Mecki Mark Men

Mecki Mark Men
Origin Stockholm, Sweden
Genres prog rock, psychedelic rock, jazz-rock, progg, rock opera
Years active 1967–1979; 2000; 2007; 2010
Labels
Associated acts
Past members
  • Mecki Bodemark
  • Hans Nordstrom
  • Anders Sjostedt
  • Claes Swanberg
  • Jan-Eric Olsson
  • Björn Fredholm
  • Thomas Gartz
  • Kenny Håkansson
  • Bella Linnarsson
  • Pelle Ekman
  • Bosse Svensson
  • Staffan Linros
  • Peter Sahlin
  • Janne Kullhammar
  • Henry Uilli
  • Tommy Koverhult
  • Anders Nilsson
  • Tarja Omhav
  • Daniel Wigstranol
  • Peter Sahlin
  • Johan Sjokvist

Mecki Mark Men (MMM for short) were a Swedish progressive rock band fronted by keyboardist Claes "Mecki" Bodemark.[1] The group originally formed as a dansband in the mid-1960s, then called Mecki Mark Five, before adopting elements of psychedelic rock, jazz, and experimental music.[2] A breakthrough performance at Stockholm's Experimental Jazz Festival in July 1967 helped establish the group, placing them at the forefront of Swedish psychedelic rock and its fledgling progg subgenre.[3]

History

Origins

Claes Bodemark acquired his first Hammond L-100 at age 17 and worked as a studio organist for a Stockholm television station in the early 1960s.[4][5] By the mid-1960s he was known as "Mecki," a name ironically shared both with a German word for "crew cut,"[6] and less ironically with an impudent, bristle-haired, vest-wearing hedgehog character[7] who was often given to smoking opium in children's comic books[8] and had appeared in stop motion puppet films shown to troops during World War II.[9]

In the early 1960s Bodemark played in Stockholm groups The Adventurers[10] and Nilla and the Blackbird, and a popular Finnish group called Savages.[5] In 1966 he appeared on two singles by Örjan Englund's pop group Vat 66[11] before devoting himself as bandleader on his own Mecki Mark Five, which would become the more alliterative Mecki Mark Men.[2] Shortened from Bodemark's surname, the word "Mark" connotes "borderlands" in Swedish and other old Germanic languages, thus giving "Mecki Mark Men" the meaning "Mecki's men who come from the outskirts."[12]

First lineup: 1967–early 1968

Mecki Mark Men's original 1967 lineup was a septet of two horns (Hans Nordström on tenor sax and flute, and Anders Sjostedt on trumpet), two guitars (Claes Svanberg on six-string electric and Jan-Eric Olsson on bass), two drummers (Björn Fredholm and Thomas Mera Gartz, the latter of whom also played vibraphone, bamboo flute, tenor saxophone, and sitar), and Mecki Bodemark on Hammond organ, vibraphone, flute and vocals.[13] The group was one of the first big psych-rock bands in Sweden. MMM, along with the improvisational rock trio Baby Grandmothers,[14] served as the house band at Stockholm's famous Filips club run by Janne Carlsson of the instrumental music duo Hansson & Karlsson.[15] MMM entered the studio in September 1967 to record their first single, "Midnight Land" b/w "Got Together," after which Sjostedt and Olsson left the group. The following month Mecki Mark Men's residual five members went into Stockholm's Philips Studios to create their eponymous debut album. A U.K. tour and an appearance on the BBC television program Popside soon followed.[3]

By late 1967 the band shrank down to the quartet of Bodemark, Nordstrom, Svanberg and Gartz for a tour of Finland with the Baby Grandmothers and Finnish singer Anki Lindqvist.[5] In January 1968 Mecki Mark Men and Baby Grandmothers opened for the Jimi Hendrix Experience for the Swedish leg of Hendrix's European tour.[16] Hendrix had become acquainted with MMM on previous visits to Klubb Filips and he was regularly performing his own version of the Hansson and Karlsson's tune "Tax Free."[17]Jimi Hendrix had begun his time on this Swedish tour by smashing a plate glass hotel window, thus performing shorter sets with a bandaged right forearm.[18] Before returning to London to resume the recording of Electric Ladyland, Hendrix had regularly jammed with the Mecki Mark Men when their bands were warming up for their gigs.[19] That year Mecki Mark Men also opened for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at Stockholm's Concert House.[2] Because of Mecki Bodemark's Jimi-soundalike vocal style[20] and his band's heavy, unpredictable and esoteric music, MMM often drew comparisons to both Hendrix and Zappa, even from those unaware of the artists' various associations.[21][22]

The group soon split up, with some members going on to found other Swedish bands. Gartz, who had been MMM's secondary songwriter,[20] formed the quintet Pärson Sound, a project that originally came together to perform Terry Riley's composition, "In C.".[23][13] Pärson Sound soon rebranded themselves as International Harvester, and then as Harvester, before settling on the name Träd, Gräs & Stenar ("Trees, Grass and Stones"), who became a staple of Swedish progg music in the early 1970s.[24]

Second lineup: late 1968–1971

1968 marked a big shift in Swedish youth culture as political protests erupted all over Europe.[25] Demonstrations against the Viet Nam War had started in Sweden the previous year, and future prime minister Olof Palme marched against it in his capacity as Minister of Education.[26] Many Swedes were also involved in campaigns in support of the environment[27] or against apartheid.[28] On May 3 activists protested the participation of apartheid nations Rhodesia and South Africa in the international tennis competition held in Båstad. resulting in a violent clash between Swedish police and demonstrators.[29] A calmer protest at Stockholm University led students to occupy their Student Union Building at Holländargatan for four days.[30] Amidst all this Mecki Bodemark landed a role in a mainstream reflection of activist and hippie counterculture when he, protest singer Hawkey Franzén, and the three members of Baby Grandmothers were musicians and cast members in Hår, the Swedish version of the popular musical Hair.[31] The musical ran at Stockholm's Scalateatern from September 1968 through April 1969, playing a total of 155 shows, and the cast recorded a Swedish language version of the soundtrack with Bodemark and the others as the backing band.[32]

During Hår's Christmas break, Bodemark and the Baby Grandmothers toured to Prague with Finnish singer Anki Lindqvist and avant garde musician M.A. Numminen.[33] They arrived to a city still occupied by Soviet tanks from the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that had followed the Prague Spring. The band played several clubs backing Lindqvist and then playing selected songs from Hair mixed with experimental music. Their last gig in Prague was a huge concert to some 10,000 people, ending with a sing-along to "Let the Sunshine In." Before returning to Sweden, the band made appearances on Czechoslovakian radio and TV as a follow-up to their concert success.[34]

Meanwhile, MMM's first album had been issued in 40 countries, including an American edition released in the summer of 1968 by Mercury Records' imprint Limelight Records.[10][35] Earlier in the decade Limelight had been managed by Quincy Jones, who booked luminary jazz artists like Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Milt Jackson, Gerry Mulligan, and Oscar Peterson.[36] To keep up with the rapid shifts in the counterculture of the 1960s, Limelight's aesthetic and catalogue also shifted, expanding beyond its repertoire of hard bop and cool jazz to include Indian classical music and many European electronic and new msuic composers, like Dutch experimentalists Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan, France's Pierre Henry and Les Percussions de Strasbourg, and Sweden's own Bengt Hambraeus.[37] Mecki Mark Men, who sang in English about politically relevant topics such as the war in Vietnam, became the label's sole rock act.[38]

Limelight's remixed and repackaged U.S. release of Mecki Mark Men did reasonably well for an unknown European group, selling 20,000 copies stateside.[14] After seeing a performance of Hår, a Mercury A&R representative expressed interest in releasing a second Mecki Mark Men album for Limelight.[38] Upon finishing their seven-month run with Hår, Bodemark asked the Baby Grandmothers to become his new Mecki Mark Men, and the re-dubbed quartet returned for another tour of Finland.[39][40] This less jazzy-sounding band of Kenny Håkansson on guitar, Bengt Linnarsson (a.k.a. Bella Fehrlin) on bass, and Pelle Ekman on drums backed Bodemark for MMM's sophomore release, Running in the Summer Night.[3] Recorded over the course of a few days in early 1969, the album mixes Bodemark's songs with material previously composed by the Baby Grandmothers. Critics have hailed the album, some citing it as an early work of proto-heavy metal, predating Black Sabbath's debut by one year.[31]

Mecki Mark Men made a promotional film for the songs "Running In The Summer Night" and "Being Is More Than Life," which aired on the Swedish TV program Kram: Tema Att Lyssna in May 1969.[41] By the fall of 1969, the band's popularity in their home country garnered them numerous TV appearances, a U.K. tour, and a collaboration with the Royal Swedish Opera on Lars Johan Werle's opera Resan ("Journey"). Rasan's libretto by Lars Runsten depicted a suburban woman's everyday life in contrast with the fantastic world of her childhood friend, reflecting the rifts between post-war European society and the burgeoning counterculture seeping in from America and Britain.[42] In the program notes, Werle wrote that Resan was "An opera about people of today; about the children of the welfare state; our lack of contact with one another; our loneliness and blindness and pretensions. It also depicts the difficulties we experience in visualizing existence—our own and others."[43] For the performance, the Mecki Mark Men and various orchestral soloists were situated in illuminated cubes and fit into a larger program of classical music.[31] In 1970 Mecki Mark Men also performed the opera with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.[42]

In 1970 Mecki Mark Men were heralded as the first Swedish rock band to embark on a tour the U.S.[44] For three months they made the city of Chicago their home base,[45] from which they travelled to various other cities to play festivals with Sly and the Family Stone, Jethro Tull, Pentangle, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Paul Butterfield, and The Byrds.[39] The tour ended in disarray, as the band had overstayed their visas and racked up a considerable debt. The group's manager bailed them out financially by picking up the band's tab and arranging for the recording of their third album, Marathon, at Chess Studios in Chicago.[46] Their manager also convinced Finnair to fly the band home on credit.[31] The group had hoped that their U.S. tour would help bolster sales and maintain their record deals with Limelight and Phillips, but it didn't, and both labels dropped the group.[39] Marathon was released by the Swedish label Sonet, which had also issued the soundtrack to Hår, and the royalties from this third Mecki Mark Men album were used to reimburse the Mecki Mark Men's manager.[2] Ironically, Marathon's Lead track bears the title, "I've Got No Money."[5]

In 1971 Mecki Mark Men returned for a second collaboration with pianist Lars Johan Werle and a handful of other musicians on Werle's ballet Stonehorse, which was recorded but went unreleased for nearly 40 years.[46] Also in 1971, MMM appeared in Ingvar Kjellson's documentary about Werle, En Saga om Sinnen ("A Tale of the Senses").[47] The group's second lineup soon dissolved, with all but Mecki Bodemark going on to play in the folk rock progg group Kebnekajse.[3]

Mecki Mark and third lineup: 1972–1980

In 1972 the Swedish Jukebox label released the first three songs from Marathon on a split 7" EP with the British band Shakane, the last record to be released by MMM for several years.[5] Bodemark teamed up with members of the Swedish band Red White & Blues under the name "Mecki Mark" (dropping "men" from their moniker) but that collaboration proved short-lived.[10] Both Linnarsson and Bodemark returned as collaborators in a theatrical production based on Dante's Divine Comedy.[45] This was then adapted into the 1975 film Skärseld (Purgatory) with Bodemark playing the role of Casella[48] and featuring music by Pink Floyd.[49]

In 1974 original trumpeter Anders Sjöstedt returned to work with Bodemark in Mecki Mark Men, and by the time their 1979 soft rock, smooth jazz, and soul-inspired album Flying High was recorded, Bosse Svensson had joined on tenor saxophone, Staffan Linros was on guitar, Peter Sahlin played bass, and Janne Kullhammar manned the drum kit. Around the release of Flying High, the group played concerts in protest of nuclear power.[50] A video for the song "Fly High" was released in conjunction with the album before this third iteration of the band dissolved in 1980.[39]

Reissues and reunions

Between 2004 and 2008 Universal Music reissued Mecki Mark Men's first three albums on compact disc. Universal included MMM's first single and two instrumental versions of songs with the first album, and added U.S. mixes of two songs as bonus tracks to the Swedish mix of the second album. In 2007 Bodemark and his wife, Tarja Omhav, reformed a new band under the Mecki Mark Men name. The group of Henry Uilli on guitar, Peter Sahlin on bass, Tommy Koverhult on sax, Anders Nilsson on trumpet, Daniel Wigstranol on pedal steel and Johan Sjokvist on drums joined Bodemark and Omhav in the studio to record the band's fifth album, Livingroom.[51] This lineup also took part in a day-long boat concert on the Baltic Sea between Stockholm, Sweden and Turku, Finland.[52] Mecki Mark Men reformed again in 2010 to support the release of Stonehorse.[18]

In 2015 the French Record label Lumpy Gravy re-reissued MMM's first three albums on CD, keeping Universal's four bonus tracks for Mecki Mark Men, including five alternate versions of songs on Running in the Summer Night, and adding six live tracks to the release of Marathon. In 2016 much of the original 1968 cast of Hår reunited to reenact the musical in Stockholm, but no members of the Mecki Mark Men performed.[53]

Discography

Group lineups on each release indicated as follows:

a First lineup (seven members)[13]
a- First lineup, minus two members[3]
b Second lineup (four members)[3]
b+ Second lineup with additional musicians[32][46]
c 1979 lineup (six members)[39]
d 2007 lineup (eight members)[51]

Albums

Singles

Extended plays

Compact disc reissues

References

  1. ↑ Björnberg, Alf; Bossius, Thomas (2016). Made in Sweden: Studies in Popular Music. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-85857-6.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Hibou, Lise. "Mecki Mark Men". Prog Archives. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Mecki Mark Men – Artist Directory | TeamRock". TeamRock. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  4. ↑ Alm, Per-Olof (2013). "Emile Ford på Grönan" (Photograph). Roger Lindqvist. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Carsten, Busch (2010). File Under Jurassic Rock: An Encyclopedic Guide to Progressive Rock and Related Musics – Mb-Mn.
  6. ↑ Kutch, Lynn M. (2016). Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4985-2623-4.
  7. ↑ Madocks, Rod (2013). No Way to Say Goodbye. Five Leaves. ISBN 978-1-907869-91-4.
  8. ↑ Rätsch, Christian (2005). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. ISBN 978-1-59477-662-5.
  9. ↑ Giesen, Rolf; Storm, J.P. (2012). "6. Starevich, Mecki the Hedgehog, the Diehl Brothers and Jürgen Chausen, the German "Pal"". Animation Under the Swastika a History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Publishers. pp. 28–41. ISBN 978-0-7864-8969-5.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Petterson, Tobias. "Mecki Mark Men". The Encyclopedia of Swedish Progressive Music 1967–1979: From Psychedelic Experiments to Political Propaganda. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  11. ↑ Måhlberg, Yngve. "VAT 66 - The Birds In The Sky". Musikon. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  12. ↑ Stroud, Kevin. "Episodes | The History of English Podcast". historyofenglishpodcast.com. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  13. 1 2 3 Bluhm, Erik (25 July 2012). "Thomas Mera Gartz 1944–2012 | UglyThings Magazine". Ugly Things. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  14. 1 2 Gartz, Thomas Mera. "The Bands". Comhem. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  15. ↑ "Hansson & Karlsson | Music Videos, News, Photos, Tour Dates | MTV". MTV Artists. Music Television. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  16. ↑ Shapiro, Harry; Glebbeek, Caesar (1995). Jimi Hendrix, electric gypsy ([1st St. Martin's Griffin ed.]. ed.). New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-312-13062-6.
  17. ↑ Bershaw, Alan (March 2012). "Jimi Hendrix Experience - Tax Free". Paste Magazine. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  18. 1 2 "Mecki Mark Men + special support av GUDIBRALLAN". Kulturdirekt (in Swedish). 23 February 2010. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  19. ↑ McDermott, John; Kramer, Eddie; Cox, Billy (2009). Ultimate Hendrix: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Live Concerts and Sessions. Milwaukee, Wis.: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-0-87930-938-1.
  20. 1 2 3 "Mecki Mark Men - Mecki Mark Men + 4 bonustracks". Nu Musi. 2015. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  21. ↑ Trane, Sean (6 February 2009). "Mecki Mark Men – Mecki Mark Men". Prog Archives. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  22. ↑ Segel, Jonathan (28 January 2013). "From The Desk Of Camper Van Beethoven's Jonathan Segel: Swedish "Progg," Then And Now". Magnet Magazine. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  23. ↑ "Thomas Mera Gartz RIP – The Wire". The Wire Magazine – Adventures In Modern Music. 5 August 2012. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  24. ↑ Weir, Jim (January 2008). "Once upon a time in ... Sweden". WIRE (287). Retrieved 8 April 2016.
  25. ↑ O'Hagan, Sean. "Everyone to the Barricades." The Observer. January 2008. . Retrieved 02-2008.
  26. ↑ Rothschild, Nathalie (30 April 2015). "Anti-Vietnam war protestor remembers leaving USA for Sweden". Radio Sweden. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  27. ↑ Rootes, Christopher (2008). 1968 and the Environmental Movement in Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  28. ↑ Törnkvist, Ana (6 December 2013). "Sweden and Mandela's anti-apartheid struggle". The Local. Retrieved 10 February 2017. Popular resistance started instead on the ground, finding voices in Sweden's student movements in the late 1960s. As apartheid resistance started spreading worldwide, groups in Sweden began boycotting South African produce. Students refused to eat oranges imported from South Africa, carrying placards urging others not to buy fruit from the country because "it tastes of blood".
  29. ↑ Wijk, Johnny (2009-03-07). "Idrotten tjänar på de politiska aktionerna". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 2012-06-26.
  30. ↑ Claes Fredelius: Kårhusockupationen. From the book Det är rätt att göra uppror – Om klasskampen i Sverige. Stockholm 1970, Bonniers.
  31. 1 2 3 4 Müller-Hansen, Niclas (9 July 2015). "Stockholms Hårdrock Historia: Del 1 (1967–1972) –". Rocksverige. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  32. 1 2 3 Naervik, Per. "Hår – musikalen (Hair)" (Poster). Affischerna 1967–1979 (in Swedish). Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  33. ↑ "Biografi". Baby Grandmothers. 2011. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  34. ↑ Linnarsson, Bengt. "Baby Grandmothers". WE2L. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  35. ↑ Genberg, Kjell (22 June 1968). "International New Reports: Stockholm". Billboard. p. 42.
  36. ↑ Kernfeld, Barry (2002). Kernfeld, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. 2 (2nd ed.). New York: Grove's Dictionaries Inc. p. 610. ISBN 1-56159-284-6.
  37. ↑ "Jazz and Merc; Partners from the Start". Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 27 May 1972.
  38. 1 2 Wesslén, Gunnar (21 January 2016). ""70 är bara en siffra"". ETC (in Swedish). Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  39. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Mecki Mark Men – Biografi". Progg. 31 December 2007. Archived from the original on 31 December 2007. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  40. ↑ Breznikar, Klemen (May 2011). "Kenny Håkansson Interview about Kebnekajse, Baby Grandmothers and Mecki Mark Men". It's Psychedelic Baby. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  41. ↑ "Mecki Mark Men invokes the belief of an entirety". Swedish Beat & Psych. 24 January 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  42. 1 2 "Mecki Mark Men och Norrköpings Symfoniorkester | Affischerna 1967–1979" (Poster). Affischerna (in Swedish). 1970. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  43. ↑ Werle, Lars Johan (1969). "Resan (The Journey)". Music Sales Classical. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  44. ↑ Penczak, Jeff (March 2007). "Terrascope Online Reviews". Ptolemaic Terrascope. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  45. 1 2 Bengt, Bengt. "History (English)". We Tool. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  46. 1 2 3 4 "Lars Johan Werle and Mecki Mark Men: Stonehorse". Clear Spot. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  47. 1 2 3 "Mecki Mark Men". Swedish Beat & Psych. 2 December 2011. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  48. ↑ "Skärseld (1975)". Swedish Film Database (in Swedish). Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  49. ↑ "SKÄRSELDAN (1975)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 18 February 2017.
  50. ↑ Berg, Olle (1979). "Rock Mot Atomkraft | Affischerna 1967–1979" (Poster). Affischerna (in Swedish).
  51. 1 2 3 "Mecki Mark Men – Livingroom (2007)". Progarchives. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  52. ↑ "Hello Everybody!". Mellotronen. 2007. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  53. ↑ Milveden, Tessan (10 January 2016). "HÅR!!! Hippie-Yippie- Musikalen Hair på Engelen!". tessanmilveden.se. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  54. ↑ "Running In The Summer Night". Prog Aarchives. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  55. ↑ "Mecki Mark Men - Marathon + 6 bonustracks". Nu Musi. 2015. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
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