First, this page only was supposed to
contain music written by myself. But with his permission, I've also
posted music written by Peter Genstrand, my old friend who lives on
Gotland. We sit in our basements and record music that we share via
DropBox. A method that we highly recommend!
Recently, I also learned from STIM, the Swedish Composers'
International Music Bureau, that it's okay to publish covers of
other people's music, as long as you give them credit for their
music/lyrics and don't alter the arrangement, lyrics or title. So
here we go... I just added a few songs by other people below.
You'll find the latest update at the top of the page. I you scroll
down, you'll find the older stuff. Well, the exception is the
section at the top, containing a growing number of versions of my
tune 'Svensk sås'. And just below these different example of a
Swedish Salsa song (yes, I know it's an oxymoron...), the entire
live performance we did with Monica Törnell's New Band on the 30th
of November 1977. We had been playing as a band for something like
six months and playing in the big Studio Four in the Swedish
National Radio Building was sort of... overwhelming. Okay, scroll
down and enjoy!
Svensk sås
In
April 2020, I realized I had to gather all the versions of this song in
a section of its own. I've tried to sort them in chronological order,
beginning with the original:
Svensk sås 1978
Written in 1977 and
recorded in 1978
Music
by Bosse
Well,
this is the original version with myself on keyboards, Monica Törnell,
voices, Jörgen Johansson on drums and percussion, Per Johansson, bass
(including a rather wild solo with tapping on the strings with a
bow...) and btw, they're not related. Then there's the late, great
Björn J:son Lindh on flutes and the equally late, great Lasse Ekholm
on guitar.
I wrote this in 1977 and we used to play it as one of the two or three
instrumental numbers before Monica entered the stage. After a while,
she started to join in with wordless singing. When we came to the
point of recording the album 'Jag är som jag är', I was rather
flattered when she wanted the song on the album. So this is what we
recorded. Live in the studio, of course. One curiosity: We recorded in
the Metronome Studio in Stockholm (and it's still there, under the
name Atlantis). I found an ARP 2600, the same 'phone switchboard'
synth that Josef Zawinul used (he actually had two of them on stage,
named 'Eins' and 'Zwei'). I fiddled a little with it and used it on
the recording. J:son commented: "What the f***? I spent hours with
that one and couldn't get a decent sound out of it. And you just did
it in, like ten minutes..."
Even more fun is that Todd Terje, who made a cover of the song in 2014
(see below), uses a 2600. The circle has turned a full 360...
The
years went by and some royalties flowed into my account. The amount
diminished from a small but steady stream to a trickle. The last few
years, whatever royalties I received, came from Norway. Norway? I
couldn't figure out why, but all enigmas have a solution. So did
this one...
Svensk sås Todd Terje
studio version
Recorded
in 2014
Recorded by Terje
'Todd Terje' Olsen
In the summer of 2014,
I received an e-mail from Terje Olsen, a Norwegian AKA Todd Terje.
Given my age, I had never heard of him... Todd told me he had used
'Svensk sås' over the years, when working as a DJ. Ah, that explained
the Norwegian royalties. He then told me he had recorded a cover of
the song on his first full-length album, 'It's album time'. It's fast,
much faster than our original version, but performed with skill and a
lot of humor.
The reason Todd e-mailed me was that he was planning to release
'Svensk sås' on a 12" vinyl single, and wanted to have our old version
on the B-side. He wondered if we knew where the old master tapes were,
if they indeed existed.
All this of course was great news. And when I told my grown-up kids,
it turned out they had danced to Todd's version of 'Svensk sås' in
clubs. He was a bit more well-known than I had guessed. When I finally
received a link to a YouTube clip from Todd, I realized how big he is.
The clip was recorded at something called 'Øya-festivalen' in Norway
(see below).
However, it doesn't stop there...
Villa
Recorded in 2014
Music
and lyrics by Niykee Heaton and Bosse. From the album 'Bad intentions'.
A few weeks after Todd
Terje's e-mail, I received another one, this from some strange e-mail
address in the USA. I thought it was spam and deleted it. Two or three
more e-mails arrived from the same address. I deleted them as well. But
when the fourth one landed, I noticed that Todd was also on the send
list. So I opened it, and holy smoke...
It turned out that there's a young American singer named Niykee Heaton.
She had recorded songs and posted them on YouTube. Which landed her a
contract with Universal Music for an EP. One of the songs on the record
was called 'Villa' and is written by Ms Heaton. But when the producer
was working on it, he found Todd Terje's version of 'Svensk Sås'. They
sampled it and used it in 'Villa'. Or to be more exact, wanted to use it
and asked me and Todd if we were willing to let them do so. Todd said no
and I said yes.
This meant they could use my song, but not Todd's version of it. So in
the end, some musicians had to re-record those parts, making them sound
like Todd.
Anyway, I got an MP3 of 'Villa' and timed the parts that are 'Svensk
sås'. Almost exactly one third of her song was my song. So I simply
said, 'I want one third of the royalties'. And to my surprise, the reply
was a simple, 'OK!' You can say much about Americans, but when it comes
to immaterial rights, they are heavenly to work with!
In the wake of this, I was contacted by two other US-based companies.
One was converting music into mobile phone ring tones. The other was
producing a TV series about young African-American girls going to
college. To make a long story short, Villa is a phone ring tone and the
song can be heard for like 15 seconds in an episode of the TV series
'Sorority Girls'.
All this, both the Norwegian and the US tracks, makes me feel like
Rodriguez, the artist whose life is portrayed in the movie 'Searching
for Sugarman'...
Svensk sås Todd Terje
live version
Recorded
at the Øya Festival on August 9, 2014
Todd and his band play
my almost forty-year-old song live for 15.000 people. Kids, the age of
my own two oldest, dancing like crazy...
