Interview with Scrags, October 2006

NB - Please introduce yourself.
S - My name is Antonio Fryk and I do the vocals, the strip show, the blood show and i use to speak a forgotten African language in a trashy megaphone. I'm also the leader of an underground cult, we burn goats for Christmas.

NB - Who are the band members and can you tell me a bit about yourselves?
S - On electric guitar we have Jani Lehtinen, a half blood finish young man. Fredrik Berglund does the chunka-chunka drums and sweats a lot. He also tattooed "The Scrags" on his arm today, I'm gonna call him right now and tell him he's fired. Joakim Forsgren plays the Ovation Magnum-I bass and does the limp dancing.

NB - How did The Scrags start?
S - I met the guys one at a time at bars, porn boutiques and at other odd places. We started to play two of my songs "Flowing Napalm" and "Radiation Blind", we got wild and thought it was so much fun that we tore the rehearsal room apart. We got thrown out and had no place to play. So we started to send the tape that we recorded at the wicked rehearsal to clubs outside our town and like that it still goes on. We're allways out hunting gigs and we play were ever people want us, or don't want us. We love doing freak shows at odd places.

NB - I was in Gävle once for few hours, which I spent in local record store. You say there is nothing exciting there, at least in musical life. I can't imagine that. Holland who has much bigger population than Sweden has so much less bands. There are so many good bands from Sweden that I always have a feeling that each smallest village has at least one, and all you Swedish people do is playing music. Or maybe this image I have in my head is wrong?
S - The record store you are thinking about is probably Petter och Lottas. That is the coolest store in Gävle, the only store that I can stand being in. There are menny bands in Gävle but weather the town is musicaly exciting or not depends on your taste. Garagerock is not a big thing here and that's why we allways play far away from here. But that's ok really. We like to jump in to our Van and travel 12 hours just to play one gig, party all night long and then go back. We do it like a weekend travel just to have fun. Off course we do other kinds of tours to. We play a lot and have to start doing more than two gigs in a row. Well anyway, you're right about Sweden in many ways. There are good bands in every little stinking shit-hole here.

NB - Do you think Scandinavian bands have equal possibilities to get as big as bands from UK or US? In my opinion Scandinavia is strongest in r'n'r music, but you don't see many Scandinavian bands in record/CD shops, or hear on radio - except for The Hives, Hellacopters...
S - Well, yes and no... Sweden has a very good welfare system. I believe that Sweden spend more money on youth culture than most of the European countries. I mean, you can get economic help from many places. For an example: we have plans of going to New York because a friend of mine has fixed a gig there and he wants us to come visiting him. The problem is that we don't have the money to go there just fore a few gigs. So I called the municipality yesterday, cried and lied and now they're paying one of our tickets to New York.
But then on the other hand it feels like that if you are a shit-band playing holidaypop-punk music like Blink 182 in the US you can easily get your video out on MTV and get rich and retire like a fat and tattooed fakepunk. No holidaypop-punk bands are from Sweden. They're from US or UK and they surf on the green while the high-school teens are throwing their panties at them...
There are many good R'n'R bands here but most of them are putting out their records on small independent labels, often in Germany or Italy. It's very hard to get signed here 'cause of the hard competition. The record industry sucks and every time I think of a label telling us how to do our thing I look at our demo tape from the rehearsal room with a smile. I mean, you're not selling any records any way. Ok, The Hives are one of a fucking lucky kind, doing their own garage thing and has become one of the biggest R'n'R bands on this stinking planet called earth. But I don't think The Hellacopters are big sellers. But they're probably satisfied anyway. The Scrags would love to get help from a label who really care about us. If they don't care we'll scrag 'em!

NB - What are you doing except playing in The Scrags?
S - At the moment I'm not doing so much. Playing a kind of theatre, based on improvisation, at schools and trying to get inspiration for new songs. Me and Fredrik went to Copenhagen a few days last weekend just to get a break from Gävle. That was a hell of a trip! I love Copenhagen now and hopefully we're playing in Christiania in early November after the gig in Lund (south of Sweden). I'm also running my own club - Klubb Stilett, we have gigs a few times a year, booking garagepunk and rock'n'roll bands that I like and DJ:ing. Joakim (bass) are studying art at Konstfack in Stockholm and dating arty-farty girls. Jani are for the moment working at a school as a teacher. He gives the teens good notes if they suck his finish pale dick.

NB - Are you involved in other bands/projects?
S
I'm not. Fredrik (who are now scraged 4 life) and Jocke, the limp dancer, are not playing with anny others eather. But Jani has a fist full of bands in Sandviken.

NB - 3 things you hate most:
S
1.The Scrags 2.Myself 3.Always telling the truth

NB - Do you play many shows and did you tour outside of Sweden?
S
We often play here in Sweden but have never played outside yet. Hopefully we'll do Copenhagen and New York next year. We would love to play more outside Sweden. Every place is very stiff here, you see what I mean? You can go 15 minutes outside Sweden to Copenhagen and there the atmosphere is like in southern Europe compared to Sweden.

NB - Can we expect you in Holland?
S - Book us and we'll jump in to the Van without thinking!

NB - What are The Scrags doing at the moment?
S - Trying to get more gigs. The liveshow experience with The Scrags is like heroin. It totaly blows my mind, i feel sick afterwards but wen we're out of gigs i can't stop thinking of how to get the next trip!

NB - Anything you want to say to No Brains readers?
S - Can you fix a gig? Are you interested in putting out some good garage music on your label? Would you like to send some nude pictures of yourself?

Contact us:

www.thescrags.com
thescrags[@]hotmail.com

Thank you very much for reading!