FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Taggiga törnen i blomsterängen! Nu hoppar Johanna av Timoteij för att det är ”svårt att jobba med sina bästa vänner”. http://t.co/isEIadL5nH — Nöjesbladet (@ABNojesbladet) April 17, 2014
Jag har beslutat att lämna Timoteij! Tusen tack till alla fina fans för allt ni har gjort och gör! 😘 pic.twitter.com/lTcsjBblSK — Johanna Pettersson (@tweetsbyjohanna) April 17, 2014
Guess this decision means we'll never see that Kom video after all, eh?
That Timoteij vid they filmed recently isn't for a new song. It's for an English version of Kom, which they will release internationally :( — scandipop (@scandipop) August 16, 2013
Nobody but nobody can smile as often when she speaks and with as much appeal as talented and vivacious lead singer and guitarist Cecilia Kallin of Timoteij.
*This post was updated with additional videos and text at 11:55 p.m. Does it really matter what Cecilia was asked about here at the Helmia car show in Arvika?
Not really.
Cecilia's friendly and infectious smile just knocks me out every time I see her in an interview, even one as semi-awkward as this. She's such a charmer!:)
Also seen in the top video in Arvika: bandmates Bodil Bergström, fleetingly: Elina Thorsell, and, rather abruptly: Johanna Pettersson. Uploaded April 21, 2013. After they sang a few songs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm0I6JzzMGI and had finished signing autographs at the record signing, Cecilia and Bodil, separately, were among a number of passengers in a rally car driven by 22-year old Swedish professional rally driver Pontus Tidemand,which resulted in some great photos of him, Cecilia and the band -and a very smart and well-produced video that's definitely worth checking out.
PTMRacing YouTube Channel video: Pontus Tidemand Videoblog EP09 Helmia Show-driving in Arkiva, Sweden. Event was on April 20th, Uploaded April 22, 2013. http://youtu.be/pVWknesYt0I Above, you can see a truly striking-looking Bodil getting into the car at 1:15 and then the whole band from 1:31 to 1:38, with Cecilia happy and clearly relieved to be standing on her own two feet again and Bodil looking calm and cool. From 2:08 to 2:15, Bodil is recounting the experience to Elina, standing next to her, sipping a drink. There's a great photo of a smiling-but-nervous and helmeted Cecilia in the rally car on her blog page on the group's website at http://www.timoteij.se/2013/04/22/det-svanger-om-arvika/ where she admits that for at least part of the ride, she had her hands directly in front of her face and was peering thru her fingers, while, not surprisingly, 'driving' and 'braking' with her feet. Here's the photo of her and the band on Pontus' wonderful website and Instagram account: http://instagram.com/p/YVYMIqiw0R/
*I received a link to the below-the-radar video at the top of this post courtesy of an eagle-eyed reader of the blog living in -wait for it- Sweden, who wanted me to see it and share it with you all, but remain anonymous. Tack så mycket, Anonymous! On Saturday the band will be performing in Cecilia's hometown of Falkirk, so I'm sure she will be snapping lots of photos that will soon be appearing on the band's always amusing blog and her Instagram page at http://www.timoteij.se/ andhttp://statigr.am/ceciliakallin Timoteij tour schedule: http://www.timoteij.se/turne/ Pontus Tidemand's official website, which is very attractive and , well-designed, is at: http://www.pontustidemand.se/
Summer 2012 is officially here as Timoteij's new album, Tabu, drops today. And they also celebrate a new-and-improved website that's delightfully more-colorful, engaging and pleasing to the eye -and more intuitive!
The top of the new website, which changed slightly from the original template a few weeks before their participation in the 2012 Melodifestivalen two months ago, now sports new photos for both the website and the blog, and I must say that in the week since I first saw the photo of the new album over at Swedish Stereo blog in Damian's description of the songs and their order, http://swedishstereo.blogspot.com/2012/05/timoteij-tabu.htmlwhich seems to be fresher, more upbeat and dance-friendly but with all of the Timoteij folk and authenticity trademarks we love, I've been eager to see what it looks like in a new and improved online environment.
Well, in my opinion, the new features and photos really POP off your computer screen in a way that the old pinkish/purple ones really didn't after awhile because... well, we just got so used to them. http://www.timoteij.se/
The new group photo for the website now is, left-to-right: Elina Thorsell, Johanna Pettersson, Cecilia Kallin and Bodil Bergström, and the photo is the same as the album but in the header photo, you don't see their instruments, while the header above the blog text http://www.timoteij.se/category/timoteij/is a variation of that: Cecilia, Elina, Johanna and Bodil.
I also saw that last week's news also had this great teaser: Buy the new album and enter a contest to have Timoteij perform at your home/place of work -in Sweden: http://www.ginza.se/product/timoteij/tabu-2012/11863/
Correct, it's remarkably similar to what the amazing Full of Keys (Anni Bernhard) did on her tour in February for her winning fan, Victor: http://fullofkeys.com/blog/?p=228 I was so envious!
On Monday, the girls were still busy promoting the new album and swung by the Sveriges Radio (SR)studio in Skovde, and fortunately for us, the folks at P4recorded a bit of what happened, which is how I can share it with you here now:
Not to give away too many teasers about some future posts you'll be seeing here soon, but as some of you reading this particular post already know, I actually have hopes of seeing these talented ladies perform -as well as the fabulous Florrie, whose new album drops next week- in a few months in their native habitats, though I'm still working on exact dates and logistics.
My original killer post about Timoteij and Melodifestivalen 2012, scheduled to run the morning of the Second Chance competition, with a complete recap about what happened to them and other acts like Molly Sandén during the competition, was actually killed by a freak power outage one night when my electricity didn't come back on for quite a few minutes, and Blogger lost what I'd written.
Hours of work down the drain! I was so beyond frustrated!
Below are some odds and ends from that the draft of that post which I'd thought to save to an email draft before I started trying to finish up and the electricity went kaput, my post going adios! Obviously, there were lots of what I thought at the time were some well-chosen words, photos and videos that ought to be below but which aren't.
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Today is D-day for Timoteij and its fans: Clear sailing to next week's Melodifestivalen Finals in Stockholm, or, Stormy Seas? (Stormande Hav)
It's the day we've all been waiting for... "Andra chansen." The second chance. One last chance to make the grade for the chance to represent Sweden at Eurovision.
Yesterday the band posted this short acapella version of them singing an excerpt of Stormande Hav in one of their hotel rooms onto their official YouTube Channel.
Like many of you out there, I've wondered, too, why they and the record company still hadn't posted a HQ copy of their performance at the Second Heat as good as the one that uris1 posted two weeks ago, or done a series of occasional updates on their YouTube Channel since then on their preparations the past few weeks, a variation of what they've been writing on the blog. But now at least, somebody finally decided to do something positive.
uris1 video: Timoteij - Stormande Hav. Second Heat of Melodifestivalen 2012 in Göteborg, Sweden. February 11, 2012. http://youtu.be/Nw73WHckdNY
Fans of the band may want to start looking at this page to see what's also being written about them on Social Media: http://whotalking.com/flickr/Timoteij
Make sure you watch this on a full screen for maximum effect.
En somrig hit? (A summer hit?)
Yes!
It will probably come as no surprise to those among you reading this blog who have an interest in this subject that I've been reading and hearing a lot about the new Timoteij single being released for awhile now.
But the first time I actually heard "Het" for myself -sans video and the rap opening that both jolts you and catches your attention- came last weekend, a few days after it was featured on May 12th P4 homepage for Sveriges Radio'sDaniel Kjellander and Jenny Lindeborg, who host a four-hour morning show.
Obviously, I don't listen to SR all the time, probably more like a couple of times a month out of curiosity, and the truth here is that I simply got a tip from someone I trust and followed it up -and took a listen myself. You may well remember that I previously mentioned here that I'd been having some computer problems and all last week, esp. with my speakers?
In any case, it's just as well that I didn't post about that SR link, because I didn't have access last weekend to thistres charmantvideo and THAT's what really makes this particular song POP and sets it apart!
And didn't Johanna (Pettersson) tell us only on Wednesday, on their blog, how truly sick -"cruel"- it would be when we all saw it for ourselves?
Yes, she did, saying "Den är grym! Såå bra! Hurra!?"
First off, there's a whole lot more going-on in this sweet and catchy -and ingenious- video than seems readily apparent at first viewing -a whole lot more, which is why you have to watch it a number of times on full screen to catch some of the clever touches.
To me at least, parts of both the song and the video have an almost Nashville-centered feel to it, like certain very popular female Country Western acts you and I can both think of.
Giving a video a real sense of place and reality is very, very smart, actually.
I dare you not to be hooked by the second time you play it, and actually know what to expect with the whole switch in tone at the beginning from the typical rap 'intro' and the appearance of the long white stretch limousine
and paparazzi at the ready, to the looks of, first, dismay
"That's NOT schlager, that's hip-hop!"
and then quickly, delight on the faces of the little girls and boys wearing those popular pink and blue Timoteijskull caps when the band cruise in,
"Here they come!"
emerging from their sweet cherry red Skoda -embossed with their name in script on the hood and a silhouette of them on the sides.
(Johanna didn't have her license yet when they got the sponsorship deal.)
And in case you were wondering, yes, those pink and blue Timoteij-embossed skull caps ARE ridiculously popular, as even a cursory look at many of the photos or video of their touring the past year has made abundantly clear, where you see them everywhere, and NOT just on kids.
I almost bought one of them last year for my youngest niece, aged ten, up in Maryland, and while not naming names, I have some friends in Sweden who bought a lot of them for stocking stuffers and such, even giving some blue ones to their more hard-edged heavy metal male friends and work colleagues as a joke. (But they had to wear them out in public, of course.)
The slower, quieter part of the song that kicks in at 2:30 or so, starting with a shot of Elina (Thorsell), is a great change of pace and really brings the attention back to the quartet's sweet harmonies that these four do so consistently, seemingly, effortlessly.
Here's a video they recorded of their behind-the-scenes preparation for the "Het" music video, and yes, that is Taylor Swift playing in the background; they love Taylor Swift!
This is the quartet's first video on their "official" YouTube Channel. More on that in a minute.
Speaking of summer, or as one person I know who has spent many, many winters in Sweden puts it, the first time you have seven days in a row when it's NOT freezing, here's a short vid from Expressen TVlast August, showing how willing the girls are to indulge the media to get some attention for their self-evident talent -singing while swimming in a pool.
One of the other things I've sort of been waiting to mention here on the blog for a bit, thinking the new single was the time to mention it, was that there is -FINALLY- an official YouTube Channel for Timoteij, even though their fans have been pretty good the past year at uploading videos they shoot of them on tour around the country or even their TV appearances -perNyhetsmorgon, Lotta på Liseberg, Sommarkrysset and Allsång på Skansen.
As it turns out, your faithful blogger and friend Dave was their second subscriber.
For what it's worth, I have actually mentioned to them via an email that I thought that their very amusing videos on their official -not fake- Facebookpage, located at
http://www.facebook.com/timoteij.officialwere full of personality and often hysterical, especially the ones where they were traveling and Elina was acting as cinematographer from the back seat -82 videos as of a few days ago athttp://www.facebook.com/video/?id=286938310265&s=0- and really needed to be shared with more people via an official YouTube Channel they controlled.
Whether or not they will start putting those sort of funny videos up at this new channel, I can't say for sure, but this first one is certainly a good sign and when I hear something, I will share the news with you here.
The first five photos above are screenshots I took ofAmanda Römmesmo Diaz (as Lucia) from Tuesday morning's St. Lucia concert at Kungsholms Church in Stockholm, that was broadcast LIVE by SVT -at 7 a.m.- in an event officially titled, Luciamorgon i Kungsholms kyrka.
The ridiculously cute St. Lucia icon/photo directly below those photos of Amanda is from Elina Thorsell's blog post Tuesday, as the flute-playing member of Timoteijrecounts what she was up to today on one of the biggest days on the Scandinavian calendar.
This was updated in December 2015
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Lucia
Av Elina den 13/12/2010
Idag är det den 13 december och julen närmar sig med stormsteg! När jag gick upp imorse så var tv.n på och luciafirandet strömmade ut ur högtalarna. Så fint!... Read the rest of Elina's post at:http://www.timoteij.se/2010/12/13/lucia/
In Elina's particular case, the celebration of the Queen of Light amidst supernatural forces, included her going to her little brother's school to listen to him and his classmates sings some festive traditional holiday songs. What a sweetie she is!
As the ever-adorable Elina alludes to in her post, Swedish TV was in full St. Lucia mode today from the get-go, and one of those features was SVT's fabulous one-hour broadcast this morning featuring the Södra Latin Chamber Choir -conducted by Jan Risberg- singing traditional Lucia and Christmas favorites like, well, yes, angels, even as the St. Luciaaction holds our attention, as our brunette Lucia, Amanda, stays perfectly still throughout the ceremony, with four burning candles on her head wreath.
Good job, Amanda!
Also appearing this morning to sing some traditional Christmas favorites and give it some oomph were some very popular singers like Darin, Sonja Aldén, Shirley Clamp and Sanna Nielsen.
As always when I recommend an SVT program for your enjoyment here on the blog, once you have pulled-up the SVT web page, click the word "Fullskärm" to the bottom right in order to make it "full screen." Though some of the program is in Swedish, obviously, you'll still be able to appreciate the songs without knowing a single word of svensk.
I really urge you to watch some of it -if not the whole thing- as a means of not only reducing your own holiday stress, but gaining some Scandinavian cultural awareness, PLUS, and I can't emphasize this enough, the audio and video production qualities of this are just flat-out amazing! Especially considering thatSVT had this entire program up on their website within hours of it airing!
(I have a future blog post on the amazing technical quality of SVT and SVT Play's programs and website that features plenty of examples of why they win so many design and technical awards.)
There's no heavy-handed VO narration by some un-seen quasi-celeb, nobody in the audience aping for the cameras, nobody in the church trying to steal the limelight from the kids performing. In a sense, it's almost like watching a documentary on another culture, with cameras that are carefully hidden to prevent anyone from acting un-naturally. The video is available for watching on the SVT Play web page until January 11, 2011, so you only have a month to catch it before it goes buh-bye!
2015 Update: Excerpts from SVT's 2010 Luciamorgon, i Kungsholms kyrka, via 398asa YouTube Channel
SVT's holiday webpage,http://svt.se/2.114277/julen_i_svt_2010 is chock-a-block full of interesting things and as usual, is not only clever and colorful -while a bit cheeky- but also well-produced, but NOT busy and cluttered, unlike the Miami Herald andSouth Florida Sun-Sentinel'sweb pages these days, which cause me to get a headache at the complete waste of resources in an area like South Florida that is crying out for real news coverage, not more syndicated photo files of B-List celebs or amusing animals.
Will someone please put a stop to that madness before the shareholders finally find out what's been going the past few years?
Tell them that the second-rate websites and the duplication of stories isn't fooling anyone about the actual quality of the product anymore?
We see thru the self-serving lies, the ridiculous fallacies, clear-cut news mis-representation and the longstanding charade that most of the reporters, columnists and editors really want to bring compelling stories to the public's attention -they don't.
That dog doesn't hunt anymore, plus, it's so, so painful to wade thru all the junk online plus seeing links to so-called Breaking News that's already 18 hours old.
Me duele la cabeza! ----
I know that I am remiss in this, and I've already received some emails from overseas the past few days asking me why I haven't said anything yet about the suicide bombings in Stockholm.
Well, I'm working on something right now in regards to that specifically, as well as the larger change in Swedish political and social culture. I think it'll give you some real insight into some matters that you won't find elsewhere in South Florida, though that clearly isn't really much to brag about these days, is it?
All-in-all, I think at least some of you of a more serious bent will be surprised at what you learn -as well as disturbed- and find out how much has been going on in a modern democratic European country like Sweden that you haven't been hearing about in the American mainstream media, print and electronic.
For instance, the efforts by certain non-native groups that aren't particularly keen to assimilate and adapt to Swedish norms of democracy and civics, to actually prevent people from being able to speak freely at public forums, and inciting violence so that they can then be cast by the news media as victims. There has been an awful lot of that! Whether you haven't seen it in print or on TV already in the U.S. because of journalistic laziness, editorial myopia or that old alibi, lack or resources, I can't say. But after you read a bit and see some videos I have in mind for you all, you won't be able to say that you didn't know. And the facts are pretty compelling, especially when you have the video that tells the tale.
If you think the mainstream news media in the U.S. is condescending and ideologically against the interests of the average American, you have no idea how much worse it is in Sweden, as the election coverage showed.
As Christmas nears in the U.S., nobody-but-nobody wants 'legacy media' in their Christmas stocking, not even their own employees. It's the same thing in Sverige.
Timotiej appeared on TV4'sNyhetsmorgon back on April 30th, performing two songs and doing a four-and-a-half minute sit-down interview about what's new with the girls and their new album.
The two singing performances included a mellower version of Kom, performed sans drums and with three of the girls without their trusty instruments, which seems very strange at first, but without the drums, you can really hear Bodil Bergströmon the accordion in a way that you really couldn't in their great Melodifestivalen performance of a few months ago. The harmonies are just perfect, of course, especially towards the end.
In the Kom video, performed as the show was ending, are, from left to right, Johanna Pettersson, Bodil Bergström (on accordion), Cecilia Kallin and Elina Thorsell.
The girls also performed Längtan till landet (Vintern rasat) which I haven't heard in a while. http://www.tv4play.se/aktualitet/nyhetsmorgon?videoId=1.1619474
This is the new TV ad for their new album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfowcDq27A0
For more on Timoteij, see their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Timoteij/286938310265
Their wry and very amusing personal videos can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Timoteij/286938310265#!/pages/Timoteij/286938310265?v=app_2392950137
Among the many hopeful performers last month in Göteborg (Gothenberg) at the thirdSemifinal of Sweden's extremelypopularMelodifestivalen singing competition -telecastLIVE bySVT- http://svt.se/2.120908/melodifestivalen_2010 for the chance to represent Sweden at the 2010 Eurovision Song Contestin late May in Oslo, http://www.eurovision.tv/page/home was a very intriguing four-womanpop group known as Timoteij, singing whatI'd call a folk-inspired pop song titled Kom. ("Come" as in a plaintive plea.) The band only formed in the Fall of 2008, from some music students in the Skaraborg area of central Sweden: Cecilia Kallin, Bodil Bergstrom, Elina Thorsell and Johanna Pettersson. Despite how talented each woman was known to be individually, nobody could've honestly predicted that Sweden as a whole would be so knocked-out by themensemble, but appealing they are, and this has caused some pop culture watchers to say that maybe the fog has lifted, and that Swedish power pop has -finally- returned to its roots, by doing what it always did so well when it really mattered and was actually popular outside of the country: well-crafted songs with catchy hooks and great harmonies that linger in your head long after the song has ended.
Some Swedish music industry types have even gone so far as to publicly say that this overdue return to fun power pop is not just a very welcome breath of fresh air, after an era where Sweden, quite frankly, had really become a bit of a tired afterthought musically, continually sending performers to Eurovision that were clearly too obscure or overtly theatrical than musical -and sure to get hammered by judges and millions of European TV viewers at home for these very reasons- but an opportunity for the entire Swedish music industry to regain its balance.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that, but certainly there's a palpable sense of new confidence there that a certain degree of competitiveness and interest has returned.
The group's tremendous performance last month before a nation-wide TV audience has earned them a spot in the Finals next Saturday night at the Ericsson Globe Arena a.k.a. Globen, in Stockholm, where they will be one of ten acts vying to perform at this year's Eurovision competition being held in Oslo, because it is the home of last year's winner, Alexander Rybak, whose Fairytale captured so many people's attention last year, for both good and bad reasons.
Timoteijhas created quite a buzz for themselves all over Sweden and one reason for that, though hardly the most important one, is that they sing in Swedish and not in English, as so many other acts have chosen to do over the years for all sorts of practical marketing and voting reasons.
Not that there's any consensus about the issue, per se, since people clearly understand why a Swedish singer or group hoping to make it big would choose to go the Englishroute for the contest, but from reading comments in different forums over the past few weeks, people definitely seem pleased that sucha talented and immensely appealing group has consciously chosen to perform inSwedish, not Engelska.
Their harmonies are tight and heavenly, as you'll hear for yourself when you watch the video.
Melodifestivalen's homepage for Timoteij is at http://svt.se/2.121002/timoteij?lid=puff_1786706&lpos=lasMer Hanna intervjuar vinnarna i Göteborg Längd: 03:10
An SVT promo from December 21st, 2009Timoteij utklassade alla -----
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grThquUDlKs ---- Interview on SVT'sGomorron Sverige with Cecilia Kallin and Johanna Pettersson of Timoteij.
The groups's website is at http://www.timoteij.se/
And just when you counted them out, Slovakia, yes, Slovakia, goes "Solid Gold" in its entry, almost like they could get votes from South Florida precincts,with the lovely Kristina singing her heart outabout Horehronie, a beautiful region of Slovakia. http://www.horehronie.com/
You know what they say, after the country girl has seen the bright lights of Bratislava, there's just no going back tothe farm!
FYI: One of my former housemates from Arlington is a member of the Foreign Service stationedin Slovakia. Slovakia shoots and it scores!Here's the travelogue version of the song
