The green buses of Malmö are coming through washed by a soft drizzle. The cobbled streets and the falling autumn leaves breeze a shade of melancholy in me. The gray skies, the wet grass and the wet sand paths in the park, and the brown brick buildings around Kyrkogatan have definitely made me feel to be in the right place. The weather reminds me of my hometown. Anna plays me Los Saicos in her little lovely flat, reminiscing that day when we sang their songs in a playground in Chinatown, NYC. I just arrived to the city of diversity, meetings and possibilities, crossing the Oresund sound. I could have done it faster if I crossed swimming. Delays in Copenhagen. We walked to her place and made the same old joke about “peruker” stores: “oh! look, a Peruvian store!”

Anna smokes a cigarette first. Then we can plan. I won’t be able to make it for dinner at Debaser Malmö. I’ve been invited by Daniel to DJ there at his So Tough So Cute club. Anna plans going for a kebab. There is a kebab joint in Amiralsgatan. The clerk is not very friendly or perhaps he doesn’t speak any English at all. I thought all Swedes did. The fries are very good though and that makes up for his behavior. They have some special seasoning. The kebab is alright, I ordered schwarma kebab with tahini sauce, but it seems tahini is not known in Malmö. To drink, a diet coke, or a cola light, as it’s called here.

The walk to Debaser takes around ten minutes. We pass by Folketspark and a Kommun store. I will visit these two places the next day. From outside Debaser looks like a house, a regular one story house. Inside it is a really nice club. Very spacious, which means not that friendly to indiepop, unless, you are Camera Obscura or some other band that has crossed the line between being and indiepop band and making indiepop music for the masses. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Just keep your values right.

There are two bands playing tonight too. The support band is from Denmark and they play some catchy pop punk. I don’t know the headliner, but it’s American, so I assume it is a hipster band. The singer has a peculiar haircut. I don’t get to see much of any.

Most of the time at Debaser I spend it outside, in a nice biergarden/patio. There are a couple of egg ball chairs around. You can see some couples giving them a very good use. There are some other cleaner sofas around. Some tables, some chairs, and a very friendly atmosphere. I’m sitting there with Albulenë, Anna and Maja. I talk to them in my broken Swedish. I’m told I speak like a Finnish. “Jag är finsk och jag äter fisk” I answer. They laugh.

I meet Toby from Girl Alliance. What a nice guy he is. I tell him he has to play London Popfest, or Indietracks. I ask him about the gig he did in Hamburg, on the Heidi boat. He says he is working in new songs. I look very much forward to them.

Jennifer is taking care of the DJ deck. She keeps playing good stuff. Sometimes Daniel comes in and plays some sixties songs. The crowd seems more pleased with sixties than with indiepop. Clearly there needs to be a revolution in Malmö. I could give it a shot. I’d love to give it a shot. I play perhaps 4 or 5 songs. At this moment I don’t remember what I played.

My friend Hanna arrives too. She is the sweetest, she’s made me the nicest mix CD ever. I don’t receive many of them. When I ask for one, people love answering a very polite: “but you’ll know everything I’ll put on it”. That is not true at all. See, Hanna put me some Robyn for example. It’s fantastic!

I also see Rebecca sipping some fruity liquor. She tells us all about her latest flame. She is so passionate about it, and she is looking forward to him cooking pasta on Sunday for her. Hope it went well. She keeps going on that he was raised catholic.

There’s a very young Rebecka in the crowd too. Her god is Woody Allen. She impresses me immediately by talking to me about Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru’s most known writer and intellectual. She has read “La Casa Verde” and “La Tía Julia y el Escribidor”. Then we talk about movies. And she knows and likes Whit Stillman’s work. She runs into the dancefloor when “Lola” starts playing.

At 3am we decide to go home. We are invited to an after-party but I prefer resting to be fresh the next day and go sightseeing. I wanted to walk with her home, but she prefers going to the after-party. It is too late to retract, Rebecca has given away the three umbrellas she had.

We walked fast down the pouring rain. Brainy Rebecka, Sam and me end up in a telephone booth. She gives me directions on how to get to where I’m crashing the night. I really didn’t need it. I know this town by heart. It’s just the beginning.

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Listen 
Girl Alliance – Straight to my heart (Så Tuff Så Söt)