I’ve translated this YouTube interview (ita-engl): MP @the Fridge 1996

[Black-eyedJ]

Let’s translate some Motorpsycho interviews!

So there’s my turn to start and, as I am Italian, I picked this Italian interview on you tube:

Motorpsycho @ the fridge

Part 1: https://youtu.be/f0qrFKpD234

Part 2: https://youtu.be/r9lT-1kYCm8

This is part 1, in the coming days I’ll do part 2 for sure

Wait: my knowledge of English is pretty bad, so… don’t expect a magnificent translation… but I think it’s more or less understandable ahah

03.03.1996

Motorpsycho, guests of the record store “The fridge” (Fridge records), play unplugged for the Tele+ tv show “Good vibrations”, hosted by Ezio Guaitamacchi.

…

0:08 it’s time to turn over a new leaf.

We’re going to the cold Norway because Motorpsycho come from this land, a very popular rock band in Norway and all over Europe, with a huge following in Italy.

We went to record them in a temple of the alternative music in Milan: “The Fridge”, where Motorpsycho performed for us in an acoustic set.

Voilà: Motorpsycho

0:41 Motorpsycho is the most important Norwegian rock band. They come from Trondheim, a small industrial city in the North of the country.

They start to gain quickly a solid reputation, with “hard” and “wild” live performances.

After the encouraging 1991 debut: “Lobotomizer”, the band makes great advances and creates “Sooth”, work that states their reached maturity and the innovative songwriting.

1:04 With the publication of their 3rd record: “Demon Box” their fame

is strengthened outside the Scandinavian borders. The record contains everything: rough tracks and extended suites, which flirt with psychedelia.

After a big tour throughout large European festivals, they published “Timothy’s Monster”, a monumental opus.

Two hours of music in which rock, pop and psychedelia coexist.

The new album is called “Blissard”, it came out these days, the songs are short and intense and show the further evolution of the band.

[I’m trying to translate what the Italian translator is saying… I can hardly hear what Bent and Snah are saying in English]

1:40 Bent: We started Motorpsycho as such in the autumn of 1989 and since then we’ve often changed lineup. Me and Snah are since then the permanent members of the band and we’ve produced six albums. The last record came out this week.

2:00 Interviewer: So this is a very obvious but inevitable question, since you come from Norway.

What’s the situation of rock music in Scandinavia?

2:06 Snah: There are quite some Norwegian bands and Swedish, of course, trying to emerge in the European music scene.

But the Swedish have much bigger opportunities.

They’ve got a business music tradition since Abba and stuff like that, maybe.

But that are quite some good Norwegian bands, which sell their records in Italy too.

2:36 Madsun. ((You can find this acoustic version in the mixtape “Soniche avventure 3”.))

3:16 Int: How much is difficult to put forward your music abroad, since you’re not English or American?

3:23 Bent: Oh, it’s a different situation because the English press is such overprotective with British and American music and it’s complicated for every continental band to break through.

You know, we’re in no hurry, we play because we love music and it won’t be an issue if we will not become big rockstars in England and in the United States. You know, we’ve sold several records in the rest of Europe… it’s a slow progress but we’ve got time and we’ll continue to do what we like.

4:31 Snah: We all have very different musical influences. We embrace every kind of music, from folk to heavy-metal. But the important thing is making good songs.

4:50 Int: You have played acoustic versions of your songs… I’d like to know if you usually do this sort of things during your concerts, or if it’s just a special gift you’ve done specifically for us today

5:04 Bent: Oh, this is for you… but we’re thinking about it! The problem is that if we want to play acoustic we should reorganize all our gear… and since we have just few roadies, we should do it all by ourself… and this a little complicated.

But we’ve got a country/western band too: The Tussler… the international Tussler society. It’s composed by drums, a banjo and a guitar. That’s where we take out these acoustic sets

[Ercarnar]

As a Italian fan, thank you for showing me this gem. I never knew they released this interwiew! If you have doubts about the second part of the video let me know, I'll be glad to help with the translation

[Black-eyedJ]

Thanks a lot @Ercarnar! Yeah, this interview is truly valuable… and the second part is even more interesting

(Grazie per esserti reso disponibile… vediamo che combino con la seconda parte:D)

[Black-eyedJ]

So here I am again with part 2… have fun!

(For all the Italian psychonauts: sentitevi liberi di apportare modifiche e migliorie varie, se vi va!)

Remember that I’ve posted the translation on you tube in the comment section!

0:13 Int: Talking about psychedelia, inevitably, you think about a specific historical period, the end of the 60s, and a specific geographic place, the North of California… so I wonder how much it makes sense talking about psychedelic music and culture these days, in an updated form…

0:34 Bent: It was, you know, at that time, in San Francisco such a big turnaround for the whole society… it was a momentous event. But the thing is that for the very first time rock music has become a mass market. You know, psychedelic music is a sort of jazz version of pop music… musically speaking, that idea was for us the perfect combination: we like to do pop songs but with a “jazz mentality”. What we always try to do with live songs and when we make records is to make bases where we can put our souls and drag people… because the intent is to grab our listeners and grab ourselves… and take it all away for 2 hours, becoming enriched from this experience

1:54 Bent: Motorpsycho is a family thing because we live in Trondheim, which is a small city far from Oslo, the capital and nerve centre of the Norwegian music business… and we’re trying to stay away from all this. Because we’re not into these things, become big rockstars or make a lot of money… we love playing and we’re trying to keep away from these mortal traps, where it’s easy to fall in when you start to sell a few records

So, in this way, we've built up a relationship of trust with all of our collaborators. Most of the deals we make are done with people we know, and we split fifty-fifty the income from our job.

3:00 Bent: Motorpsycho is a family thing, as it was for Grateful Dead… we drew inspiration from their way of playing, improvisation plays an important role. We always try to write our songs so that we can change them and…improvise. It’s important for us to work on that basis and be in a constantly changing.

4:01 Bent: The funny thing is that looking back to the 5 or 6 albums we’ve made, you see a line somewhere which is always changing… None of our records sounds as the others, they are all very different with all different musical angles.

You know, my favorite artists, as John Coltrane or the Beatles, would love this.

Think about the Beatles, in every record, from “Rubber Soul” onwards, they have taken a step forward, and this what we’re trying to do.

4:58 Bent: We’re trying to avoid the things that we’ve already done too much before. For instance, there’s no long songs in the album, because it would’ve been a cliché.

And we ended the album with a whisper instead of a crescendo, and this is a thing that we’ve never done before.

We worked a lot with 2 guitars, trying to obtain from both a smooth sound. And you know, with all these guitars, it’s a new approach for us because we’ve never had 2 guitars in the band before.

That’s a lot of small things constantly changing.

And we’re also trying to shorten songs to make them more intense, trying to take advantage from all the technical possibilities that a song offers, without extending unnecessarily.

We wanted songs even shorter and even more intense… and I think we succeeded!

6:16 Snah: Oh, we are getting ready a lot for our upcoming tour in Europe and in Norway. And we’ll continue as a trio: drums, bass and guitar, with some electrical gizmos on the floor. This is the new line-up of the band, with a different approach to the songs and kind a new face, I think. Because we used to be a quartet and now we’re just three persons.

6:50 Int: In the upcoming European tour, do you think you will also come to Great Britain?

6:55 Bent: There’s people in our booking agency, working both in France and Great Britain but we don’t know yet… It would be nice to go. But I think they aren’t yet ready for a band like our because they’re too much involved in 60s pop music… we’ll see

[Punj Lizard]

@Black-eyedJ – Thanks so much for translating the interview.

[Mark]

Thanks you!

[Author]

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