Reykjavík Grapevine - 25.08.2006, Side 13

Issue 13, 2006 8 Page Listings Section in Your Pocket
it’s
free
Matt Dillon’s and Marissa Tomei’s presence at the open-
ing ceremony of the Iceland International Film Festival
this year will be a highlight for film in Iceland, but it is
only part of what cinephiles can look forward to in the
three weeks of IIFF.
Dillon and Tomei both star in the Bent Hamer’s film
Factotum, based on the great working man’s saga of the
same name by every two-fisted man with a pen’s hero,
Charles Bukowski.
The films for this year’s festival are divided into four
categories: World, containing the cream of international
independent films, America, showing a variety of inde-
pendently-produced films from the States, Documenta-
ries, and finally Gala, which includes carefully selected
films that will be premiered in grand ceremonies, like the
aforementioned gift from God, Factotum.
The line-up up at this point includes, for example,
Dave Chapelle’s Block Party starring the comedian
himself and directed by Michel Gondry, the Oscar-
nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in
the Room starring John Beard, George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney, Peter Coyote and Kenneth Lay in a film about
the Enron Scandal and the Cohen brothers’ Romance and
Cigarettes, with Sopranos mobster James Gandolfini in
the leading role. A film of particular importance for this
nation of melting glaciers, An Inconvenient Truth, Al
Gore´s struggle against global warming will also make its
Icelandic premier. SJ
The Iceland International Film Festival, August 30 – Sep-
tember 21
For more info, visit www.icelandfilmfestival.is.
Matt Freakin’ Dillon! Doing Bukowski!
couple of years ago. It isn’t even that crazy
if you think about it, as many of the world’s
most famous rock clubs are very similar in
size to Grand Rokk. New York’s CBGB and
London’s Marquee really aren’t any larger.”
Like many in the scene, Eyjólfsson, who
partook in building Reykjavík’s music reputa-
tion, sees the end of Grand Rokk as the end of
an era. “Now, we must confront the fact that
Reykjavík is getting limited in some respects,
at least if we want to maintain the stigma of
culture and art that has slowly crept around it.
There’s no gay club and hasn’t been for years.
And now we are lacking a proper rock venue.
Seriously, when I got wind of this, my main
thoughts were that this was a sad day for Ice-
landic music and culture in general. I actually
thought there were quite enough hamburger
joints here to keep dumb sports idiots occu-
pied. Apparently, I was wrong.”
He can’t help but point out that the clos-
ing of the live music venue seems peculiar:
“Mainly, I’m surprised. The venture never
lost money – in fact it was rather the opposite
– and there are still opportunities to expand.
We get a lot of tourists here that have heard
great things about our music and nightlife and
are interested in catching a gig. And I now
find myself dumbstruck when they stop me
on Laugavegur and ask where they can go for
that purpose. There really isn’t anything now,
although Amsterdam shows some promise.
Hopefully, someone will spot the opportunity
and get something going again. Our city’s
honour depends on it.”
The same month Grand Rokk decided its
fate as a sports bar/dive, another key venue in
the Reykjavík music scene closed down – one
that has in many respects been as important
as Grand Rokk in hosting and developing
new talent, its larger capacity making it serve
as a sort of ‘next stop’ for bands after they’d
conquered Grand Rokk.
In July, Airwaves favourite Gaukur á
Stöng filed for bankruptcy after a long strug-
gle with creditors. In an interview with Blaðið
last week, Gaukurinn’s proprietor Sigurður
Hólm Jóhannsson stated that the club’s down-
fall could in part be explained by the public’s
hesitance to pay to attend concerts, as well as
frequent visits from Reykjavík’s health inspec-
tor that were usually accompanied by fines for
exceeding the legal decibel limit.
Thus, Reykjavík is lacking an appropri-
ately sized venue for modestly popular local
bands and the effects are already being felt.
Benedikt Reynisson manages the Smekkleysa
record store and is also a local musician and
DJ. He has also been known to book gigs for
visiting punk and rock bands. Reynisson tells
the Grapevine that he has had some trouble
booking shows after the demise of Grand
Rokk and Gaukurinn and was forced to cancel
what was to be a sort of farewell gig for some
of his band members due to the lack of an ap-
propriate venue: “Grand Rokk’s policy change
has really left a huge gap as far as I’m con-
cerned. For a long time, it was the place you
relied on when everything else fell through.
And with it and Gaukurinn gone, it’s much
harder to play shows in Reykjavík, especially
if you want to charge admission and maintain
some level of professionalism, not settling for
a shit sound-system for instance. Grand Rokk
was a great resource in that regard.”
Speaking about the old venue, he seems
to suffer from a bout of nostalgia: “It was
sort of like a community centre for musicians
and music-lovers in the regard that you could
always count on there being something hap-
pening. It certainly wasn’t as big and fancy as,
say, Gaukurinn or NASA, but it had a real
comfortable feel to it and the fact that you
could walk in most nights to check out what
local bands had to offer marked it as a vital
stop when going out. You’d inevitably meet
colleagues, and not just from your neck of the
woods – it wasn’t segregated in the way that
Sirkus and Kaffibarinn are and no one group
claimed it as its own. Grand Rokk was a good
place to get exposed to new things. With it
gone, it’s harder to properly follow things.”
Morgunblaðið music critic Arnar Eggert
Thoroddsen shares some of Reynisson’s senti-
ments regarding Grand Rokk, and has some
fond memories of the place. “When The Fall
played Grand Rokk I was ecstatic. I was a
fairly recent Fall-convert and was very excited
about the show, which in hindsight epitomised
much of what the whole Grand Rokk experi-
ence was about. The show was rowdy and
chaotic, as Fall shows tend to be, and after
they finished, I led Mark E. Smith backstage,
where we talked and shared some drinks. At
one point, I opened him a beer bottle with my
teeth, to which he replied by pointing at his
toothless grin and telling me I should be care-
ful. A wild night that was.”
Although Thoroddsen associates many
good memories with the bar and grants it a
certain place in the history of Icelandic rock,
he isn’t worried about the future: “First off,
this is something I really don’t understand
and seems to happen a lot here in Iceland
– it’s like people are actually trying to shoot
themselves in the foot over and over. There’s
recently been plenty of talk about the excellent
shape of Reykjavík’s grassroots musicians and
these concerts have for the most part been a
great success. And now they’re through. In the
long run, however, I think we are going to be
fine. Someone’s bound to see an opportunity
there and seek to fill the void left by Grand
Rokk and Gaukurinn. Throughout my years
following Icelandic music, there’s always been
one main place that takes the heat of the city’s
concert activities and that slot is available now.
Amsterdam seems to be trying something like
it, which might work out fine. As I recall it,
Grand Rokk was rather similar to Amsterdam
when they started emphasising live music. If
Grand Rokk was indeed losing money from all
of this, maybe the state or the city should have
been decent enough to support it in some way.”
I feel obliged to ask, given the possibil-
ity that Reykjavík will not have a good venue
for the next few years, shouldn’t the City of
Reykjavík, which profits immensely from the
scene, contribute to bars that are the scene?
“It’s still interesting to put into perspective
with the way Reykjavík has been advertis-
ing itself and the amount of hyperbole the
music scene gets. They’re always bragging
about ‘Reykjavík, the culture city’, music this
and music that – when it finally starts paying
off and we get tourists that are interested in
checking out the scene, there’s nowhere for
them to go. And at the same time they’re
building a ridiculously expensive enormo-
dome for the ‘higher’ forms of music right in
the city centre, a symphony hall that’ll prob-
ably wind up hosting poorly attended f lute
concerts most of the time. If you’re going to go
in that direction, you have to ensure that pop
and rock get equal access, which is something
they’ve completely ignored.”
Continuing on the theme of righteous in-
dignation at the monstrosity that will be Rey-
kjavík’s symphony hall (built in the same spot
as the Grapevine’s old offices), Thoroddsen
offers a legitimate suggestion: “It would have
been incredibly easy to design the building so
that there’d be a small Grand Rokk-like venue
in one of its corners. Now, that would have
been forward thinking.”
When confronted with these arguments, the
city councilman who took so much pride in
the local scene, Stefán Jón Hafstein, points
out that at least the environment is right for
rock. “You’re telling me some news here. It’s
sad to see Grand Rokk and Gaukurinn go,
although I am convinced that there isn’t going
to be a problem in the long run. I am proud of
Reykjavík’s music scene, and it is still thriving.
And the city’s current economic and social
environment is of the kind that really benefit a
prosperous rock scene.”
The Social Democratic Councilman offers
some laissez-faire advice: “Even if places like
Grand Rokk and Gaukurinn bow out, there’s
always someone willing to pick up where they
left off. You know, we’ve already started see-
ing places like Amsterdam take over. One of
Reykjavík’s better aspects, like Airwaves has
shown us in the past, is that if no one else is
willing to, you can just do things yourself.”
A neat suggestion. The city will ignore the
local needs, but will take pride that musicians,
like poor people, can find their own solutions.
I ask about how the rock scene can last in
a downtown that is pricing rock clubs out of
the market.
“That’s a good point, those places can’t
really operate in an expensive or ‘fancy’ envi-
ronment; it doesn’t fit. We probably stand to
see them move away from Laugavegur and the
city centre to the edges of downtown, Hver-
fisgata and Hlemmur. Only a small fraction
of the area is being renovated anyway. There’s
still a lot of cheap housing available for these
purposes. Our music scene isn’t going any-
where.”
feature
“Even if places like Grand Rokk and Gaukurinn bow
out, there’s always someone willing to pick up where
they left. You know, we’ve already started seeing
places like Amsterdam take over. One of Reykjavík’s
better aspects, like Airwaves has shown us in the
past, is that if no one else is willing to, you can just
do things yourself.”
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