FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley slaps the shit out of a Nazi-saluting skinhead in Stockholm, 1993


The late Layne Staley of Alice in Chains modeling the proper reaction to someone throwing up Nazi salutes. Image source.
 
As the world seems to still need a reminder that Slap-a-Nazi-Day should be observed every damn day, let’s take a look at the example set by the late Layne Staley of Alice in Chains when he spotted one in the crowd of an AIC show in Stockholm in February of 1993.

The band was in Stockholm to play a gig at Cirkus during their two-month tour of Europe with Screaming Trees. During the band’s set, Staley took notice of a skinhead close to the stage, acting like a whirling dipshit, creating a one-man moshpit of sorts, beating members of the audience and throwing up Nazi salutes. Once AIC finished up “It Ain’t Like That” (Facelift, 1990), Layne addressed the crowd with the endearing line “We love you fucking Swedish people!” and proceeded to walk to the edge of the stage to speak to a member of Cirkus’ security team. He gestured to the skinhead who had been assaulting people in the crowd and asked him to come up on stage, telling him, “Come on, man. Come join the band—have a good time.” Randy Biro, a contributing vocalist to AIC, was there (as told in the book Alice in Chains: The Untold Story by David De Sola) to see the look on the Nazi numbskull’s mug as he responded to Layne’s invitation asking “Me?”

Staley’s showstopping moment was a puzzle to everyone including the rest of AIC and the Cirkus security team. Biro recalls wondering “why the fuck” Staley was extending an olive branch to a “douchebag” skinhead. During the confusing stand-off, Layne kept encouraging him to come up and join the band on stage, which he finally did. When the skinhead was close enough for Layne, he reached down and pulled the punch-happy asshole up on stage. He then struck him in the face twice so hard the annoying Nazi fell backward into the crowd, who were collectively having a good laugh over what they just witnessed (feel free to insert your “they did Nazi that coming” jokes here). As if Layne’s impromptu romper-stomp of a skinhead’s face wasn’t enough, as the Nazi was being taken away by security, he returned to the microphone and yelled, “Fucking Nazis DIE!”, finishing the rest of their set incident-free.

I wish this was the part where Layne Staley and the band were then shuttled off to the king of Stockholm’s gothic castle to receive the key to the city, but that didn’t happen. And that’s because it’s not actually legal to slap someone (even an aggressive, Sieg-Heiling Nazi) in the face. Layne was in trouble, and he and the band knew it.

After the gig, people were nervously ruminating about the consequences of Layne’s Nazi-slapping incident, and they were right to. John Sampson, Staley’s personal security guard, took the vocalist to a ferry bound for Finland to avoid arrest. As the rest of AIC were leaving their hotel, the local authorities showed up after getting a call from the skinhead Staley had slapped. They confiscated the band’s passports and went to apprehend Layne, who was already on the ferry. The cops boarded the ferry and arrested Staley for the incident at the show. In yet another interesting twist to this story, the skinhead’s brother (who was at the gig), had also gone to the police not to defend his sibling, but to make it clear that his brother had been “picking” on people in the crowd and Layne had stopped him. Since this story really does have a happy ending for everyone except the Nazi, the police congratulated Layne and the band and sent them on their way to the next stop of their tour, Oslo, Norway . Footage of Staley setting a skinhead straight follows.
 

Footage of Layne Staley slapping an aggressive Nazi during an Alice in Chains show in Stockholm on February 8th, 1993.
 
HT: Screaming Trees official FB page.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
A super glam-looking Layne Staley performing with his high school band ‘Sleze’ in 1985
‘Experiencing Nirvana: Grunge in Europe, 1989’: Sub Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt on his new book
‘Hype!’: The 1996 documentary that captured grunge’s explosive rise (and immediate co-optation)
Ultramega OK: Soundgarden destroy the Whisky a Go-Go, 1990
‘No Nirvana’: Jane’s Addiction, Sonic Youth, Screaming Trees & more live on UK TV in the early 90s
Blistering, previously unseen Nirvana footage captured the night before ‘Nevermind’ was released

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
02.24.2020
12:55 pm
|
Some Stockholm commuters are irritated by menstruation-themed subway art
11.17.2017
08:46 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Anyone who’s ever been to Stockholm has probably gotten at least a taste of the remarkably vibrant artistic concepts that define many of the city’s subway stations. A bunch of the stations are incredibly distinctive––my favorite was the Solna Centrum station on the blue line, executed by Anders Åberg and Karl-Olov Björk in 1975. In that instance, the cavernous, rocky ceilings are painted a deep shade of red, while the walls at each exit are either green or black. (As you wander about the platform, there are plenty of odd, rustic dioramas to hold your attention.) If you Google the subway stations of Stockholm, this is the image you’re most likely to see––it is rather like a vision of hell. Other stations have geometrical patterns or motifs from science, and not all of them are by any means pleasant.

Stockholm continued its tradition of adventurous subway art when it granted a commission to a cartoonist named Liv Strömquist. Americans are most likely to have encountered Strömquist’s work as the cover art for The Knife’s 2013 album Shaking the Habitual, which necessitated the creation of a comic book called “End Extreme Wealth” that portrayed the 1% as culturally impoverished and vermin-esque. 
 

 
In 2014 Strömquist published Kunskapens frukt (Knowledge’s fruit), in which she introduced menstruation as a major theme of her work. This year, after accepting the commission to do art on the subway, Strömquist decided to present the menstruation-themed artwork in an even more public setting. Did been on display at the Slussen station, which services the green and red lines, since late September.

The enlarged felt-pen sketches, which are self-consciously simple in execution, are entirely black and white except for a noticeable streak of red strategically positioned to evoke menstruation. All of the pictures feature women doing things outdoors; only a few of them focus on menstruation. One of the images references Bob Dylan’s song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”

Not everyone is delighted to be confronted by images of blood-stained womanhood in the subway. The pictures have been criticized for being “disgusting” and “inappropriate”; one blogger, while acknowledging the positive aspects of a franker attitude towards menstruation, stated that she has doubts that “not sure that enormous pictures like this are what I want to be faced with on my daily commute.”

One tweet complained: “It’s not fun explaining to a four-year-old about the red between the legs.” Another read: “It is not enough to get [your period] once a month. Now you will be reminded every time you jump on the subway.”

As Strömquist commented to Sverige Radio:
 

This discussion always comes when I exhibit my art, because it’s a taboo in society and evokes strong emotions. I’ve not commented on the discussion, and it’s not my place to give judgments to my own art. I’m very excited that some people have enjoyed it.

 
“It’s weird that it’s deemed so provocative, considering it’s something that we see all the time,” she explained to the SVT television station. “I have a hard time understanding that.”

One woman who has no problem with the images is the well-known singer Neko Case, who in early October tweeted some of the images, with the message “Yep, these amazing Stockholm subway murals are by Liv Stromquist!” followed by a heart emoticon.
 
See the images after the jump….......
 

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
11.17.2017
08:46 am
|
Led Zeppelin watch a couple have sex on top of their gold records at a Stockholm sex club in 1973
09.21.2017
06:32 am
Topics:
Tags:


Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant back in the day, perhaps recalling some good times at Chat Noir in 1973.
 
I haven’t really thought about Led Zeppelin in a while, so the other day I started poking around looking at photos of the band taken back in the early 70s (don’t judge). It was one hell of a rabbit hole where I came across an infamous shot of Zeppelin taken by photographer Bengt H. Malmqvist in Stockholm in 1973. The photo in question featured the members of Zeppelin watching a couple have sex on top of a table displaying their gold records. The bizarre image was part of a larger series attributed to Malmqvist containing 56 black and white negatives, one set of photos and two contact maps which were up for auction in 2010—though it’s unclear if they ever sold. The photos of Zep taken by Mr. Malmqvist were shot inside Chat Noir—one of Stockholm’s premiere sex clubs, and according to the auction site Bonhams, Malmqvist was the only photographer allowed to shoot the event.

The Chat Noir itself was the epitome of what one might imagine a high-end sex club to be like. The establishment prided itself on being “classy” by offering what they described as a “luxury” sex experience which would routinely feature female stars from Stockholm and other locations around the world, and even some sort of sexy “wizard” which according to folklore about Chat Noir was especially popular with Japanese businessmen. The club, considered at the time to be one of Stockholm’s most glamorous, was also a popular site used by the Swedish sex film industry and several movies were shot on there including Anita: Swedish Nymphet. That film came out the same year Led Zeppelin was welcomed by the club to receive four gold records from Metronome Records in honor of their record sales. True to form, the whole salacious event was orchestrated by the band’s manager, the notorious Peter Grant. 

Below, a few of the images from Zeppelin’s infamous visit to the Chat Noir, plus a full page account of what went down that night that was published in a Swedish magazine in 1973.
 

Robert Plant and a friend at the Chat Noir, 1973. Photo by Bengt H. Malmqvist.
 

Jimmy Page, (allegedly) Pamela Des Barres, and John Bonham hanging out at Chat Noir in 1973. Photo by Bengt H. Malmqvist.
 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
|
09.21.2017
06:32 am
|
Roxy Music: Live in Concert, Stockholm 1976

image
 
Packaged highlights of Roxy Music in concert at Konserthuset, Stockholm, as recorded by Swedish Television on January 27th, 1976.

Track Listing:

01. “The Thrill Of It All”
02 “Mother Of Pearl”
03. “Nightingale”
04. “Out Of The Blue”
05. “Street Life”
06. “Diamond Head”
07. “Wild Weekend”
08. Band Introduction
09. “The In Crowd”
10. “Virginia Plain”
11. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

This concert was available as a bootleg within days of its performance, and has been a staple of the unauthorized Roxy catalog ever since. The concert was considered solid and workman-like at the time, but now it looks bloody marvelous.
 

 
Bonus…Bryan Ferry on his latest album ‘The Jazz Age’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.26.2012
05:06 pm
|
‘Clara’: A film about joy, love and struggle by Anna Österlund

image
 
After the success of Breathing, her haunting collaboration with composer Michael Karlsson, film-maker Anna Österlund has returned with her latest short, Clara - a beautiful and impressionistic film examining the conflicting pressures of motherhood.

‘I made the film after hearing designer and musician Jenny Grettve‘s music and seeing her collection which drew inspiration from the 19th century composer Clara Schumann.

‘Clara was a mother of 7 children, and yet, she was considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era.

‘In the eyes of society, being a performer and the main breadwinner for her family, Clara was in direct conflict with the expected role as a wife and mother. Some of the hardships she must have gone through in combining the two, I also see in my friend Jenny’s life. She’s had 3 kids within 3 years, while at the same time she started her own fashion brand.

‘I see the joy, the love and the struggle, the wish to drop everything, yet embracing it, and the fantastic creativity that comes out of being under such a pressure.

‘So I asked her to just act herself in her own collection and I put her in contrasting situations involving her, her kids, music and creativity, and let the camera roll.

‘I worked with symbols from classic paintings such as the apple symbolising temptaition, and other symbols showing struggle, hard work, restlesness and love. I’m leaving it up to the viewers to make their own interpretations, but everything is there for a reason.’

Prior to film-making, Anna set-up her own highly successful design company Ravishing Mad in 2007, which she described as a contrast of things she loves: ‘being outrageous and yet stunning, clean but not strict, dirty and oh so powerful.’

Anna was born and raised just outside Stockholm. She had a rather lonely childhood, and was often bullied by other kids. To escape Anna spent much of her time alone in her room drawing and sewing, while listening to music. It was the kind of existence that focussed her talents and ambitions.

Once Ravishing Mad was a success, Anna wanted to find new outlets for her cretaivity. ‘I bought a camera and got back into filming, photographing and writing, collaborating with musicians and dancers along with my work in fashion. Now I’m enjoying myself like I never thought possible and my biggest joy is the mix of doing everything.

Anna describes Clara as a mix of music video, fashion video and short film.  ‘Call it whatever you like, but it’s not very typical of the first two. What I’m interested in is awakening emotions and adding an expression that is different to what you see every day.

‘There is an indie feel to most of my work and I have a weakness for the unpolished. I grew up during the 80’s and 90’s and remember how I as a child and teen I recorded films on top of each other until they were completely worn out. I’m so in love with the faults and beauty in old VHS copies and it’s probably a way for me to romanticise the moments when I saw some of my favorite films for the first time. I think my past is quite visible in my work and I try to be honest and to create my own magic world that I can invite fantastic people into.’
 


 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘Breathing’: A haunting and eerie short film by Michael Karlsson, Anna Österlund and Truls Bråhammar


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
08.29.2012
07:42 pm
|
Andreas Englund’s paintings of an aging Superhero
08.30.2011
07:05 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
DM pal and acclaimed writer Steve Duffy passed on these amusing paintings by Swedish artist, Andreas Englund, who says of his art:

“Humor can be the carrier of messages that are otherwise hard to convey. For me, it liberates my thoughts and ideas from pretentiousness while at the same time it opens doors to new routes and angles.”

As Mr Duffy points out, even superheroes get old, and “this’ll be you, one day.” Well, yes, but maybe without the lycra cat suit.

See more of Andreas Englund’s paintings here.
 
image
 
image
 
Via Empty Kingdom, with thanks to Steve Duffy.
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
08.30.2011
07:05 am
|
The Patti Smith Group live in Stockholm, 1976
07.11.2011
08:51 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
The Patti Smith Group in Stockholm October 1976.

Things kick-off with Patti passionately stating her mission as a poet and punk rocker, which includes some words to live by from Franklin D. Roosevelt. The interviewer is popular Swedish radio and TV personality Lennart Wretlind. And then we’re off to a concert at The Konserthuset where the group does killer versions of “Land” and “Time Is On My Side.”

Patti tears it up!
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
07.11.2011
08:51 pm
|