Let Mr Ad read it for you: 
It all started as a crazy idea down in Henrik's room in the basement
of the family Schildt’s house . We (Henrik and Michael) must have spent
a hundred nights, drinking his dreadful home brewed wine, discussing the
eternal dream of having a band of our own. Henrik was kind enough to share
his somewhat limited skills on the Guitar with me, and coincidentally one
night his sister's boyfriend, Peter, showed up and claimed that he had
always wanted to play the Bass guitar in a band. Even though we considered
him a bit old for the mission, we were happy that we now only were short
of a drummer. A phone call later I had managed to convince a previous classmate,
Lasse, to procure a brand new drum set, and believe it or not - we had
a band.
This was 1980 and Henrik and I struggled with our Electronics Engineering degree. Lucky as we were, we had a weird guy in our class, Bosse Sound. We managed to convince Bosse Sound to build a combined guitar and vocal amplifier, all in the spirit of saving money. We were also lucky to find a suitable rehearsal area in the basement in our school, Berzelius-skolan. The first period was pretty tough. We certainly loved it - but the way we sounded and played really sucked. We tried very hard to make it sound Punk Rock but due lack of skills we never gained any control over the music. It simply took a direction of it's own. Surprisingly, we were offered a first gig at the very prestigious venue -The Cave-. I believe Bosse actually hooked us up for it. The promoter, Rock D’amour, of course wanted to know what name to print on the posters - Bosse Sound kindly replied "Pappa Rune Band". We really hated the name, but the posters were already printed. Ok - time for the first Gig. We were really nervous. Someone cracked a bright idea. Let's get real drunk; - "we need that in order to relax a play better". Bad idea - we totally fucked up our first gig. It was really a nightmare and I remember that I didn't want to go down town for several weeks afterwards.
After a few additional gigs we decide to re-group. Pierre on drums and Stefan on Keyboards had left Ramblers and joined us on a trial basis. Now things happened very quickly. Our music took a new direction. Although the majority of the local music scene hated synthesizers we felt that it was really cool. We re-named the band to "Andra Sidan" for the first gig and this time we stayed off the booze. The result was really good. We were so encouraged by the outcome that we immediately requested B-Sound to schedule a recording session with his mobile recording studio. The first Andra Sidan demo was recorded by B-sound on his two 2-track Revox machines in the family Schildt’s house during a weekend. When we were listening to the final mix and we were so impressed over the result that we could simply not believe that we actually were playing. Now this was for real! The enthusiasm died approximately five minutes later when Bosse showed up with the first reviews of the demo. Jan Gradvall and Sven Dolling from the local, but at time well established in the country, fanzine had given us the verdict. They claimed that it was too commercial oriented and they both felt that we probably would get a contract with one of the major record companies if we wanted, and of course - they hated the synthesizer. Remember now that this was during a period when, if you had a potential of making money on your music, you were considered to have reached the ultimate stage of failure!!
We recorded an additional four sessions with Bosse Sound in his permanent
8-track Fostex studio and they were all very important steps in the development of our
music. It was a fantastic opportunity for us to be able to record new songs
in an affordable and relaxed atmosphere. B-sound used to charge us a daily
rate, and I believe that we probably were the band that managed to get
the best mileage out of him. I especially remember one session that continued
over 24 hours without a break. When the end of the B-sound studio was a
fact, we finally decided to finance a recording in a 16-track studio. This
resulted in the release of "En gruva av guld" (-87) which was followed
by the single "Bränner mig" (-88), released on the label Non-Stop
records. In total, we have been through close to ten different line-ups
in the band and approximately 60 gigs over the years. And last but not
least, we've met a lot of interesting people, and had a lot of fun and
crazy moments!!
The true story written April 8, 2002 by
Michael Andersson
