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The story of The Soul Preachers
Part four: 1991 -
1992
- As you maybe could guess, The
Soul Preachers broke up again. In January '91 Raikku
and Jarmo couldn't stand each other anymore and went
different ways. A couple of months later Pasi Taskinen, the former
drummer boy of The Soul Preachers, contacted Jarmo and
said that he wanted to join the group again. Uffe was
eager to play, too. He was planning to move to
Linköping, which is a university town 130
kilometers south from Hälleforsnäs. It took
a couple of months before the trio was joined, but in
June '91 was The Soul Preachers #6 formed.
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- For many the line-up: Jarmo Haapamäki
(guitar, lead vocals), Pasi Taskinen (drums), Uffe
Enokson (bass, backing vocals) is the real Soul Preachers.
- For many the line-up: Jarmo Haapamäki
(guitar, lead vocals), Pasi
Taskinen (drums), Uffe Enokson (bass, backing
vocals) is the real Soul Preachers. In part one we
looked back what the line-ups were before the guys
started so bang their instruments together. Now we are
gonna tell you about the time with Uffe playing the
bass.
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- The Soul Preachers posing on a cold
day in March 1992. The place is home in
Hälleforsnäs nearby the old iron works
Hälleforsnäs Bruk AB. Photo was taken by
Lars Carlsson.
The sky was red and yellow. And black.
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- The band took their first tunes on Midsummer Day in June 1991. Uffe had came to
Hälleforsnäs to visit his friend Tero
Larsson and celebrate Midsummer by drinking a lot of
alcohol, as the custome is in Sweden. Jarmo, Pasi and
Uffe met each other at the local emusement park,
Vallen, the
evening before and decided to play something together
when they'd sobered up. Dorian Gray, Tero Larssons
band, borrowed their rehearsal studio at about 11
o'clock in the morning (they say it felt really early)
they came there, one by one. They all were breathing
rather heavily (hangover) and they had all bought a
large bottle of Fanta to put out their thirst with.
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- They also had pieces of paper with them. They had
written down some lyrics and chords of the songs they
wanted Ther Soul Preachers to play. Jarmo had thought
that the next version of The Soul Preachers could
start by playing the songs the band had played
earlier. The pop songs. "Well... Could we try this
instead?" asked Pasi. He had written down the lyrics
to New Rose (The
Damned), Ace Of
Space and Eat The
Rich (Motörhead) and a whole bunch of
songs written by The
Ramones. "Hell, Yeah!" said Jarmo and told
Pasi and he had wanted to play "New Rose" for like
forever, but it never felt right. This time the group
members said in one mouth: "Fu¢k the art. Lets't
play some fu¢king rock'n'roll!"
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- And so they did. They guys played theirselves
sweatty for a few hours. It was a whole lot of fun,
they said and knew they had a winning team. Although
it was very easy for the guys to tape the rehearsal in
Dorian Gray's studio, the guys pushed the REC-button.
The songs on that tape are: Blitzkrieg Bop, New Rose and I Could Die For You
Tonight. The last song is one of the very
few old The Soul Preachers songs the trio ever
bothered to play. That one is one of the very oldest,
it's from 1986. Pasi was playing the drums even back
then.
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- Although Uffe was a student in Linköping and hadn't
got loads of money (he still hasn't got any money, and
he's still a student...) he couldn't drive the 130
kilometers every weekend for rehearsals. And the band
hadn't got anywhere to play. It wasn't always that
practical to borrow Dorian Gray's rehearsal studio. On
weekends they wanted to play, too. It took couple of
months for the band to find a place where they could
bang their instruments but other they did it, things
started to happen quite fast, despite of the
geografical distance.
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- After a couple of months, in february '92, the
boys met their audience for the first time. They
weren't that many musicians around at that time who
weren't offended if you told them they were punk.
There was Dirt in
Flen and that's it. The Soul Preachers and the guys in
Dirt became good friends shortly after the first gig
and wanted to tour together but no-one ever bothered
to call any promotors. It was more fun to get drunk
and run around.
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- The first gig was a disaster. The audience in
Hälleforsnäs
Folkets Hus seemed to love the power and
the electricity of the trio, but the guys were
ashamed. They were too drunk. A reporter from a local
newspaper was in the audience and, because of the guys
knew that, they thought they would be slaughtered.
They were very unhappy. Jarmo tried to get happier
after their gig by drinking a bottle of whisky in ten
minutes - and he did. For a while. He wanted to sing
with the next band, too - but he passed out on the
stage, while Candy Kicks
Ass from Katrineholm were playing.
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- The guy (Anders Olofsson) from the local
newspaper, Eskilstuna-Kuriren, had totally
misunderstood The Soul Preachers. Maybe he just didn't
get it. For he put the guys on the front page of
monday's paper! He wrote: "The Soul Preachers have
achanged from preachers of
soul to profets of
heavy battle tank rock'n'roll" and one
found out that he was chocked by the pure energy that
exploded from the stage. The last time he had seen The
Soul Preachers there were two guys sitting on the
stage playing 12-string guitars and sounded like
The Church or
something. This time, one of the guys in the audience,
a big hairy biker and a great fan of Motörhead,
declared that The Soul Preachers was greater than
Motörhead! Well, he said later that he didn't
really mean it, he was much too drunk at the time.
"Nothing can be greater than Motörhead", he said.
But what he said tells what the audience (at least
part of the audience) thought of The Soul Preachers
premiere show.
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- And there were more shows to come. The new punk
wave hadn't come yet and Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit
hadn't come in the stores yet. But the time was right
for the speed and energy of The Soul Preachers. 4-6
chord was enough and and the refrains were easy and
cachy enough for the audience to sing along, although
they hadn't even heard them before. And the guys
weren't afraid to make fool of themselves on the stage
by banging themselves bloody on the stage on
rock'n'roll extacy. The guitar player was enjoing
himselves by ripping of the strings on his guitar,
sometimes every six of them at the same time. At one
accasion there were 16 strings and guite a lot of
blood on the stage after The Soul Preachers had made
noice there for half an hour. It didn't always sound
that great, but it usually sounded a lot!
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- (to be continued)
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