SOUNDTRACK: THE ALLER VÆRSTE!-Materialtretthet (1980).
The Aller Værste! were a Norwegian new waves/punk band with elements of ska thrown in. I only know of them because of this story, but I decided to check out some of their stuff since it is so relevant to the story.
This was their debut album, which has been ranked as the number 6 best Norwegian album of all time (by Morgenbladet, a Norwegian weekly newspaper). The album opens with lounge piano and trombone before breaking into a ska-inflected “Du sklei meg så nær innpå livet.” Lead singer Chris Erichsen sings in some unusually deep voices (some of which seem comical) in “Dødelige drifter.” “Døgnflue” is a two-minute punk blast with a loud Farfisa organ running throughout.
“Bare du som passer på” has a distinctly Clash feel in the vocals. “For dem betyr det lite” is powered by that organ sound, while “Bare en vanlig fyr” is very guitar heavy (and may have a different singer). This is probably my favorite song on the album, there’s some great sections in it.
This sound of punk sensibility with a prominent organ (an vocals in Norwegian) really make The Aller Værste! stand out in 80s rock. “Må ha deg” has some interesting backing vocals and sounds like a Clash inspired ska song (with more crazy vocals). It has a slow instrumental section with a twangy guitar solo.
“Igjen” is 90 seconds of punk (but not very harsh punk). The next few songs are all about 3 and a half minutes long. “Bare ikke nok” has call and response vocals and an unexpected beat. “Hong Kong” slows the sound down, with a prominent bass riff. “De invalide” is an upbeat song with horns. “Hekt” has some dissonant guitar over almost funky bass and a serious breakdown at the end. “Discodrøv” has very fast drums as it opens, but it turns into a rollicking song with disco bass and big horns.
“Oppvekst” follows those horns with some fast (ska-like) guitars. “Materialtretthet” opens with some great, wild bass and continues wit a very fast-paced song. This is another favorite (it’s interesting that the title track is also one of the shorter songs on the record). “Menneskelig svikt” sounds quite raw, with echoey distant guitars and vocals. “Blank” is the final song on the album (reissues have added more tracks). It has a distant echoey harmonica acting as a melancholy sound behind the vocals.
I hope that Karl Ove’s book somehow gets this disc in print, I’d like to listen to it on more than YouTube.
There’s a live version of the song mentioned at the end of the story here:
[READ: June 11, 2014] “Come Together”
I know that this is an excerpt form the third part of My Struggle which I plan to read in say six or eight months. But I decided to read it anyway in part because I was intrigued by the cover picture, which is of a record sleeve with a man on a bicycle and the wheel is the inner label of an album. That, coupled with the title “Come Together” made it pretty apparent that this would be about music. And so it was.
As I said, this is excerpted from Karl Ove’s third book in the My Struggle series, which is called Boyhood. I’m intrigued that this book is set in his teenage years since the first two were set much later–it actually felt like Book 2 caught us up to the present). At any rate, this is one small section (chock full of details) about being young and being in love with music and with girls.
Karl Ove is 12 in this section, listening to punk and other kinds of weird music that his brother likes. Meanwhile all of the kids in his class like a pop music, a band called The Kids, and he is sick of it. So he tricks the class by saying that a song is a new one by The Kids and everyone loves it until he says it is really the first song Materialtretthet by The Aller Vaerste! This makes them hate him even more.
The next scene jumps to the gym, where a boy in his class with an enormous penis has gotten a hard on in the showers. An astonishing scene follows (a corridor full of naked boys trying to embarrass Tor and their female teacher). This leads to Karl Ove inspecting his own privates and then sitting in the bathtub singing “So Lonely.”
Karl Ove has mentioned that he plays the guitar badly and in this chapter we see that he and his friends formed a punk band called Blood Clot and that they are terrible.
But Karl Ove has discovered girls, and at a May 17th parade, he and some friends were flirting with girls by trying to lift their skirts with flagpoles. One girl in particular seemed amused by him, she was beautiful with big breasts and was a year older than he was. After that day he didn’t see her for a while unto he was playing soccer and she showed up with some of her friends to watch the boys. He recognized her immediately and his teammate said he knew who she was and that her name was Kajsa.
Karl Ove is too shy to say anything. But the next time they have a soccer game, one of Kajsa’s friends asks if Karl Over want to go out with Kajsa. He says yes, and he plans the most boring first dates ever. Mostly they involve riding their bikes around. (Of course, he is 12 so what do you expect). Then he learns that a friend of his kissed a girl for ten minutes and he decides that’s a good ice breaker for him to get Kajsa to kiss him. But he sets out to break the record by kissing (for the first time) for an interminable 15 minutes. Needless to say there were no future dates. And his brother Yngve, (who in real life wrote a book about The Aller Værste) tries to make things better by playing The Aller Værste! song “No Way Back.”
As with the books, this was translated by Don Bartlett.
For ease of searching, I include The Aller Vaerste (but none of the Norwegian song titles).
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