09
Apr

Thanks so much to Sebastian Johansson for the interview! I had written about this little known Swedish duo from the early/mid noughties some time ago. There was no contact through the comment section, but Sebastian wrote me an email and was keen to reminisce with me about his band! For you who have never heard about them, not only the interview is good news, you could find their songs on different platforms!

++ Hi Sebastian! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Are you still involved with music?

Hello! I’m not involved in the case of making music and I actually hasn’t been since Valentine Academy. But I listen to a lot of music. You know, that habit never changes. It’s such an important part of life. I also try to write about music, something I’ve done the last 20 years on and off. Though during the last years I’ve had some kind of urge to make music in some form again. Maybe!

++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?

We had a lot of records in the house while I was a kid. Both my dad and uncle played in bands and grew up during the 60’s so there was a lot of that stuff on a daily basis. I had a period when I was about 10 that I really loved Guns N’ Roses. I got the Appetite for Destruction LP, the pressing with the banned cover. At that time, we are talking late 80s and early 90s, you had to make a choice at school. Guns N’ Roses or Metallica.
My dad took me to my first really big concert when I was 12 in 1993. Bruce Springsteen in Stockholm. I’ll never forget that one. So during those years there was this big mix of music even though I started digging through those 60’s LPs and singles at that time. I got an electric guitar for my 14th birthday and that same winter The Beatles released the first Anthology album which I got for Christmas and that was it. Anthology 1 was my first own Beatles album and to this day I see it as the most important album I’ve ever had because that’s where this big music obsession started. From that day and especially during my teenage years The Beatles took over everything and i started going to record fairs.
I sat by the record player almost every evening and if it wasn’t The Beatles there were other 60s bands. So i sat there reading Beatles books while listening to The Beatles.

++ Had you been in other bands before Valentine Academy? What about the other band members? Are there any songs recorded?

No band before VA. Me and a close friend talked about getting a band together when we were 17-18. We even came up with the name. The Leftovers. At this time, we are talking 1998-1999, we had a mutual musical interest in Surf music and listened a lot to The Beach Boys and Dick Dale. I don’t remember if that was the plan but it probably wouldn’t have sounded surf at all.
If I remember correctly Linnea hadn’t played any music before VA.

++ Where were you from originally?

I’m from a small town called Tibro. Linnea was from Kalmar. We met at the indiepop festival Emmabodafestivalen in the summer of 2004.

++ How was your town at the time of Valentine Academy? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?

Well. Tibro is very small. About 20 minutes away you have Skövde which is a bit bigger but not more than about 50000 people. I grew up outside Tibro in the countryside in Östra Torsrud. The size of Östra Torsrud must be something like a square kilometer. About 5 houses in a very agricultural and wooden area. Beautiful place. A ”music scene” never existed. I don’t know if there was a scene in Skövde either so you had to travel by train to Gothenburg to get into that.
But, Skövde had this great record store called Jannes Wax. From age 16 I was in there a couple of times a week digging through the 60’s section. They even had bootlegs. The most important store of my life. Jannes Wax closed about 20 years ago.

++ How was the band put together? How was the recruiting process?

Well we met at a festival and became a couple. I can’t remember if I had any songs at this point. I probably sat around with the guitar but no plans. I think getting into a lot of indie music and that whole scene made it happen really. If you want to do it just do it and there’s always people who will appreciate it.

++ Was there any lineup changes?

It was just me in the beginning. I asked Linnea a few months later if she wanted to be a part of it. I had this cassette TASCAM portastudio. ”Glenn Miller’s Airplane” and ”You Can Be My Wingman Anytime” was already finished by the time she joined me. She wasn’t used to singing in front of people so I had to leave the room at first when she did her vocals.

++ What instruments did each of you play in the band?

The Adam & Steve record is just guitar, vocals and a toy piano. It’s probably a Native American style drum on ”The Girl with the Mountain Fox Bag”.
I did the guitar parts. Very simple. It probably sounds like a bass in a few songs but that’s a guitar. We never practised. Since we lived so far away from each other and only met on the weekends except for summer there wasn’t really any time for that.

++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?

Something I came up with a few years earlier. Sounded nice. ”If I ever record anything I will use that”.

++ The album came out on Popkonst Recordings who were fantastic at the time, a great run of different Swedish pop bands. How did this release happen? Did you contact them? How was the relationship with the label?

We were friends on MySpace. I’m sure you also remember that MySpace was a great platform for bands just like us. You just had a MySpace and connected there. They asked if we wanted to release an album on Popkonst and hell yes of course. I think we had about 3 songs at this point. So for a few days during summer 2005 we had to sit down and just make it happen.
And yes, Sweden had a great twee scene at this point early to mid 00s. But it’s just now so many years later that I realise how special it was. Funday Mornings, Crime Time, The Tidy Ups. All those Northern Twee Crew bands. I remember talking to the Crime Time drummer one year at Emmaboda. Not very sober I had this mission of telling him that those first drum beats on ”Stop Playing Football” was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. There’s this live recording of ”No Time” from 2003 where the song just breaks down but somehow they get back on track. It’s lovely. They’re not very accomplished musicians and that’s what makes it so honest. But oh my those melodies and pure pop love. The true punks.
Valentine Academy would never exist without Funday Mornings. I think we wanted that Beat Happening approach to music combined with the sound of Funday Mornings. You can’t really compare the World Of Girls EP with anything else. It’s totally unique. We were very influenced by them. Fantastic duo. But we weren’t even close. They had it all.

++ I am curious too how the album was recorded? Was it all done by yourselves? Did you go to a studio?

Well Popkonst wanted a few more tracks. The few we had were made on that previously mentioned portastudio. The thing was that it took some time to lay down different tracks on it, mix them over to another track and then record again without accidentally deleting stuff.
So we had this computer in my childhood home in a litte room where there was a washing machine, drying cabinet and different tools. We did the new tracks in there on Audacity. The thing is it was summer and the meadows outside had these electric fences to keep the cows and horses in order. The signal from these fences were picked up by the computer and generated this tik-tik-tik sound like a metronome. You can hear it on ”Lo-Fi Loneliness” if you listen closely. I remember hearing that sound and just ”We must keep that!” We wanted that Lo-fi sound and that thing just happened. I think the song got it’s name from that.
So yes. We did about 5 tracks in a few days. Made them up as we went along.

++ Another interesting bit of this record is the artwork, where I suppose these are you, Sebastian and Linnea? Or not?

It’s probably not us. We handed that bit over to Jonas Fust. A school friend of Linnea. He did the artwork in a Garden of Eden kind of style. Jonas later became the unofficial third member when he did all the sound effects and drums on the Slow-Fi EP. Great guy.

++ On the thank you notes, you only thank The French Resistant Movement. Tell me more about them?

That’s a typo! It should say ”The French Resistance Movement”. The guerilla groups that fought against the Nazis in France during WW2. I had just read a book about Jean Moulin so the french resistance ended up in the thank yous.

++ Another fun bit of the album is that from the titles of the songs you want to burn down the University of Berkeley (why?), that there is a guy called Mike from Glasgow and that Glenn Miller has an airplane… Did real life events inspire these tracks?

The song titles were important because they were often based on things I liked. Berkeley came from the whole 60’s counterculture which intrigued me as a teen. ”Mike from Glasgow” is some kind of tribute to Glasgow bands like Orange Juice and Teenage Fanclub. Sounds nothing like them though. Glenn Miller very tragically crashed with an airplane in December 1944. Still as mystery but he and the others probably went down in the English Channel. I had a 78 rpm record with ”Moonlight Serenade”. Great tune. If i remember it correctly ”Glenn Miller’s Airplane” was the first song I ever recorded.

++ Three years later the Italian tape label Best Kept Secret would get in touch and release the Popkonst album plus another EP, “Slow-Fi”, on a cassette. Again, how did you end up working with this label? Were you still active in 2008?

We probably wrote to the label and told them we had a few new songs. They may have contacted us. Anyway. ”Slow-Fi” were planned to be released on Popkonst but the process didn’t go as smooth as it did with Adam & Steve. Best Kept Secret wanted to add that first record to one side of the tape and the new EP on the other. We asked Popkonst about it since we had signed a contract with them but they didn’t mind. I really love the artwork on that cassette.
It’s funny but just a few days ago I found this unused cover art in a box. I always save stuff like that for some reason. We had some idea of an EP to be titled ”A small window over the bed EP”.  It’s probably what ”Slow-Fi” would have been called if we would have released it on Popkonst instead of doing that cassette on Best Kept Secret.
We weren’t active in 2008.

++ Tell me about the “Slow-Fi” EP. Why was it not released on its own?

As I mentioned ”Slow-Fi” should have been a stand alone release. But since Best Kept Secret wanted to add the older tracks to the tape we thought it was a nice idea.
Regarding the new sound. I think we wanted some drums on the songs. We never did that with Adam & Steve except for the first and last track. I also recall that the Slow-Fi material sounded very basic before Jonas Fust sat down with it. We just had to add stuff to make the sound more interesting. Jonas was told he could do whatever he wanted with the songs. He had already recorded electronic music under the name Mandfaster Grlash.

++ Are there more songs recorded by the band? Unreleased ones?

There’s one instrumental track that I recorded by myself at a childhood friend’s home studio in Stockholm in 2006. I uploaded that song somewhere online but I can’t find it anymore.

++ One thing I noticed too, is that there is very little info about the band but the songs are on most digital platforms. What made you put all the songs up there, I feel most of your peers from the CDR days haven’t done so!

A few years ago I sat with the folder containing all 13 tracks. That’s the discography. About 17 minutes in total. I thought it would be fun to just put them up there. About 50 people will listen to the songs online. There’s no scene. But it doesn’t matter. It was fun times!

++ My favourite song of yours is “Sasha’s Summer in the Suburb”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?

That’s just me romanticizing suburbia. Sasha may be Sasha Bell from The Essex Green and The Ladybug Transistor. The whistling part is probably a tribute to ”Killing Thomas” by Funday Mornings.

++ If you were to choose your favorite Valentine Academy song, which one would that be and why?

I’m really fond of ”Burn Down the University of Berkeley” and ”You Can Be My Wingman Anytime” because they came out exactly like I expected them to sound. Fiddling with the porta.
”Countryside” though. After Jonas Fust did his thing with that one and sent it back to us I was amazed. I temember being in Linneas house in Kalmar when we got it. He really made that track shine.

++ What about gigs? Did you play many?

No gigs at all. We got asked once to play the New York City Pop Fest. We realised that this wasn’t possible due to our approach when recording the songs. We just had these ideas, picked chords that sounded good and recorded it. Then on to the next track. If you had asked us to play any track more than a day after it was finished we wouldn’t remember how to do it. These songs were only performed during a few days in the mid 00s when they were recorded. I find the fact quite beautiful.

++ When and why did Valentine Academy stop making music? Were any of you involved in any other projects afterwards?

Valentine Academy ended when we broke up. Nothing after this. Maybe I will record something one day but it probably wouldn’t sound anything like VA.

++ Looking back in retrospect, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?

For me those summer days in 2005 when Popkonst asked us to make a few more tracks so they could release the album. Happy times.

++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?

I was 23 when we recorded most of the VA tracks. I’m 42 now with a lot less time for stuff like that. Haha. Office job, family with two preschoolers. So the hobbies are still mostly music during work and evenings. During autumn and winter it’s the NFL season so I watch a lot of football.

++ I’ve been to Sweden a couple of times but I’d still love to ask a local. What do you  suggest checking out in your town, like what are the sights one shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?

I’ve lived 7 years in Stockholm and 8 years in Gothenburg. If you visit Stockholm do it any time of year and just enjoy. Gothenburg works during the summer months. Any other time of year the rain will come down from any angle possible. Haha. Record shopping is great in both cities.

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Listen
Valentine Academy – Sasha’s Summer in the Suburb