July 8: I Am Starting To Function In The Usual Way

Yes indeed. After keeping myself on hold, as I am sure most people touring do while touring, I am now slightly rehabilitated. Six weeks is a long time to be pressing the pause button on the remote control. And it's not always that its laser signal reaches across the Atlantic. Sometimes you wonder if the laser ever will lead you back home, or if it has taken a dead end turn.

Now that I am home in Bergen, I am starting to look forward to my next departure. That's just how it is. Not that being where I've longed to be for so long is already worn out. It hardly is. But I have a special, I did not see that coming-thing, coming up.

As I may and most certainly must have mentioned in previous postings, my absolute biggest musical influence while writing the "Faces Down" record, was Elvis Costello. From hearing "This Year's Model" (78) one week, to discovering his, at the time, newly released Burt Bacharach collaboration, "Painted From Memory"(98) the next week, I knew I had found my man. The angry young man, when he was cruel. The eclectic crooner, now adult, but hardly old. I preferred both. With or without the Brodsky Quartet. In other words: I did not cry when he for a while refused to rock. That is every sane man's right. And most men should be refused even attempting rock. By law. If only all men were as sane as EC...

So, in the excitement of hearing songs written by someone who did know how to rock, but still did not feel like doing it all the time, I started spending all the money I could make on Elvis' back catalogue. This was late 98.

By April 99 I had them all. By August that same year I also had a pile of songs finished myself. Little did I know that in the future, these songs would often appear together under the name of Sondre Lerche "Faces Down". Sometimes music means more than just what you hear.

"The Beat", "New Lace Sleeves", "The Long Honeymoon", "Poor Napoleon", "Jack Of All Parades", "The Comedians", "Talking In The Dark", "Baby Plays Around", "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4", The Birds Will Still Be Singing", "Favourite Hour", "London's Brilliant Parade", "Shamed Into Love", "I Want To Vanish", "Upon A Veil Of Midnight Blue", "The Bridge I Burned", The Other Side Of Summer" "Toledo", "Painted From Memory", "Spooky Girlfriend".

Probably not his set-list, and surely not mine. But a brief list of some songs of his I just remembered that I love.

These shows will surely be quite alright.

I'm looking forward to playing a few shows in Norway these next two weeks. Stavanger on Saturday and two nights at Tjøme's fabulous Gamle Ormelet, for the third summer around. Hope to see some regulars there. I cannot wait to speak fluently between songs..

Meanwhile, I'll be out doing nothing. Especially not rocking.

Good Summer!
Sondre Lerche