The Return of The Sugarcubes
0 Comments Published by magnusk on Monday, September 18, 2006 at 23:44.
It amazes me that things I feel like happened maybe 10 years ago, actually happened 20 years ago. In november 1986 The Sugarcubes released their first single, "Birthday", in Iceland. When it was later released in the UK it went straight to the top of some indiependent top list whose name I can't remember, but it opened wide opportunities for Icelandic bands to promote themselves outside of Iceland, and eventually shot Björk to stardom after the band disbanded in 1992.
I always looked very much up to The Sugarcubes, and for me and tons of Icelandic musicians they became a role-model in that they did not accept labels bossing them around, and telling them what to do, and thus refused offer upon offer from all kinds of labels, eventually to be signed by the only label that accepted their artistic indiependence, One Little Indian, which later went on to release Björk's hugely popular solo albums.
Now, in 2006, the band has decided to regroup for one big anniversary concert, in Reykjavik, november 17th. Icelandair will be offering travel packages to the concert, and all profit made by the concert will go directly to the Bad Taste Label which was formed by The Sugarcubes and friends in 1986. At the risk of severely reducing my own chances at getting a ticket to the show, I nevertheless want to tell everybody about this. Also, I believe that Björk with The Sugarcubes far surpasses Björk the solo-artist in quality. And it gives me an opportunity to mention two DVD's that Tom sent me a while ago for review:
Aptly named "The DVD", the first dvd disc is a collection of all of The Sugarcubes' videos, namely the original low budget "Birthday", the higher budget version in english, "Cold Sweat", "Deus", "Motorcrash", "Luftgitar", "Regina", "Planet" and 4 others from a later period where i'd stopped being interested. It brings back a whole lot of good memories, is nicely packaged and has no-nonsense menus. I wonder though why there are three more videos labelled as "extras", it's like the producer had to have some "bonus material" so those three we're unnecessarily labelled thus. 
Live Zabor
So stay tuned and grab your tickets when they become available. And drop me a line if you're coming and we could grab a beer together! In the meantime check out Deus and more sugarcubes goodies at YouTube. And because this is an mp3 blog here are a few goodies:
Bogomil Font & Flís (drummer Sigtryggur's calypso alter-ego with the band Flís) - Eat your car
Þór Eldon - (guitarist's solo project) - Dauðaskammtur
Ghostigital - (Einar Örn's experimental band) - Dream of sleep
The Sugarcubes - Ammæli
Sugarcubes on Myspace
Bad Taste on Myspace
Ghostigital on Myspace
Björk on Myspace
Einar Örn on Myspace
Update september 24th: Thanks to Dr. Gunni, here's a Live recording of The Sugarcubes in Hard Rock Cafe, Reykjavik, october 21st 1987:
The Sugarcubes - Köttur
0 Responses to “The Return of The Sugarcubes”
Post a CommentLinks to this post
Create a Link