THESE WERE THE NEWS IN MARCH 1997:

16/11 1997.Doctor's Special lived through their gig at Heda in Hälleforsnäs - as Spice Boys

Yes, we played at Heda. Covers. Songs of Pixies, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Hawkwind, Johnny Cash, The Clash, Iggy Pop, Nirvana, The Kingston Trio... It went alright. Not better, not worse. I think. The audience seemed to enjoy it.

We played under three different names. None of them was Doctor's Special. The first band was called Spice Boys. (Fredde was Sporty Spice, Pelle Dirty Spice, Pasi Horny Spice and I of course was the Smart Spice...) After a brake we called ourselves Flowerpower Andy and His King Kong Balls. The last group was called Horny Devil and His King Size Penis Orchestra. The main attraction who says they are the sexiest band in Sweden, they never came...

10/11 1997 Doctor's Special gig:
Saturday 15/11 1997 at HEDA, Hälleforsnäs

Doctor's Special "on the road" again: on this Saturday the 15th we play at Heda Värdshus in Hälleforsnäs. We have more songs now and... eh, have rehearsed also a few times more. And have more songs. It will be a success, be sure of it! Be there!

It costs 40 SEK to come in. Doctor's Special will climb (?) on the stage around 22.00 and the last tunes will be played around half past twelve at night. As I said already: BE THERE!

24/10 1997 Uffe sent us another card from Gothenburg. We think he studies there.

A few weeks ago we received another note from Uffe, The bassman of The Soul Preachers. He has really moved to Gothenburg (Göteborg). He sent us another note, written on a unemployment security coupon. He told us he's studying history and astronomy... Living in a student village... Reading many books... We think. His way of writing is kinda poetic. Here's the card he sent us for those who understand Swedish:

So, what happenes now to The Soul Prechers? Who knows. It isn't impossible that the guys in Doctor's Special take over. We will come back to you.

8/7 1997 Uffe sent us another post card...
He's not in Greece anymore - he has moved to Gothenburg.

Uffe Enokson - you know, the guy with a bass we used to play rock'n'roll with - seems to have moved to Gothenburg (Göteborg), west side of Sweden. We received a post card from him today. We could read his new address and "What are you doing there while I'm here?". We wonder, what the heck is Uffe doing in Gothenburg???

Anyway, he's not in Greece anymore. That's a relief. Gothenburg is not as far away as Greece...

6/7 1997 Doctor's Special first "tour" was a success, they say. We had fun, anyway.

Doctor's Special (yes, that's the name we decided to use) played it's premier gigs. We promised to tell you how it went. Well, we try.

Pelle Holmgren was really nervous before the first gig. He has been playing guitar for four months, that's not a very long time. Pasi and I have been playing for ages and Fredde has played bass for years as well. But Pelle has guts and he won't give up. He's been rehearsing like hell, I'd guess we should do the same. He puts the rest of the band in shade, soon.

The Hälleforsnäs pub, Heda Värdshus, was full of people who were eager to hear Doctor's Special. There had been an article in a local newspaper, Eskilstuna-Kuriren, a couple of days earlier. Tomas Uddin wrote: "The doctor comes with speciel medicine for the people in Hälleforsnäs on Friday night. The medicine we're talking about is a journey through the history of rock music with songs of for example Stooges, Kim Wilde and Patti Smith." and so on. Deep stuff... The people came anyway.

Ten o'clock in the Friday evening we started the engine. At first we thought we'd start with full throttle - Search And Destroy. But we didn't have the guts then. We took another Iggy Pop song instead: Passenger. Pop instead of earthquake.

Well, the audience liked it. We thought it sounded alright. Calle, the former Soul Preachers guitarist, sat in the audience and he said it sounded really good. "It doesn't matter how slow or soft the songs you play are, it sounds hard and intense anyway. I love it", he said. But he didn't like the climax of the consert. Full throttle: Search And Destroy, followed by Territorial Pissing (Nirvana). Calle couldn't stand it, he said his ears were hurting. It was too damn loud. Well, it might have been. A little.

Don't know what else to say. Well, the audience didn't seem to be as exited as in the "good old days". We didn't really know what songs they liked. They clapped their hands and so on but... Something was missing. We played a bit carefully because of that. Except for the two POWER songs... We played three sets, maybe seventeen songs alltogether.

Saturday night's gig was more fun, really. The audience was wonderful, they started to dance and sing along and slide and everything from the first tunes. It was cool to see people headbanging to Patti Smith's beautiful Dancing Barefoot...

It didn't sound as good as it did in Heda, we didn't hear each other so well and the bass amplifier (not ours) was much too small. Pelle complained later that he was too drunk the second time we entered the stage. Sometimes he didn't have a clue of what chords he might play at the moment. "Well, I learn of my mistakes. Next time we play I will be sober" he said. We'll see...

Doctor's Special's first "tour" is over. Many people from the audience came to us afterwards and thanked us. They said we were great. You could call it a success, then.

25/6 1997 Doctor's Special is ready to rock!

In Hälleforsnäs and Flen to begin with...

Doctor's Special (or whatever name we choose to have, does Spice Boys sound stupid enough?) has agreed to go to a "tour" in couple of weeks. On Friday the 4th of July we play in Heda, which is a small quarter pub in Hälleforsnäs. The day after, on Saturday the 5th of July we make noise in Flen, at a private party.

On our repertoaire we (If you don't know what the heck Doctor's Special is, check out the news from 24/5 1997) have covers like Milk And Alcohol (Dr. Feelgood), Little Red Ridinghood (999?), Kids In America (Kim Wilde), San Quentin (Johnny Cash), Guns Of Brixton (The Clash), Search And Destroy (Stooges), Greenback Dollar (Kingston Trio), Dancing Barefoot (Patti Smith), These Boots Are Mades For Walking (Nancy Sinatra)... and more stuff like that.

We will tell how it went to you all who couldn't come to hear us. But please come if you can! And book us if you have beer and some money to offer... We play anywhere there's audience that likes good music.

13/6 1997 Uffe is alive (Wasn't that the news just a few weeks ago?...). He's in Greece this time.

The news is: We received a postcard from Uffe today. He wrote:

"Kalevala. Har av outgrundlig anledning hamnat i Grekland. Det är ett land. Ett strandland. Det finns berg i mitten så att alla rullar ut till kusterna där de ligger och solar. Uffe"

Which is Swedish and means something like:

"Odysseia. I don't know why but I've ended up in Greece. It's a country. A beach country. There's mountains in the middle, which makes everybody roll out to the coasts where they lie and sunbathe. Uffe"

4/6 1997 Uffe has dissapeared again - now to some Eastern European country (we think)

It's not easy to get started again with Uffe. He's never here. Now that his school termine ended and he had to give up his appartment as well (the school owned it) Uffe simply dissapeared. He mentioned earlier that he may spend the summer in some cheaper country, perhaps in Hungary or somewhere else in the eastern Europe. Well, now he's gone and we don't know where. He never told us.

Pasi and I will continue playing in Doctor's Special - with Fredde (Fredric Larsson) and Pelle (Per Holmgren). It feels all right to play cover songs but who knows - maybe we start making songs of our own. It feels like a real rock'n'roll band, not just four kids having fun on a friday night. We'll see.

Right now we want to go out and play live before audience. We have only about a dozen good songs rehearsed, but that's enough, isn't it? Watch out for the details and don't miss our gigs. We sound harder than steel and more beautiful than a wild rose. When we want to...

We'll see what happens to The Soul Preachers when (if?) Uffe comes back to Sweden. Right now everything with The Soul Preachers goes real slow.

24/5 1997 Dan Pettersson is alive - now he's playing "Johnny B. Goode" with WB Band

Fredric Larsson and Per Holmgren, Pasi and I, Jarmo, have formed a cover band a few weeks ago. We call ourselves Per Keles or Doctor's Special or Johnny Clash or whatever. We have loads of fun.). Last night I was in Flen with Fredric and Per. We went to a restaurant called Loftet, there was cover band playing and there might be nice girls, too... Well, the girls were nice and beer cold. But that's not what I want to tell you. It's this: The Soul Preachers bass man anno 1988 was standing on the stage and playing guitar with the cover band! I didn't recognize him first but Ramme, also a former bass player in The Soul Preachers, pointed him out.

I hadn't seen the guy since 1988. He moved somewhere to the north then, but now he's living in Stockholm and working as a sound engineer. So he told me. I asked him if he ever got a copy of the record we made. "Yeah, I got four copies." Well allright. I thought we never gave him a copy...

It was nice the meet the bloke. But it's funny, though. Nine years ago he was playing in a rock band called The Soul Preachers in Hälleforsnäs. Now the man is playing "Johnny B. Goode" (well, he told it was highly temporary) in a second-rate cover band from Vadsbro. Is it progress?

3/5 1997 Uffe touring with a theater group - another new song composed

After Uffe the bassman came from Equador, where he had carried stolen wood in the jungle, he wrote a theater play about the land. Now he is touring with the play in Sweden, mostly schools and stuff. Why? His journey in Equador was part of his education in human help or something and the play was their groups school project.

This weekend Uffe took some time off from his studies and came to happy Hälleforsnäs. They jammed a lot and made a lot of new material. At least one of the tunes sounds great and will be one of the strongest new The Soul Preachers songs. The lyrics aren't ready yet, but they called the song She's The One.

After the rehearsals of the weekend can The Soul Preachers announce that they have many new songs to perform. Because Uffe has not been playing with the guys for a long time, many new tunes has been written and some of them even performed with other guys on bass guitar. We're talking about songs like Looking for America, Belgian Blue and Love Will Tear Us Apart (ok, the title is the same as the Joy Division song. We know.) They played even Finnish songs like Perse, Tiukka Pillu and Impin Pimppi. Those hilarious songs were formerly performed by Noppikoski Home Boys, Fredric Larsson on bass guitar.

What about the recordings for the compilation CD? It seems like the songs will be I Will Kill You and Cunthunt. Both songs are already recorded and mixed. That means that The Soul Preachers have finished recording their contribution to the CD. Now they are planning to release another record of their own. There'sa bunch of perfectly good songs waiting. Unless any record company shows interest, the band pays the bills themselves.

24/3 1997 Uffe has returned from Equador. He is alive.

Uffe, the bass man, called us by the phone a moment ago. He is in Stockholm now, alive and well. He had been in Equador for the last two and a half months, doing --- something --- there. Maybe he can explain it better when he comes in Hälleforsnäs, we're not really sure what he has been up to.

We talked about kicking our instruments for a while the next weekend. Uffe hasn't heard our latest recordings after december - and never with a real song and stuff. I said he could listen to the song I Will Kill You through Internet. I Love Your Mama isn't ready yet - maybe it never will. It has some qualities but... We maybe decide to re-record it. It sounded better when we recorded it live in our rehearsal-room with a normal tape recorded and two microphones in the middle of the room. The song was more alive then, somehow.

We know more (and let you know, too) after the Easter.

7/3 1997 New recordings with The Soul Preachers

The Soul Preachers is working in a studio with a couple of songs: I Will Kill You and I Love Your Mama. The group is planning to release these two songs on It's Alive! compilation CD that has a working name: "0157".

TSP started the recording of the new songs in It's Alive's own recording studio in Hälleforsnäs just before the new year. The drums, guitar and the bass was recorded in couple of days (they also recorded a couple of extra songs, Dunblane 13.3.1996, Mr. Brett and Alcohol, mostly for fun). A couple of days later went Uffe, the bass man, to Equador for two months. The rest of the band is still waiting to hear from him. Maybe he gets out of there alive.

The lyrics for the songs, I Will Kill You and I Love Your Mama, were just rough sketches by the time the main instrument were put on tape. Jarmo, the singer, started to write down somethings that hopefully didn't sound all too stupid. About a month later, in the beginning of februari, he was ready with the first song. A day later the song was recorded and mixed (by himself). Sounds a bit like Frank Black, a bit like Iggy, not so much the old Soul Preachers. The early TSP was more punk rock, today's TSP is more rock or pop. Slower tempo.

Lyrics to I Will Kill You can be read in another location on this site.

The next song, I Love Your Mama, is starting to take form now. The work is rather slow now, Jarmo tells that he has got difficulties with writing the lyrics for a longer time now. "I have realized that I've got nothing to say, really. Yet I've got to stand for the lyrics and want to be proud of my work."

Now that Uffe is coming back from Equador (or is he?) the band will be working together again and hopefully soon get ready for touring.

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