A Whole Lot of Stupidity on Garagerocktopia

For its first couple of decades, rock and roll was considered the domain of teenagers. Rock and Roll for grown-ups was an idea nobody even considered.

Then, those teenagers who sustained rock became, well, grown-ups, and rock started to grow up in the late ‘60s. Still, rock was mostly the playground of the under 30 crowd.


But rock didn’t die before it got old. Naturally, as rock and roll’s age went up and up, so too did the people making the music.

For the Swedish garage rock band Stupidity, the too-old-to-rock-and-roll never washed. In fact, the band’s unusual moniker was partly a reaction to the nonsense that a pimply face was a prerequisite for rock and roll.

“Our name was taken from several things,” explained PA, guitarist and backup singer for the band. “It partly came from a Solomon Burke song we all liked and partly from a Dr. Feelgood live album with the same name which all of us loved.”

“But it also came partly from the fact that people around us thought it was pure stupidity to form a new rowdy original rock band at "our age (late forties)." We were supposed to sit at a fireplace being old and not play around with rock n roll. You know, some people think when they get older they stop living. We refused to do that. Why give it up just because we were in our late forties at the time?”

That was late in 2005, so you do the math on their age now, if that’s really what’s most important to you. What’s more important is that, regardless of their age, this band rocks like crazy.

The other members of Stupidity (there’s no “the” in the band’s name) are Miss Anna Palmer, who plays the Flying V-Bass, Tommy Boy Sjöström on drums, and Erniz Lundqvist on vocals & Percussion. Together, they make music that doesn’t sound like any rock band on earth.

PA

The band has recently released its latest single, “Get Up,” a torrid rocker that has gained airplay on radio stations in the United States and which recently spent a week as “Coolest Song in the World” on Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

On its Facebook page, Stupidity lists the kinds of influences one might expect from a garage-rock band: The Sonics and Johnny Burnette, amongst others. But the band’s sound in reality defies a handy description. They have their own, though. They call their music “Rawk.”

At times, “Rawk” takes a hard-driving sound alternately recalling both first-wave punk bands like the Jam and more contemporary bands like Green Day, as well as ‘60s garage and surf. Other times, it’s much in the mold of other straight-up garage rockers. Sometimes it just sounds like, well, “Rawk.” PA says the band doesn’t focus on making a certain kind of sound.

“We don´t really have any influences in particular,” PA explained via e-mail. “This is only a way to describe something so others will get a hunch. We do what we do and the songs we write are the songs that come out of our heads.”

“Our influences would be everything around that we’ve heard since we were kids in the sixties. It is impossible not to get influences from here and there, but it is nothing we think about.”

One band from which PA doesn’t deny inspiration is the Who, in which he describes having a moment in his life that we at Garagerocktopia have heard from other artists who make the kind of music we like here.

“I started to play after watching a TV show called ‘Popside’ on Swedish TV when I was about ten years old,” PA recalled. “I had been playing piano for a year or two, but I didn’t like that too much. Then, one day I was watching and the Who was on (You can find that show on YouTube today, actually). What hit me was the attitude of The Who. It really was a ‘(blank) you’ attitude which I loved right away. And when my dad shouted ‘What is this crap you listen to,?’ that was it for me.”

Stupidity’s lead singer, Erniz Lundqvist, has probably one of the most unique voices in rock, garage or otherwise. At times, he recalls Tony Andreason of the Trashmen (“Surfin Bird”) but he has also been compared to Lux Interior of the Cramps and Iggy Pop. Once again, according to PA, comparisons tell you only so much.

“I think this is just a way for people to describe somebody in a way for others to understand,” said PA, “like explaining the color orange to somebody who doesn´t know the color orange, but knows the fruit.”

For fans of garage rock, Sweden stands out as a country that has contributed far more than its fair share of great acts. Swedish artists are no strangers to international charts, but with regard to genres like garage rock, the U.N. Commission on Garage Rock regularly lists Sweden (as well as the other Scandinavian countries) as having the highest number of cool bands per capita in the industrialized world.

Well, OK, so that commission doesn’t exist, but there’s nothing imaginary or facetious about Sweden’s ability to produce great rock and roll bands. And yes, it is partly due to government policy.


Art schools in the UK in the ‘50s and ‘60s that helped educate John Lennon, Ray Davies, Phil May, Pete Townshend and so many other icons of rock, icons who, by the way, have probably paid back many times over in taxes what the British government spent on the art schools. Sweden also has a system of free music schools which, at least artistically, have obviously paid off handsomely.

“We have something called "Kommunala Musikskolan" here in Sweden,” said PA. “That means that every kid can go to music school for free. So most kids in general have an idea about music, and it also means that most Swedish bands can play pretty decent. So never mind style, most bands actually sound quite OK.”

“One thing that also came from this, is that choir singing is quite popular among older people. I heard a figure about around 300.000 people singing in different choirs here, and of a population of 9 million, that is quite a number. People here simply love music. And why not? Music is good for the soul and makes you happy.”

But it wasn’t only government policy that made PA and band mates form Stupidity. All members had already been with other bands.

“One day, I was looking for a rehearsal room,” PA recunted. “In Stockholm, the Swedish YMCA decided to build a music and sports house for kids and musicians in general. Miss Anna and I got a place in one room with our band. We shared that with Tommy and Erniz and their band, and for a few years our both bands shared it.”

“Then their band split up, and Tommy started as a manager for mine and Anna´s band and we did our first British tour.”

That tour didn’t go so well. PA described it as a “financial disaster,” but it wasn’t enough to scare any of them out of music. The members went their separate ways but would eventually hook up again.

“Erniz stopped music to support his family and study,” PA said. “Me, Anna and Tommy kept playing together with another guy, one of the best harmonica players in Sweden called ‘The Wolf,’ now a very famous bluegrass player over here. Around 2003, we felt that it was harder and harder for a rock band to succeed, so for a while we didn’t do much.”

“Then one day I was down at our local Super Market and I ran into Erniz. We had a talk at the side of the milk and cheese counter, and he said he wanted to go back to music. I had been both lead singer and guitar player for years and was a bit fed up with singing lead, so we decided to rehearse a few times just for fun. It sounded pretty good, so we formed the band Stupidity.”

“Get Up” is not the first “Coolest Song …” Stupidity has had. They have alsoscored others, such as “King Midas” and “Girl Named Moe.” Being recognized on what is probably garage rock’s most visible outlet is helpful, but it rarely catapults a group into superstardom. Still, it helps, bit by bit, to build a loyal audience.

Partly because of LSUG, Stupidity has a global audience. The internet has also helped Stupidity, which these days offers up a global audience scarcely imaginable to the original wave of garage rockers back in the ‘60s. PA said the band would love nothing more than to tour these far-flung areas.

“If it was possible, we would tour all the time all over the world,” admits PA. “People ask us to come everywhere. But it is very much a financial thing. It is very costly and setting it up is very time consuming. We run everything ourselves through our companies (Go Fast Productions / Go Fast Records.) Including our day jobs, there just aren’t enough hours in the day right now.”

“So for now we work Scandinavia, UK and USA. But we would love to go to Germany, Spain, France, and other places in Europe, Asia and Australia. Right now, the USA is our priority one. I know we are get lots and lots of airplay over there, and we simply love to play over there.

“For now the money we make in our companies -- and from playing -- are enough to sort what we can do now, regarding touring, making and releasing records and such. We’ll see what happens.”

One might think with all of the great garage and punk bands in Sweden that the genres are more popular than in other countries. Not so much, says PA. Like so many other countries around the world, garage, punk and other related kinds of music are pushed more or less to the margins, and for pretty much the same reasons.

“In Sweden, garage rock is actually a bit like punk rock, rockabilly, and such,” said PA. It’s more of a subculture, or as you might say, an underground thing. What is missing though is media coverage. It would be great if TV and bigger national radio stations everywhere would support and feature so called ‘sub-genres’ as well at the side of the usual flood of mainstream stuff.”

But there are certain things that are universal, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in Sweden, or the U.S. or Timbuktu, the music biz always places the almighty dinero first.

“The big companies rules, and they are thick in their heads not understanding (there’s an  large audience for ‘subgenres’). They just think about making big bucks "now" with as little effort as possible.”

We’re going to make a wild guess here – that most of you reading this story, or whom were already familiar with Stupidity, or just dig cool music in general have already given up on the major labels and mainstream radio and have your own ways of finding good music.

“As you know, nothing can stop the real music market no matter how hard they try,” PA lauded. “People will always find new ways and be one step ahead. That is how music (and everything else for that matter) is developing. Just look at history.”

“So it is great that people like Little Steven and others make sure that smaller bands can be heard and seen. Since millions listen to these underground, satellite and internet stations, that should be enough to make the bigger actors to react. All kinds of music would benefit from that. But I guess that will be when pigs can fly.”

Regardless of whether or not Stupidity gets to tour the world, or whether or not they become fixtures on mainstream radio, the band will continue to perform the music their fans love, a sound had by nobody else on the planet. Don’t hold your breath for a “Stairway to Heaven” moment.

“That is not us,” PA reassured. “We do what we do and are happy with that. I love Led Zep, but would never play Led Zep stuff. It’s for them to do and us to listen to. We do our own slam bang stuff we call "Rawk".

Right now at Garagerocktopia, we seem to be on a real winning streak. It was truly a pleasure to talk with PA and hopefully help you to know the band just a bit more. The winning streak continues next week in a big way.

We were lucky enough to have a chat with Larry Tamblyn of the Standells, truly one of garage rock’s most legendary bands and one of the most influential rock groups ever. We spent quite a bit of time talking, so it may be a two-parter, but regardless, check back next week.