THE VECTORS

And now to one of my favourite swedish punkbands ever to take stage, The Vectors, from the punkcity of Umeå will forever be a band that will be pretty unknown for all you stupid kids out there rather drinking beer then caring of good music. But i don´t care about your stupid requests for bands that copycat already made shit, if you don´t listen to these boys energy filled punkrock you are really missing some of the best swedish punk ever to hit the stage in the 90´s. Long live The Vectors and fuck you.

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When and why were The Vectors formed?

Pelle: Me, my brother and Jens had played together before the Vectors, but this time around and as the Vectors since I think around late '95, probably because nothing else was happening etc. Nobody else played punk in Umeå at the time, maybe a little Oi, only SxEHC emo and such.

Karl: The three of us have played together on and off since 1990. When we were kids Jens lived in the same building as us, so really we were formed in the mid-70's, only then our weapons of choise were bows and arrows, not guitars and drums.

What´s the lineup?

Pelle: I play bass and sing about half of the songs, my brother sings the rest + lazy git, Jens drums (rummut).

Besides the Vectors which other bands have the members played in?

Karl: 20 years ago I played with the Boredom Brothers, then Death Rate, Kåtröjj and some other bands no-one has ever heard of. Various punk bands with various punks. Just local bands doing gigs for free beer, in places around town.

Jens: I started back in the late 1980's with a band called Step Forward and then moved on to play drums for a crappy skate band called Blender (made a few records). In the late 1990's I joined a hardcore band called E.T.A. and now I pound the drums in Regulations as well as in The Vectors.

Pelle: I play bass in a band called Public Toilets now.

How´s the scene in Umeå nowadays? (anything you care about?) Any problems rehearsing with the band split up between stockholm and umeå?

Jens: It's back and forth, nowadays pretty bad I guess.

Karl: There's alot of gigs right now, but they're all very very low-key. You hardly see any posters anywhere. It's not like it was when SxE HC was really big and you had 500 kids at a local show, but it's alright. Some bands are good, most aren't. We've never had problems rehearsing really, just problems at the gigs. Due to the drinking, not the lack of rehearsals. We just did the annual Festival Für Alle and that's one of the best things in Umeå.

Pelle: I don't know everything about it since I don't live in Umeå now, but I think it's probably still quite good for the city's size, population and location as far as bands, distros etc go. When it comes to gigs, I really miss some kind of underground, there's very little happening in Umeå that doesn't involve the city/state/government or some other funded organization. Most gigs are at city controlled youth clubs, or maybe once or twice at some fancy cultural affair which is made to make Umeå look good in the press.

State Controlled Punk - it sounds like a bad joke, I only wish it was. A good exception is Festival Für Alle, it's a great simple idea (free summer event) and the only motivation behind it seems to be making it happen. I wish somebody could rent or squat some place or at least start to book up bands on their own in a pub or something, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it, and you certainly could do without some rented goon shoving alcometers down the kids throats, overpayed cultural workers etc, but everything in Umeå that has anything to do with food, culture or alcohol, entertainment etc has always been very heavily controlled and restricted by the city, usually the same bunch of old social democrats.

The area along the water is used as a parking lot. All licenced places are hidden away in different corners of the city, the squares and main streets are supposed to be kept clean or whatever.

Sometimes the distance is a problem, as I can't afford to go there all the time just to rehearse, but it's not that bad, if we've got anything coming up, we always manage to rehearse. Right now we've got new songs which will be recorded soon, so recently we've been rehearsing quite a lot.

What are the influences to your sound, any bands in particular you have taken inspiration/engergy/speed from?

Jens: Drum influences are mainly 60-70's rock - Hendrix, The Who, Led Zep.

Karl: The Sex Pistols and early AC/DC has influenced my guitar playing the most. As for the energy - we all suffer from a chronic punk rock disorder which basically means that we play everything too fast, so that's probably why we sound the way we do. We actually try to play slower but we can't.

Pelle: Bands that made me want to play in a band before I ever did are probably the Pistols and the Ramones + a lot of the early eighties british stuff like Partisans and GBH, the Oi! bands etc.

Over the years it has got a bit more varied, a lot of american punk; from the NY 70's scene to the eighties HC type bands, and a few of the nineties garage R'n'R bands too.

Besides bands that inspire The Vectors sound, what do you guys listen to?

Karl: I listen to people go blah blah blah all day.

Jens: Musicwise stuff like Black Flag, 7 Seconds, The Damned and Fu Manchu.

Pelle: The past week I've been listening to Roky Ericsson, Bad Brains, Sham 69, the Germs, SLF, Cramps and some old live Ramones bootlegs etc, mostly old stuff. The Spits (from the US) is a good new band.

Any "new" swedish punkbands you are into?

Jens: No, all new bands sound like crap except maybe the Nervous Minds, Public Toilets and of course Regulations.

Karl: There are some local bands that I like. The Sluggers and a band called Ungjävlar.

Pelle: There's none that I really listen to very much at home, but there are some bands I like seeing live.

Who writes the lyrics in Vectors, and what´s in mind when creating them?

Pelle: My brother and I. Sometimes I really want to write about a particular subject but mostly it's just what comes into my mind, mainly something I'm pissed off about, some of it's kind of personal, I'm not into preaching.

Karl: I guess it's based on hate, frustration, boredom. And biological warfare, that's really fascinating. I admire the purity of it. When I was in the army we worked with real live nerve gas and that was really exciting too, but the bio stuff rules. Gonna get my hands on some of that. And if you know your World War II history you now know why the cat no for "Rape The Pope" was 731.

Nuclear weapons are pretty good too, I wrote about them in "Ice Cold War" which was about former Soviet missiles stolen, and Pelle did "Enter Armageddon" on the new LP, about the early US ones. "I Wanna Be With The CIA" was inspired by a series of interviews with former CIA officers. They really led exciting lives in the late 50's and early 60's. Like they lived in a personal state of complete anarchy, doing whatever they felt like. "I Hate You", "Kill" and "The Message" are all about people trying to censor things, and what I would like to do to them. "Rape The Pope" is a pro-choise song. Most of the songs are just reflections and reactions to something.

What about politics in punk?

Karl: If you've got someting to say - say it! We have political lyrics, but they're from a personal point of view, not some stupid fucking party pamphlet some left- or right-wing parasite gave you to memorise. Real Punk has always been political. No rock'n'roll song has ever created such a big political reaction as the Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen". But if someone tells me they're only in a band to get some important message across I think they're lying. Anyone who goes on stage in front of people is basically just looking for attention. That includes us, just as any other band. Good or bad.

Pelle: Sometimes I can get really disgusted about some of the so-called political punk bands, because it's just part of a fashion package and nothing else. I love the Dead Kennedys, and I guess they're a political band, like the Mc5, the Clash, even the Pistols etc. Usually the bands that make a big fuss about how political and radical they are, are the ones with the least to say.

I never think about anything I really like in those terms, like is this a political film or is this a political book etc, to me it's very easy. It's not about that the two shouldn't mix, I really think they could, if you know what you're doing and it's from the heart, it's usually good, I don't mind if it's political, but there's so many bands out there who are just copycats and even if I might agree with what they are saying it's boring and useless to listen to.

Stay away from party politics if you don't think of it as a way to make a personal career, and if you do, please stay out of punk.

How many gigs have you played so far in Sweden? How come you have mostly played in Umeå?

Karl: We've done a few in Stockholm and some place else, but Umeå Punk City is our home, that's why. If you get us a gig in your town we'll play.

Pelle: Because we're lazy and more or less never get any offers from anywhere else. Sometimes it can be a question of money/effort too, because Umeå is so far away it's usually not worth leaving the place for just one gig. But I don't think we've ever really turned any offer down.

Any "best show" yet? Where´s the best place to gig?

Jens: All the gigs with free beer!

Karl: I think the best gigs we've done were in Poland. Arnheim and Groningen in Holland were great too. Nazi-Germany is just one big drunken blurr really, because the only thing the krauts can do well is brew beer. A good gig is when there's a lot of real people drinking beer and having fun, a bad one is when there's just hippies and posers standing in the back.

Pelle: The ones that were the most fun to play must have been in Poland, but some of those shows we probably sounded horrible, because we'd been drinking too much, the best shows are probably us reasonably sober but the crowd well drunk.

Some gigs in Umeå we´ve been sneaking in the back with beer a little too long and play in front of about 10 stone cold sober kids that cling to the back wall and only went there to see some other band anyway, that's also great.

You have been on tours in Europe (Poland, Holland, Germany) over the years, any tours coming up in the future?

Karl: I fucking hope so.

Pelle: Hopefully yes, I'm really bored with not playing, I actually enjoy playing, even at rehearsal, even if you already know the songs perfectly. I really like making that noise. I'd leave tomorrow if something decent came up. Maybe something will happen once the album's out, you never know.

I get the impression you enjoyed the tours alot, how come you got the chance to tour (even before your first gig) and do you think you´ll visist Poland etc again?

Karl: Yeah we enjoyed the tours, had a great time. New Lifeshark Records set up the tour of Germany and Holland, which was pretty good except that the money made on that tour went to a completely useless tour manager from the label. The first tour of Poland was done through a contact Pelle got from the band Dissober I think, so we ended up doing the first Vectors show in Elk, Poland. And yeah I hope we'll be back there soon.

Jens: Well of course. Lots of beer, dope and stuff!

Pelle: I wrote a letter to somebody from Puffball I think who had toured Poland with Dissober and got the address to Bart, who organized both the Poland tours. Bart was fucking great. I wouldn't mind going again. We've tried to organize tours of our own once or twice, it's too much work, we got about five dates in five countries and two weeks.

We've had really bad experiences with people, especially one guy who's been 'doing tours' for us, quite good and extensive ones, he's sent us all the dates and venues and everything, only to cancel two days before the first show (which usually is a 40hr drive from Umeå). Once when it happened we had to go to a Dee Snider show instead just to wash all illusions of anything good ever happening to us away.

Could you give your opinions on your releases:

- "Fuck MTV" 7" 1996

Jens: Good songs, bad recording.

Karl: Sounds like the band is playing in the next room, not the studio. We knew fuck all about recording and neither did the guys at Ching Chong Studios where it was recorded. I think the label fucked it up even worse, because I remember the masters sounding better, but maybe I'm just looking for someone to blame.

Pelle: Seems really long ago now. I like all the songs on it, but the production and the singing is a bit on the tame side. The songs are really good, and we still play them live, except "Fuck MTV".


- "The Vectors" LP 1998

Jens: A few good songs, better recording.

Karl: I like the in-your-face sound of it and some of the songs are really good too, but the new LP is better. If you're looking for distortion and overdrive look no further then our first LP. Too bad the label censored the cover and lyric sheet.

Pelle: I really like "Ice Cold War", "Inconsiderate Requests" and "Brave New Science" etc, some songs I don't really like now. The playing's nice and fast, the production a little blurry at times, it's better if you play it really loud.

- "Rape The Pope" 7" 2000

Jens: Best so far, songs and recording.

Pelle: This is the best thing we've put out so far, all the songs are good and the production too. The rest of these sessions will be the "Still Ill" LP.

Karl: Yeah, the best one, and it should be too - as we did everything ourselves. I'm proud of the fact that we got some pro-life scum and christians upset about it too, writing us hatemail and things like that. We offended the right people with that one.

I´ve heard the recording is already made for your next album "Still ill", how come it hasn´t been released yet? And how come you release it on Busted Heads?

Karl: Yeah well that's all because of various labels lying about everything so it kept getting delayed and cancelled and all the deals went fucking dead. DS13-Krille of Busted Heads has always distributed our stuff and he's always been 100% honest with us, paid upfront and everything, so when he said he wanted it on his label we said "yeah great". It's gonna be out in October or so, I think.

Pelle: It's a long and boring story. I think we sent out a bunch of Rape The Popes to different labels, anyway first some guy in the US said he was gonna do it, awesome dude etc then it's I'm gonna do it, but not now, I really like you honestly but maybe in 3 months and zzzzz and blah blah and after about 8 months he came up with the idea of remixing it but on second thoughts it could be his stereo wasn't working properly, and then after a while he wouldn't do it unless we payed half of it or it would be on CD-Rs, some bullshit like that, can't really remember.

He did put out a comp with us on it, I've never seen it, but I've seen reviews of it. Then some guy in Wales did more or less exactly the same thing, (except for the remixing stuff) only he seemed very serious and honest and generally nice to deal with at first, and then just stopped replying to our mail/e-mail.

The punk scene is full of people like this, but isn't the rest of the world too, stop yer whining don't let 'em grind ya down etc. Busted Heads is a nice local and hard working reliable label that also has sold 2/3rds of the "Rape The Pope" 7".

Jens: They're easy to work with.

Are you satisfied with "Still ill"?

Pelle: Yes, but it's still a pity it wasn't released earlier.

Jens: Yeah of course, same recording as "Rape The Pope". A lot of drums in the mix, raw sounding guitar and bass.

Karl: It's a good one, sounds like we do live. As soon as we had played our bits we left David Sandström - who produced it - to do the mixing too. He did a great job, because he knew what we sound like live. There's almost no overdubs on it at all. It's really something special, boys and girls...

What´s your opinions on DIY? How is it going with "Rabid Alligator", your own label?

Jens: Well, it's good for all the crap and newly started bands. It's possible to do a lot of gigs as an unknown band. Too little money in it for my taste, yeah.

Karl: The problem with the whole DIY-scene is that everybody feel they have to be involved to get respect. A lot of those arseholes aren't fit to run a label or organise gigs or whatever, and they just keep fucking things up, lying and exaggerating and dreaming about what they're gonna do.

We've had our fair share, dealing with people like that. A lot of it is just a pose. When it works it's great, but it rarely does. Even though the "Rape The Pope" ep was sold out we lost some money on it, simply because a lot of the DIY distros sold their copies but didn't pay us. What can you do about it? Can't beat the money out of some cunt in Australia or the US when you're in Sweden.

Pelle: Some DIYers may talk more than they do, but true D.I.Y is the best way of doing anything ever, if we'd put out "Still Ill" ourselves at the time of the first promise from that american guy i'm sure we wouldn't have had any copies left and our money back by now.

If you've got any kind of idea, the best thing to do is to do it yourself, but it's no fucking religion, if you've got a recording and somebody else wants to put it out, it saves you the time. DIY is good, but it doesn't make a bad thing good just because nobody helped you create it.

We were never serious about Rabid Alligator as a label for anybody but us, but we might use it again in the future anyway.

I know that Kalle has an online zine, "Summer Of Hate", are the other members into any project besides the band?

Jens: As I said before I play drums in Regulations.

What´s the opinion on the punkscene in Sweden right now, what could be done better? And what´s worst with it?

Karl: It's like the rest of the world, too many bands but not enough good ones. Or if there are you never get to hear them.

Pelle: A lot of what I said about the Umeå scene goes for the rest of Sweden too. I think the worst thing is that it's kind of dead in many ways, a lot of it is really uniformed; if you're into that you gotta wear this, and then you can´t go to that show because it's not the kind of band you´re supposed to like if you're serious about liking that band, kinda fractioned like the communist movement in the sixties, everything is very set.

In Stockholm the kind of sleazy punk trash thing is (still) very much in fashion, which is good because you get to hear the Sex Pistols or the New York Dolls even if you go to some poxy student bar and I guess that the revival thing opened up for other kinds of punk too, but on the other hand it's mostly about the look and might die soon and would have twice already if the music (and style) wasn't so bloody good. I think a lot of those people are gonna get stuck in it which is more good than bad.

Besides the band what do you guys do?

Karl: I turn beer into piss. Just finished art school, right now I paint, drink and hang out with my girlfriend.

Jens: Slaving away in a kitchen all day and all night. Drinking beer, enjoying music and scoring girls.

Pelle: I've been studying (architecture) for the last three years, either I'm gonna see that through or do something else for a while, I don't know right now. The school is a bit of a drag for the most part, but I like to build things, I'm building a small house by the water next to a factory on an industrial estate right now, which will be my summer resort til the bastards decide to tear the lot down and build luxury apartments all over the place. DIY building rules, fuck the oppressors etc.

Most of you have been in the punk/hardcore scene for years, what is the essence of punk, the thing that gets you going on?

Karl: I don't know about the essence of Punk, I just wanna have fun and I found that in Punk Rock, among other things. It's about individuality and improving your life.

Jens: What a lazy question, what do you think?

Pelle: To do what you want and not care about what others say. The music is better than all other music, I can't really listen to anything else apart from some sixties/fifties rock which is pretty close to punk anyway. The style, clothing and graphics are better, too.

And how do you think the scene have changed since you first came into it?

Jens: Well, we are getting older, the kids stay the same age.

Karl: When I started, more than 20 years ago, everybody were really young. The oldest punks were around 13-14, now everybody's a lot older when they get into it. The original spirit of punk is almost gone, we used to spit at people, smash things up, just be unpleasant. The local council and all the youth clubs and crap like that were our enemies, and so were all the fucking left-wing leeches, then around five years ago the whole scene just became full of nice clean people working with the council, quoting socialist leaflets like parrots.

In the 80's the gigs used to be in squats or at private parties, not at christian youth clubs for fuck's sake. A lot of it is too PC to be called Punk. Call it something else. But in the last year or so a new generation have started to do gigs that are a bit more punk rock, with Umeå Hardcore and all that, so kudos to them.

There are more bands and gigs now, and local bands get their stuff released, so that's better. It's accepted now... well, most of it anyway. You don't get in a fight every day for wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt, like you did 20 years ago.

What's really funny is that as late as the mid-80's punk haircuts and studded belts were banned in schools, now everybody and his uncle wears them.

Pelle: The bands are a lot better technically nowadays, more professional which can be good but maybe a little boring etc sometimes too. Everyone makes recordings of what they do for instance. A punk isn't always a loser degenerate outcast these days, it's high fashion.

Any days you´ve thought just fuck it all and try to become a "normal" person and quit Vectors?

Jens: I don't think so!

Karl: I'm gonna be 33 this year, so of course I sometimes feel bored with myself, with the whole punk rock thing, but there's really not much else, is there? And you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks...

Pelle: I wish I could get abnormally rich and buy all the people who have bought me beer in the last months lots a beer back. Normality sucks.

What do you think a zine should contain, any favourites?

Jens: Good interviews with interesting bands and loads of porn, huh! As for favourite fanzines; I can't read!

Karl: And he ain't kidding either, he really can't read. Fanzines should contain nothing but praise for the Vectors. And pictures of underage girls doing undescribable things. My favourite fanzine is The Ugly American.

Any last words of wisdom to your fans and kids out there reading this?

Pelle: Buy our new album. Mind the clap. Thanks for the interview, sorry it took ages for us to reply.

Jens: No matter what anyone says stay true to yourself, and most importantly - Stay Punk!

Karl: You're our only fan, Stellan. As for the kids; they should go out and enjoy their youth - get drunk and rob a gas station or something.

Pissed And Proud