Golden Memories of Summer

Summer used to be a lot sunnier than this. It seems we're getting a lot of rain, harsh winds and not enough sunny days. There's also not enough Gyllene Tider on the radio.

Gyllene Tider was a Swedish pop group famous for catchy songs about teenage love, life in a small town and summer nights. Remember Per Gessle of Roxette? Gyllene Tider (1976-1985) was his first band. If you grew up in Sweden during the 80s and 90s you know most of their songs by heart. They did a one-off reunion gig in their hometown Halmstad in 1995 and I was there.

Mom dropped me and my friend Tove off at the gig and we promptly snuck into the bathroom in the nearest McDonalds and changed our clothes to something more rock n roll. And then we ran into Mom an hour later...  lucky for us she just found it funny.
It was a great night and a great gig. Gyllene Tider did a reunion tour the following year and another big tour in 2004. But it's the classic pop songs from their heyday that I love. Gyllene Tider is the sound of summertime love, teenage dreams and life in a small town.

For the honor of Greyskull

I just got the best keychain ever. Anyone else remember the princess of power from those cartoons we watched in the 80's? She-Ra!

Come to think of it - She-Ra, Jem and ThunderCats were pretty good role models for young girls.

If you wanna get your own badass keychain check out CartoonJunk on Etsy.

I carried a watermelon

I was in the mood for a classic tonight so I watched Dirty Dancing. I have watched this movie so many times in the past two decades that I know it by heart.
I've had many "I carried a watermelon" moments, but I haven't learned to dance the mambo. But trust me, when my Johnny Castle comes along I'm willing to learn.

And it got me thinking... are there any teen movies from the last ten years that are as good as Dirty Dancing is?

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

All I want is a DeLorean

This freezing weather and constant snowing has made me long for a way to get around without driving in the snow or freezing to death while waiting for the bus. And the I realized... I need the DeLorean from Back To The Future II.

"You built a time machine out of a DeLorean?"

Flying cars... shouldn't we have these by now?

I wouldn't have to drive in the snow or worry about traffic, I could just go to hover-mode and fly. And since it's a time machine it might actually get me to work on time.

Talk about underwhelming. NKOTB are back. The band claims that the news of their reunion was leaked. My guess is that the information was leaked by the band itself. This has "word of mouth-marketing" written all over it.

Are you ready for the return of the only boyband in history that had their own cartoon?

Tiger Army will play at KB in Malmö in 28 days! Less than a month! Wheee!


Yep, I've had a ticker that counts down to the gig on my profile at Punk Rock Domestics for months and I just noticed that it's now less than a month until the show.
However, I've heard that Tiger Army can be either brilliant or suckalicious live, depending on what mood singer Nick 13 is in, so maybe I should't get too excited. But they've got some really great songs on the new album so I'm gonna hope for the best.

On a different note; why are all American musicians so damn short? Are they smurfs in disguise or just poorly fed during their childhood?
Many a crush of mine has come to a grinding halt when I've seen the object of my desire in real life and realised that he is tiny. Nick 13 looks kinda short in pictures, so I'm guessing he's a midget by my standards.

Unfortunately my friends who introduced my to Tiger Army no longer seem interested in the band. But maybe they'll dust off their Tiger Army albums and decide to show up anyway.
Many of them were really into rockabilly and psychobilly a while back, but now they seem to be all about 80's hardcore. I don't know what happened there.

Also, my friends The Headlines are playing at Bodoni in Malmö tonight.
Drop by if you're in the neighbourhood. You won't be sorry.

I stumbled upon this video when I did research for a short feature on 80s music. The song is "Jimmy Dean" by Swedish girl band Troll.
It was a huge hit in Sweden in 1989 and 1990. And by huge I mean it was playing everywhere; in the grocery store, on the radio and in the clubs.
One of my friends had this song on casette tape, and I remember being sooo envious. Well, I was 9 at the time.

Listen if you dare, but beware it's catchy as hell!



While I was looking into music from the 80s I got sidetracked by Erasure, and discovered that I still know all the words to "Love to Hate You".