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Interview with Mufflon 5
Interview with "Mufflon 5" 8 April 1994 - by Erik Soderstrom after a gig at
"Herrgar'n", Linkoping, Sweden.
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Mufflon 5 are:
Karl Mogren (vocals, guitars) Daniel Mannheimer (drums)
Fabian Edmar (guitar, backing vocals) Lars Johansson (bass, backing vocals)
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(if the answer is "A." it was answered by someone. If the answer came from
someone special, the initials are written.)
Q. WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE GIG TONIGHT?
A. Small Place. Warm, but it was a good crowd down there. It was packed.
The stage here swayed a bit, but it wasn't too troublesome really.
We heard ourselves pretty too much though. The bass and the guitars
were the worst. We played 11 songs, of which four are new ones. Stars,
Closer To The Door, Cpop, Freewheeling, Come Again, The Wheel, NY Pop,
Come Show Me, Don't Let Them Know, The Size Of Buddha and Almagest.
The Size Of Buddha, which is a slow-ish song, about 8 minutes long,
is on a new collection from A West Side which is due any day now by the
way with 20 other bands. [The collection 'We're All Part Of A Family'
was released two weeks later.] The four new songs were Stars, Cpop,
NY Pop and Almagest which we "try out" right now. They will probably
be included on the forthcoming album. We got 3.000 SEK for this gig,
so now we own our tour-bus (haha).
Q. DO YOU OFTEN HAVE OPENING BANDS [they had one this night] ?
KM. No, almost never. We're looking for a group with sort of a similar
sound that we could tour with, but we haven't found one yet.
Q. YOU'RE SHAKING YOUR HANDS, DM. WHAT HAPPENED?
DM. I got blisters from the drum stick a while ago, and had to have some
sort of bandage to protect it, but the bandage fell off real early
tonight, and I had to concentrate on holding the stick right, pushing
it back all the time to be able to play with it. It hurts. Did you
notice?
Q. ARE YOU TOURING RIGHT NOW?
KM. We played in Lund yesterday, Linkoping today and Uppsala tomorrow,
and all gigs are arranged by Smalands Nation [It's like a club for
people from the same part of Sweden (in this case, Smaland) at the
universities]. Tonight was better than yesterday in Lund though.
Q. WHEN DID MUFFLON 5 START AND WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
FE. About two years ago. Lars, Kalle and Daniel played in other groups
before that. We're from Gothenburg. Earlier we were called Happy
Everly After (they played us on the radio show 'Bommen') and then
we changed it to Pipelines. Pet Sounds handled the distribution
back then, but well, you know, they went down the drain and now
we're called Mufflon 5. We're the same now as we were when we were
signed to A West Side.
Q. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR NAME, AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
KM. Well, in an old sketch with Tage Danielsson [famous, now dead,
swedish comedian], he said something about Mufflon sheep, which
are some sort of sheep from Australia they have in Halland [a
part of Sweden] and we grabbed that. We were in a hurry, and
had to decide. We couldn't use just 'Mufflon' because it didn't
sound right and we couldn't use 'Mufflon 4' which we wanted
(with four members), because it would have been too much (haha).
[4 is pronounced 'four' in swedish as well, but is also
pronounced like 'f}r' which means 'sheep' in swedish.] so we
just added 1. You know, there are a lot of groups with '5' in their
names. Like The Jackson 5 and so on.
DM. It's till a bit embarrasing when someone asks what group I'm a
member of. I say 'Mufflon 5' and they just say 'uh..', or they
ask what the hell it means. But my dad thinks it's a great name
(haha).
Q. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BEING ON THE A WEST SIDE FABRICATION LABEL?
KM. It's really good. We like it. SNAP takes care of the distribution
outside Sweden, and A West Side handles the domestic. We were up
there [in Skelleftea, where the label headquarters are located]
two months ago and met Bear Quartet, A Shrine, Blithe and Jocke.
It was really great.
Q. HOW DID YOU GET SIGNED TO THE A WEST SIDE FABRICATION LABEL?
A. First, we sent a porta-studio demo to Jocke [the owner of A WS]
but he lost the cover, so he didn't know who we were, but he liked
it. Thought it was Bear Quartet and called them and asked even!
Well, we didn't know anything about this then, but we sent another
demo later on, around spring 1993, and he recognized the sound,
and signed us on the spot. Then in october, 'Boca Juniors' was
released.
Q. HOW ABOUT RELEASES? DOMESTIC AND OUTSIDE SWEDEN?
KM. This week actually, SNAP is releasing a single we made for foreign
distribution, called 'Freewheeling', througout Europe. It has 'The Size
Of Buddha' on the back side. SNAP is changing name by the way to SOUP
pretty soon now, because, you know, the group, Snap, wanting to take the
case to court and all.. Oh well, we've been talking through our fax with
a label in Canada/USA as well. They contacted us, after going through
the complete A West Side stable and said they liked our sound. Pretty
amazing isn't it? Well, it's the same label as Skinny Puppy is on
[Northwood?] We're also looking at Japan through SNAP [or SOUP] as well.
We've released a full-length CD, 'Boca Juniors' and a new full-length
CD is to be released this autumn where the soft songs will be softer
and the hard ones will be harder.
Q. OTHER THINGS YOU HAVE RECORDED?
A. We did a Peel Session which is to be broadcasted really soon. Three
new songs and one old one. It sounded awful though (haha). I wish
we could have worked with them some more before we went into the
studio.
Q. DID YOU LISTEN TO PEEL SESSIONS BY OTHER SWEDISH GROUPS BEFORE?
A. Yeah. The Bear Quartet Peel Session. It didn't sound like a live
session, but it was great anyway.
Q. HOW BIG ARE YOU TODAY?
A. We're still handling pretty much everything ourselves, for example,
no-one moves our stuff for us. We have to do that, but everything
has moved really fast. They play our songs on the radio even! We
find that amazing, really.
Q. HOW ABOUT INFLUENCES?
KM. Well, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Rolling Stones, Television, Cumberland,
22 Pistepirkko, Sebadoh. 70's stuff, funk, jazz, whatever comes to
mind. Did you hear any jazz influences tonight? In the slow songs?
But yeah, we do have a lot of guitar-walls, and it's really extreme
when we play live (haha).
Q. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE BRITISH/AMERICAN INDIE SCENE?
KM. Both are really lousy these days. I mean, Suede. Even the latest stuff
from Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr are low-marks.
Q. ANY PROMOTIONAL STUFF?
A. Yeah, we made a video. We sent it to Intensiven [Indie show on
the swedish television] but they thought it was too lousy to
show. MTV did show it once though. On 120 Minutes. Paul King talked
about us for a long while before he showed the video too! It was
sometime in february 1994. Later, people told us they thought it
was so 'B' it was cool. (Haha).
Q. HOW ABOUT OTHER SWEDISH INDIE GROUPS?
KM. Whipped Cream... they're boring. Easy is okay. I saw Fleshquartet
last weekend - they're really good live. Really good. It's a pity
Union Carbide doesn't exist anymore. They were great. Popsicle?
Ahem.. naah. I really like one song by A Shrine by the way. On
their first, or second EP. A slow one.
Q. HOW ABOUT TALES FROM EARLIER GIGS?
A. (Hahaha). We played in Karlstad once, and they had a disco (played
dance music) before we were to play. There were about 800 people
dancing in front of the stage. When we started to play, everyone
left the floor. Everyone but eight people of which five were
dressed in suits, loaded to the limit. They stage-dived..
Q. HOW ABOUT COVERS? HAVE YOU MADE ANY?
A. No. No covers. Except once, a couple of years ago, when we played at
a birthday party (one of ours) we played Neil Young, Beatles, Iggy
Pop etc.
Q. ARE YOU USED TO PLAYING LIVE?
KM. Ahem. Well I was pretty nervous tonight.
FE. Me too.
DM. I thought it was great tonight. I wasn't nervous at all.
KM. We were all nervous yesterday though. It was our first gig since
the 13th of december last year.
Q. WHO WRITES THE LYRICS AND ARE THEY PERSONAL? WRITTEN FOR SOMEONE?
KM. I write the lyrics. Some of them are personal, but they get less
and less personal these days. I work really hard with them. Sitting
on my bed, thinking: 'Ok, I have to write lyrics to this music I'm
listening to' and I get frustrated, which more than often, you can
hear if you listen to them. I only write in english, because if I
were to write in swedish, people listen a lot more to them, they
seem to mean a lot more when they are in swedish, and I don't want
that. It's the music that's important. The new ones, on the new
CD is a lot more.. "out there" you know? Misty. Umm. I like swedish
lyrics though, but there are so few who can write good swedish
lyrics.
Q. ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO TELL ME?
KM. (Haha) Yeah.. we were interviewed by a guy from MM [Media for Musiker,
a serious magazine for people in the music business.] and the headline
in the magazine was "It ain't Easy". The story behind this: we have
our studio below Easy's studio (in the same building), and we mentioned
that they stole a riff they heard through the floor once, but we told
him not to print that, because we like the guys, and we didn't mind
them using that piece of music in one of their songs, but he used it
as the headline. Embarrasing. When we asked him why the hell he wrote
what we told him not to write, he just said "it was too hot to leave
out". And we meet the guys in Easy every day in the stairs. Embarrasing.
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