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http://www.aftenbladet.no/underholdning/musikk/1114026/Har_solgt_10000_vinyl.html
Bent talks about COTF, which has sold ca 10000 copies so far, the 20 year anniversary tour, future etc. Interesting
Enjoy!
Quick and dirty:
10,000 vinyls sold
In a declining market Motorpsycho wins with their purist vinyl release.
A love/hate situation emerged when Motorpsycho released their last album “Child of the Future” (2009) on vinyl only. Now it seems you can’t diss the sales figures. About 10,000 units of the LP has sold, singer and bass plyer Bent Sæther says.
-Compared to reasonable expectations this has worked extremely well.
-So now we can expect more purely vinyl releases?
-I don’t know, we haven’t discussed it. We’ll see, that’s just how it is. We don’t have a plan. We make stuff up, and then we analyze it afterwards, Bent Sæther says, and summarizes:
-It happens when it happens the way it happens, and then we make up excuses for it later.
Three weeks on the road
Tomorrow Motorpsycho ends their 20th anniversary tour after three weeks on the road in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark and more (isn’t “and more” just Holland and Germany? translator’s remark). Sæther reports good atmosphere and large crowds. Several gigs were sold out.
-One guy came up to us and said he attended his gig number 100 in Berlin. There is a core of oldies following us, and some new ones arrive.
The trio has been forward-looking (grr) enough to use the tour for promotional interviews for the next album, which is to be released in January, throughout Europe.
-It’s good to start early. You do all sorts of stuff when you’re travelling like this.
-You’re not tired of it all after 20 years?
-No problem. We have routine enough to do this totally painless. As long as the band works as well as it does with Kenneth (Kapstad, who replaced the original drummer Gebhardt in 2007), it’s all good. We live to play as good music as we can, and when we’re in the form we’re in now it’s sheer bliss. We’re simple that way, we just play until our brains switch off and everything is instinct.
-Not when you’re writing new material?
-No, when we play live. To forget everthing you know and just play by instinct, to lose yourself in the music, that is the goal behind it all. For us, and hopefully for the audience.
-Have you had good concert experiences with other bands?
-The last two I can recall that were on top were Sun O))) who I saw in Holland a couple of years ago. That was fantastic. Music as physics, pure and simple. The other one was Atomic at Dokkhuset in Trondheim. Extremely good. Otherwise it’s far apart. When you’re in the business yourself, you’re hard to drag out. When you’re used to being on stage, it can get boring to see others. The stuff that’s farther away from what we do ourselves interest me the most. But I’m only speaking for myself. Hans Magnus (Snah Ryan, guitar player) saw Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and tilted completely. We’re all different.
Hard times
Despite 10,000 sold units, Motorpsycho is noticing the recession. Both in the general economy of concert goers and in the download-threatened record market.
-We make the cheapest productions we can, without relenting on quality. For now there’s no sense of crisis, but times are tough, Bent says, and is worried about the upbringing of the next music generation.
-It’s a bit like how the old capitalists know the price of everything but the value of nothing. We’re bringing up a generation that knows neither price nor value of anything. As a music fan this is frustrating. The ritual around playing a record that I grew up with doesn’t exist anymore.
-Does the future depend on making money by touring, playing more gigs?
-Yes, in a way. So long as people are willing to pay more and more to come and see. But club owners tell us that it’s harder to get people out. There’s less money in circulation.
Home to Svartlamon
Oh well, recession, but Bent Sæther seems in a good mood on the phone from the tour bus, which is on its way up Østerdalen back to Trondheim, where Motorpsycho end the tour for this time wednesday. Fittingly in Verkstedhallen, the new venue at Svartlamon.
-It’s as home as we can come. We have played back yard concerts there, and a gig against demolishing Svartlamon, but that’s at least ten years ago.
-What are you going to play?
-Don’t know. We have 70 songs to choose from, and decide on the playlist an hour before we enter the stage.
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