A while back we mentioned that The Genuine Fakes will contribute two songs on the the compilation Songbox Fan Crusade Vol. 1. Today the compilation is released!

The Genuine Fakes contribute with the songs The Promise and I Don’t Want It and the compilation is available for purchase on iTunes - cost 90 SEK.

Ebbot – the fantastic vocals of The Soundtrack Of Our Lives – has done it again. A few days back I browsed through my music library to find some easy listening music for Molly Fake and re-discovered the fantastic album ”Bröderna Lindgren – Vuxen Barnmusik”. The nostalgia for us Swedes that grew up in the 70’s and 80’s is quite intense; just check out the album cover.

The guest list on this album is amazing; except for the Lindgren brothers the following stars has joined the line up: Kristofer Åström, Ebbot Lundberg, Swedish Tiger, Nina Ramsby, Martin Hederos, Mattias Alkberg, Vanna Rosenberg, Swing, Caroline Wennergren Asha Ali.

My favorite track is the second song on the album – En flugas väg (eng. The Path of a Fly).

Check out the album on Spotify or visit the band website on MySpace.

The next album on the list is another one that changed my life and the way I perceived music. Will Owsley is the founder of a legendary powerpop trio called The Semantics, which featured Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey on drums. Their sole album Powerbill was only released in Japan and the band never got the break they sought for. You might think that this is the album I’m going to talk about - which I could have gone on about at length - but I’m going to focus on Owsley’s first solo album Owsley released in 1999.

The story as I’ve heard it is that he recorded this album in his home studio, which he financed by touring with Amy Grant. When he started shopping around for a deal a lot of labels liked what they heard but wanted him to re-record the album to make it sound “cooler” or something like that. Owsley refused and waited until he found the label that wanted to put it out as it was, and he was rewarded for his persistence with a grammy nomination for “best engineering”. Ain’t that great?

Anyhow, the album in itself is a masterpiece. Packed with powerpop gems, full of energy and beatle-esque songwriting, it had a great impact on me when I first heard it a year after it came out and inspired me in so many ways, changing the way I write music. “Oh No The Radio” might be one of the coolest opening tracks of all time, and “Coming Up Roses” is a song every songwriter would wish they’d written!

Unfortunately, only one track is available for listening on Owsley’s MySpace. But it’s the beautiful ballad “Sentimental Favorite” so there’s really no reason to complain. I’ve been searching YouTube for any kind of Owsley or Semantics clip withouth luck. If you readers happen to stumble upon a clip, let me know.

above: two members of the LO union, appearing in a swedish TV debate.
unsurprisingly, these gentlemen were very upset about the arbitrary approval of the AMF bonuses.

sure, we’ll leave the politics out of this blog, but I could NOT resist snapshooting their stasches.
these men are on a mission, much like The Genuine Fakes.

cheers blog readers!
//Morty Fake

We are pleased to announce that Stockholm based Sara Rumar will open for The Genuine Fakes at The Southside Cavern gig on March 31.

Sara has released two albums; Stupid like me in 2006 and Why? Because. When? Now in 2007. In addition to that she recently released the single Stick To Diamonds that you can listen to on her MySpace-page or on Spotify.

• The Genuine Fakes w/ Sara Rumar
• When: March 31, 2009 - 8.00 PM
• Where: The Southside Cavern - Hornsgatan 104, Stockholm, Sweden. T-Zinkensdamm.
• Map

By many considered to be the very first album of the genre, this next essential powerpop album is a true gem that everyone should be aware of. The importance of Big Star’s debut album “#1 Record” from 1972 can hardly be ignored, influenced, as it has, bands like The Posies (whom I focused the last issue on), Teenage Fanclub and Matthew Sweet to mention a few. Big Star is a band that didn’t get its deserved recognition back when they started out in the early 70’s, but has gained some interest in later years - much like Nick Drake.

This is yet another of those albums that, in my opinion, doesn’t have a single weakness. Not a bad track. It’s got the real rocker tracks like “Don’t Lie To Me”, “In the Street” and “Feel”, as well as beautiful ballads such as “Thirteen” and “The Ballad of El Goodo”, which might be one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Big Star disbanded in the mid-70’s but reformed in 1993, adding Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from The Posies to the lineup. They also contributed to the 2005 album “In Space” which is a fine piece of work, although it doesn’t even come close to the debut.

Here’s a YouTube clip from The Tonight Show with the new lineup performing “In the Street” (which you might recognize from That 70’s Show, for which Cheap Trick recorded their own version)

The Genuine Fakes were played on Nordic Rocks last night!

Check out XMFan.com.

The show gets a lot of listeners, and it repeats twice throughout the week so it’s actually three plays!

The Songbox Fan Crusade compilation will be released through iTunes Music Store on Tuesday 31 March!

The Genuine Fakes contribute two songs - “The Promise” and “I Don’t Want It” and those two tracks make up the second official release from the band. The first was the Posies cover “Somehow Everything” on “Beautiful Escape: The Songs of The Posies Revisited”.

The price of the album will be 90 SEK (ca 9€) and it will be released exclusively through iTunes on March 31, and a couple of weeks it will also be available through other online stores such as CDON.com, Sony Ericsson Play Now Arena and Nokia Music Store.

Title: Songbox Fan Crusade
Artist: Various Artists
Release date: 2009-03-31
Price (SEK): 90

Browsing YouTube I found this fantastic clip with Cheap Trick and the cast from “That 70’s Show”.

The song In the Street was originally performed by 70’s band Big Star. A cover-version of the song was recorded by Cheap Trick in 1999 for use as the theme song for the television show That 70’s Show. Great TV-show, great music and a cool video. Definitely worth checking out!

Check out the new cool blog Pop Injection that focuses on great pop music (and especially powerpop)! The blog assembles articles, reviews and blog entries from various sites around the world and is a truly unique pop resource.

Check it out!!