Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2005, Síða 8

by Julika Huether
Originally, only the most elite hotel
in Iceland could afford a good band.
“In the beginning, most of the in-
house bands hired by the hotels
were Danish and later English,
because there were no professional
Icelandic musicians”, says drummer
Guðmundur Steingrímsson, who
played with many bands and singers
including Bubbi’s uncle, the first
50s pop-star Haukur Morthens.
“Before World War II people had to
go abroad to receive a professional
musical education, as there were
no such facilities in Iceland at that
time.”
The situation changed totally with
the arrival of the American army
and the following economic boom.
“Being a musician was suddenly a
regular job. The bands played at
the airbase, at schools and at Hótel
Borg, and could make a living of it”,
explains journalist Árni Matthíasson.
Prior to that, the whole nation
consisted of farmers who traded
goods in order to survive, and of the
small upper class. When the army
came, people were paid in money for
the first time, and an affluent middle
class evolved. “All of a sudden”, says
Árni, “we stepped from the past into
the present.”
Too Stinky to Dance
But the present did not only bring
prosperity, it also introduced
snobbishness and discrimination.
People from the countryside were
not admitted to the dances at Hótel
Borg on grounds of their attested
simpleness, poor financial situation
- and because “they simply smelled
bad!” Árni pins it down. While “the
past” was excluded, “the future” was
experiencing a revolution not only
in terms of rock music, which had
been imported by the Americans
and soon spread like wildfire among
Icelandic musicians, but also in terms
of professionalism.
After imbibing foreign influences
for decades, it was now Iceland’s
turn to export their musical elite. A
jazzgroup called KK Sextett (with
Guðmundur on drums) was the
first Icelandic band to go abroad
in 1954. “For our gigs abroad, we
would either translate our lyrics
into English, or, if possible, in the
respective language of that country”,
says Guðmundur. “Sometimes, new
songs would be written in Danish or
German.”
More and more bands began to
consider the Icelandic market merely
as a stepping stone for international
success. Instead of addressing the
national audience, they sang in
English about things that English-
speaking bands would sing about,
dressed like them and thus alienated
their Icelandic followers. With
the conversion from dried fish to
baked beans, the musical activity at
Hótel Borg declined in the 60s. The
opening of places like Glaumbar and
Thórscafé and the coming of the
discotheque in the 70s made things
worse. The lure of the new was to
celebrate its victory... but for how
long?
Disco to Punk Under
Chandeliers
As people from the countryside
were still forbidden to enter Hótel
Borg in the 70s, “the place opened
up for city and university people.
So the audience was already there
when bands started to reclaim the
stage”, says popologist Dr.Gunni.
However, when Fræbbblarnir, one of
Iceland’s first punk bands, played at
the hotel in the early 80s, they were
confronted with an almost hostile
crowd, as Valgarður, the singer,
explains: “The hostility was due to
people being used to disco and other
mainstream music, but what was
acceptable soon changed and the
punk movement took over.”
While Fræbbblarnir were rather
unconcerned about political
correctness, many of the bands had
a very political, and, as Árni argues,
nationalistic touch. “The first song
on Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s classic
documentary Rokk í Reykjavík
(which was mainly shot at Hótel
Borg) is self-explanatorily called
THE BIRTHPLACE OF
ROCK, PUNK AND
SNOBBERY
Ó Reyjavík!. The songs were
mostly in Icelandic and dealt with
working in the fish processing
factories, hanging out at Hlemmur,
et cetera.” Valgarður, on the other
hand, dismisses this argument as
an oversimplification and distortion
of a great era and points out that
bands like Fræbbblarnir, Q4U,
Purrkur Pilnik and Þeyr certainly did
not reduce their music to “what-a
simple-life-we-are-leading” flatness.
Intellectual Ying-Yang
Hótel Borg thus regained its status as
an intellectual rock-club, “it even had
a ying-and-yang-meaning for the
crowd”, says Dr.Gunni. But while he
remembers the ying, his memories
of the yang are somewhat blurred...
“I just remember standing in the
line outside in the cold for hours. I
don’t have any clear memories of the
place, but I suppose I was just doing
the things all Icelanders do – maybe
drink a double vodka and coke or
martini bianco, as there was no beer
back then.”
Despite all this rock’n’roll, the
Icelandic punk scene was not as
unified as the British scene that
was its predecessor. According to
Valgarður, “We just played concerts
without setting conditions –
everybody in the scene was different,
and this built up a special spirit.”
From the beginning there had
been a few bands that were not
really into punk, and this openness
towards other kinds of music slowly
triggered a change which went hand
in hand with the decline of the punk
movement. “When the punk/ New
Wave movement started to fade, the
same happened to Hótel Borg. It was
the club you went to play at in 83,
84, 85. After that, there were other
venues.”
Dyslexic Crooks and the
Decline
For example a club originally called
Safari, which changed its name
almost every month, along with
the owner’s kennitala, to escape tax
payments. As the club turned into
Zafari into Casablanca into Roxy
into Rocxy, Hótel Borg made some
faint but failing efforts to reopen as a
music venue.
In the 90s, the hotel was sold and
the new owners were determined to
turn it into THE upmarket place
in Reykjavík. Ironically, “when the
cocaine-scene took the place in
about five years ago, they renamed
it Skuggabarinn, because Hótel
Borg had a negative connotation for
them”, says Dr. Gunni.
Today, there are occasionally bands
who come to play at the hotel, but
the atmosphere could not be further
from any sort of musical revolution.
Which might, in fact, be a sign that
it is indeed just around the corner.
According to Hótel Borg’s natural
schedule, be prepared for the next
big thing to break through at the
end of this decade. Be there, or hide
under your cover for another twenty
years!
Hótel Borg Pósthússtræti 11,
101 Reykjavík 551-1440
Would you believe the cheapest way
to spend a night at Hótel Borg is
as dear as renting a student’s room
in downtown Reykjavík for half a
month? Unless you sneak into the hotel
and change lifts every other minute to
escape the bouncers, that is. But while
Hótel Borg has always been an elitist
upmarket place since its opening in
1930, it has also hosted Iceland’s first
musical revolution – a fact not quite as
paradoxical as it may seem.
8