Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.07.2006, Page 22

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Energy for life through forces of nature
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whO
whEN
NASA
HAM and
Nine Elevens
June 29th 2006

I had seen Icelandic rock icons HAM 15 years ago at
Fellahellir. I thought they looked like freaks (guess
they still do) and I was actually a little bit scared of
Óttarr Proppé, who I felt sounded like the devil, or
should I say what I thought the devil should sound
like. Maybe it’s because of my acquired appreciation
for the devil, but I have, through the years, grown to
like HAM. So I was a little bit excited for their recent
sold out gig at NASA.
Opening the night were the Nine Elevens, who
were surprisingly good. Somebody called them the
Icelandic Motörhead. I’ll say one thing, they defi-
nitely looked rock, shirts off, etc.
On the subject of fashion, judging by the crowd at
the HAM show, it was apparent that the newest fash-
ion tips from New York and Europe hadn’t registered
in the minds of the people at NASA, newest meaning
anything from the last decade. The uniform was sim-
ple: black T-shirt and jeans. I felt like I was at an Iron
Maiden tribute concert in Húsavík. The crowd, which
could only be described as cattle in tight T-shirts,
started chanting for HAM the second the Nine
Elevens left the stage. I have seldom seen NASA so
fully packed. Crazy fans were screaming and it was
obvious that I was watching a comeback of pioneers
in a legendary rock band. At the first guitar note, it
was on. Glaring rock pounded on peoples’ brains. I
felt a tingle down my spine. O, what power. O, what
mythical presence. Only a short while after HAM
started, people started crowd surfing. Those not
raised on peoples’ shoulders got high in other ways
– I bet that if we’d take all the money from cocaine
sales that night we could have save a small third world
country, which is partly a shame, but partly rock ’n
roll.
The hysteria had, for the most part, a demented
religious undertone. I can’t say that this totemic ritual
was contagious, but I liked HAM’s force without an-
ger. They mixed the divine with the devilish, the sex
with frigidness and masculinity with… not feminin-
ity, but that male take on the feminine that we often
just call, for better or worse, gayness.
“Jæja” or “Well” being the only word spoken
between songs, HAM seemed heavenly gothic, never
missing a beat or a relevant tone. This was a very well
delivered performance. Sigurjón Kjartansson, dressed
in clothes from the discount Norwegian menswear
shop Dressmann, not like the f lat-out bum which
has been his style for many years, was brilliant, and I
thought to myself “When he’s not trying to be funny,
(a sad day job he has at a local paper), he’s actually a
likeable guy.”
This HAM concert was an opera, a theatre and a
religious experience. I haven’t seen head banging like
this since the head bangers ball. I felt like a charac-
ter from Quantum Leap (maybe Al) travelling back
in time to change the future. The year is 1990 and
Hard Rock is establishing itself as the reigning genre
in music. My mission is to make HAM famous and
destroy Rammstein, the retarded cousin of HAM.
I provide HAM a warm-up gig with Laibach and
they’re on their way to fame. I snap back to 2006, I’m
at NASA. People are dressed like rockers did in 1990.
I call out to Al to figure out if I changed the future.

Quantum Leap: We Did It Sam,
We Saved Homoerotic Icelandic Rock!!!
By Helgi Valur | Photo by Gúndi
Tígrar eru töff
það segja það allir
siðferðilegur skilningur
er ekki bjór.
Bjór er töff,
það segja það allir.
...og orðið var Clint
Öllum að óvörum
reið haikan um sveitir
með allt á hornum sér,
búin beittum eggjum,
og tók að höggva bragarhætti
hægri vinstri.
Í minni pokann létu
kynstrin öll af atómljóðum,
höfuðstafirnir vegnir með veggjum
blæddu stuðlum um strjúpann.
Kviðlingur einn um ástina
laugaði hvarma sína,
einmana á skítugum bedda
skíttur út næturgreiða,
lygin var megn og
hann dó þrátt fyrir það.
Máttugustu ljóðabálkar
–jafnvel allsráðandi dellur–
lágu út úr sér iðraðir,
augljósir, drepnir æ ofaní dagsins aí,
jafnvel þeim var ekki eirt lífs.
Hliðstæður, andstæður,
endurtekningar,
merkingarleysur, stúfar,
uppskafningar
og lágkúrur
stundu í takt við
gný dauðans
þegar húsum reið
japanskur bragarháttur
með krosslagða fætur,
eitt orð yfir annað
af allt að því óskammfeilinni
Ró.
Síðust féll haikan sjálf á hnén,
rak upp stríðskvein,
lyfti sveðjunni hátt yfir höfuð sér,
og rak sig í gegn.
Nýhil Poetry in the Grapevine:
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Following the publication of a remarkable nine-volume set of poetry from the Nýhil poetry
collective, we decided to attempt to present the works of this group in the original and with
translations by the poets themselves into English.
Our first featured poet has been featured in the Grapevine before as a columnist and feature
writer. Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl (born 1978) is from Ísafjörður in the remote West Fjords of
Iceland. Establishing himself with a number of collections and a novel, and with a series of
well-received readings, including a stint opening up for rocker Mugison, Norðdahl may be the
most public face of Nýhil. BC
Tigers are cool
everybody says so
moral understanding
is not beer.
Beer is cool,
everybody says so.
…and the word was Clint
Much to everyone’s surprise
the haiku stormed the fields
as mad as a hatter,
wielding a sharp blade
and started slashing metre
left and right.
A myriad of free-verse poetry
suffered defeat
epistles slain against the walls
bled caesurae out of their gullets.
A couplet for love
sopped its cheeks with tears
lonesome on a dirty cot,
soiled with last night’s stint,
it reeked of lies and
yet it died with ease.
The most potent of lyrical epics
– even fads of unnerving muscle –
lay supine with their guts seeping out,
redundant, slain again and ever again,
even they were not granted life.
Parallels, opposites,
recurrences,
palaver and foot,
overstatements
and understatements
groaned in beat
to the roar of demise
when a maddening
japanese metre
rode through the fields
cross-legged
with one word over the other
in a mood of nearly insolent
Calm.
Finally, the haiku itself dropped to its knees
roared out a cry of war,
raised the sword high above its head
and drove the blade through its own abdomen.
Í leikhúsi (drög að frumvarpi)
Tjaldið lyftist (maður kveikir á útvarpi) (bók
fellur úr hillu á bókasafni) (áhorfendur tryllast
stutta stund, en þagna svo skyndilega eins og
höndum hafi verið fórnað).
Ljóshærðar kynþokkagyðjur (eins og úr fiftís
bíómynd) í ljósrauðum tálkjólum þetta eru
ekki mellur heldur gleðikonur í svörtum
sokkaböndum hlæjandi hver að annarri en
samræminu (og samkvæminu) óhjákvæmilega
og algerlega óvænt raskað af miðaldra manni í
gráum jakkafötum með .38 kalibera fant milli
fingrana.
„Haldið fyrir eyrun dömur, nú verða læti!”
Það er óskiljanlegt, en skyndilega skellir
maðurinn upp úr og slær á hné sér.
Stúlkurnar gapa og hiksta og skelfast en eru of
furðu lostnar til að skjálfa. Ekkert af þessu var
í handritinu.
„Dömur, ég er ekki að grínast. Haldið fyrir
eyrun og gerið það strax!”
Ein af annarri fylla þeir eyru sín fingrum
svo neglurnar (dömur eru alltaf með dulitlar
neglur) gera far í hljóðhimnuna án þess að
skemma hana verulega.
Þegar engin þeirra heyrir lengur til, miðar
maðurinn vandlega á svarta leðurtána, skýtur
sig í fótinn og haltrar bölvandi út.
Tjaldið fellur. Útvarpið dettur á gólfið. Bókin
brennur. Áhorfendur ganga gjörsamlega af
göflunum, þramma fylktu liði niður í miðbæ
og henda stjórnarráðinu stein fyrir stein í
tjörnina.
In a theatre (a preliminary bill)
The curtain goes up (a man turns the radio
on) (a book falls from a library shelf) (the
audience goes mad for a short while, but sud-
denly fall silent as if the skies just crumbled).
Blond dishy nymphs (straight out of a fifties
movie) wearing fair red seductive dresses
these aren’t prostitutes they’re courtesans in
black garters laughing at eachother’s jokes but
the harmony (and the feast) inevitably and to
everyone’s complete surprise is upset by a mid-
dle aged man in a grey suit with a .38 caliber
piece between his fingers.
“Cover your ears, ladies, this’ll be loud!” Inex-
plicably, the man bursts out in laughter.
The girls gape and hiccup and fall terrified
but are too surprised to tremble. None of this
was in the script.
“Ladies, I’m not playing around, cover your
ears and do it now!”
One after the other they fill their ears with
fingers so that their fingernails (ladies always
have fingernails) scrape their eardrums with-
out aff licting much damage.
When none of them can hear anymore, the
man aims carefully at his black leather toe,
shoots himself in the foot, and limps out
cursing.
The curtain drops. The radio falls on the
f loor. The book burns. The audience goes
fanatically bonkers, and storms in procession
down to the town centre and subsequently
throw the government offices brick by brick
into the local pond.
Reykjavík is the kind of place where, one day, the
neighbour that you never realised spoke English will
knock on your door and tell you that the rest of your
neighbours are in a band, on TV, right now.
My neighbour’s band, which I saw for the first
time this June, is Skakkamanage – a five-person
outfit based mostly on the chord constructions of
a somewhat owlish self-styled singer and guitarist
named Svavar. Truthfully, I’d been curious about
Skakkamanage for years, since Svavar opened, as a
one-man band, for Sebadoh. Last year’s Skakkaman-
age 7-inch, one of the few local releases on vinyl
in recent memory, had more hype than a Philip
Seymour Hoffman performance, and the band’s
evolving cast includes a member of múm, and a
number of other recognisable local stars, including
the drummer of Jeff Who?.
Which all goes to set up the expectations, and
possibly disappointment, that drive the buzz on
Skakkamanage. The band played at playing about
five songs during a thirty-minute opening set for
Hairdoctor in front of a first worshipful, then em-
barrassed, then pleasantly surprised full house.
And how does one report on delicate melodies
that are sung away from the microphone at times,
that are suddenly broken off for restarts, and that
are sometimes drowned out by bass and drums? The
crowd nodded, and Svavar would move from song to
song, but few lyrics were audible, few chords clear,
few melodies allowed to survive for long. On the
fourth song, (none of the song intros were clear, nor
were the lyrics, fully), a fanatical, dazed fan jumped
in front of the band and began to dance maniacally.
On cue, the band stopped, not to insult the fan, but
just… coincidence.
At that point, Jón Atli, frontman for Hairdoctor,
whispered back to me, “I love this band, they are so
completely random.”
I couldn’t help but agree. For all the bands I’ve
seen in Reykjavík in the last three years, Skakka-
manage are the only band I’ve seen who are convinc-
ingly in their own world, and who are completely
oblivious and impervious to judgement. They play as
they want, and they stop when it doesn’t work, not
out of spite, but out of an interest solely in the music.
Add to that the fact that, suddenly, for a final
song, they ripped out a driving, blues country
number in which Svavar found his voice, his ear, and
his inspiration, and screamed so that the whole club
got goosebumps, at the very same time the múm
instrumentalist ripped off a somewhat shocking
harmonica solo, and the drummer from Jeff Who?
demonstrated that he could drive old Band-inspired
beats as well as anyone, and you have some under-
standing as to how exciting and local a Skakkaman-
age set feels.
It would make for good continuity to say that
after seeing my neighbour tear down the house, I
saw the local hairdresser do the same, but that would
be a little misleading. Jón Atli is more of a superstar
hairdresser, which says a lot about Reykjavík. His
band, which we all thought was a two-piece forum
for blending contagious acoustic hooks with drum
and bass by master mix-man Árni Plúseinn, declared
at the onset of the night, “We’ve been to Berlin. We
are going to play techno, now. And we’ve brought
our girlfriends to sing.”
Dedicating a set to techno while playing for the
lo-fi poetry crowd isn’t recommended on too many
industry books that I’ve come across. Nor is, of
course, singing into a hairdryer. And yet, as much as
I wanted to hear the Hairdoctor songs that currently
dominate the radio in Iceland, I was impressed to
hear a full register techno improv performance.
After the band outperformed Reykjavík! by covering
the local band’s hit Beautiful Boys, a debate arose
among a few of us, f lustered by how well Hairdoctor
handled their new style – were they just able to play
any style they wanted, or was techno the real soul of
the band?
The debate faded when people started dancing,
smiling, and stopped listening to music. At an early
evening show, Hairdoctor got the masses moving,
the wool-sweatered masses, no less.

How the Techno and Lo-Fi Show Didn’t Disappoint
By Bart Cameron
where
whO
whEN
Café Amsterdam
Hairdoctor and
Skakkamanage
June 29th 2006
reviews poetry42 43