Since I have no idea when the remaining 90% will be done, I’ve decided that it’s better to release this half-baked version than drag on with the mouldy version from 2006. After all it’s just a personal journal.

The main reason for the small amount completed is that a lot of the design decisions where based on functionality that didn’t work as well as anticipated. I got lost in time trying to work around a few of the issues encountered and those detours and road-bumps delayed the majority of the work. However, the detours where exciting and I learned a lot. So no spirit lost!

Functional stuff that hasn’t been done are:

• Joining up all my three nuzzaci domains (.com, .se, .co.uk).
• Implementing the disqus.com comment system.
• Building a script that include photos from my flickr.
• Building a script that aggregating my other online activities.
• Incorporating my portfolio.
• Making a iPhone friendly version
• Other small bits and pieces like the archive and tag page

Design challenges left:

• Update my portfolio.
• Enable richer post styling.
• Rework all the colours and the left-hand panel.
• Other small bits and pieces like the archive and tag page

Singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt died on the 25th of December 2009 after slipping into a coma brought on by a suicide attempt by taking an overdose of muscle relaxants on Wednesday December 23rd. He was 45 years-old.

My first encounter with Vic’s music was in ‘96 shortly after having read a review of the album ‘About to Choke’ in a music magazine. Within a year I owned all Vic’s previous albums: Is the Actor Happy?, Drunk, West Of Rome and Little, and have since then always purchased his new releases. About to Choke is one of my favourite albums of all time.

Vic is special. His lyrics takes a different angle and are, as he puts it, “loaded”. Words are really considered. In some way similar to the writing style of the short story writer Amy Hempel, who’s generally termed as a minimalist writer.

When Vic was 18 he was in a car accident that made him partly paralysed. The accident, he has said, focused him as a songwriter, and it became the subject of some of his earliest recordings.

Vic occupies a special place in my music interest, and that place I don’t think will be replaced by any other artist any day soon. I didn’t even know about the place until Vic popped up in ‘96.

I’ve had the pleasure to see him live in Stockholm. This was back in ‘98 when he was touring with Lambchop and Calexico, promoting the album ‘The Salesman and Bernadette’. That particular concert was in many ways a disappointment, mainly since I was unaware of the release of the new album and was expecting a concert full of ‘About to Choke’ material. But all in all it’s a concert that I will never forget.

He sings about suicide in “Flirted With You All My Life” [local copy] from his recent album “At the Cut.” As described by Vic, “its a song about breaking up with suicide”. Below are the lyrics, followed by some more Vic related links for the curious.

Rest in piece Vic Chesnutt and thanks for all the music.
It’s been a pleasure.

I am a man
I am self-aware
And everywhere I go
You’re always right there with me

I’ve flirted with you all my life
Even kissed you once or twice
And to this day I swear it was nice
But clearly I was not ready

When you touched a friend of mine
I thought I would lose my mind
But I found out with time that
really I was was not ready, no no

Oh, Death
Oh, Death
Oh, Death
Really, I’m not ready

Oh, Death you hector me
Decimate those dear to me
Tease me with your sweet release
You are cruel and you are constant

When my mom was cancer sick
She fought but then succumb to it
But you made her beg for it
Lord Jesus, please I’m ready.

Oh, Death
Oh, Death
Oh, Death
Really, I’m not ready

http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/vic/

This page is a tribute to Vic Chesnutt – here to accept donations on behalf of his family to defray the expenses associated with his recent hospitalizations and death.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vic+chesnutt

The search results on YouTube for Vic Chesnutt

http://www.google.com/search?q=vic+chesnutt

Search results on Google for Vic Chesnutt

http://www.last.fm/music/Vic+Chesnutt

Vic Chesnutt’s Last.fm page

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/arts/music/26chesnutt.html

A New York Times article on Vic Chesnutt

http://vicchesnutt.com/

Vic Chesnutt’s official website

Monsters of Folk is a super consisting of Jim James from My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes and M. Ward.

So the concert was a combination of Monsters of Folk, My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes and M Ward songs. I didn’t count, but the concert lasted for 3 hours, so somewhere around 30 songs where played.

Overall, the concert at Filadelfiakyrkan was a failure. Long queues to get in, delayed, uncomfortable seats, bad sound, at times questionable performances, often they all stood facing the drums instead of the audience and the concert was too long.

But. The concert had a few really really magic moments.
So I’m willing to forgive.

Jim James definitely stood out from the rest. His performance of “Look at You”, “Bermuda Highway”, and “Golden” was superb and those alone almost made the concert worth the trouble. Other hightlights was M Ward magic guitar shredding solo, Bright Eye’s “Soul Singer In A Session Band” and the Monsters of Folk songs “Whole Lotta Losin”, “Dear God”, “Say Yes” and “The right place”.

I tweeted a tweet during the concert (probably after Mr James shone):

At a Monsters of Folk concert. Truly inspiring. Makes me want to take a sabatical and just play guitar…

It’s not an idea that established during the concert. But the seed definitely get a healthy potion of water and sunlight.

Mick Jaggers letter to Andy Warhol in ‘69. Love it. (via Joakim Jansson)

I then took the query to YouTube to see if I could find a live performance of the acoustic version. I didn’t find it, but I found this:

Which is also good, but… maybe a bit stale? Kind of lacks any notion of energy. Or joy for that matter.

Then under the title ‘Related Videos’ I found this:

What a change! I was so pleasantly surprised to see a drummer in a robotic manner spending most of his performance trying to beat a hole in the snare drum! Love it. What a legend.

I did a bit of research, and it turns out that my new found hero is called Thomas Hedlund and is from the north of Sweden. Umeå to be more precise. He also plays in The Perishers, Cult Of Luna, Deportees and Khoma. If i’m not mistaken, an acquaintance whom I played with while living in Skellefteå, Peter Melender, is also the drummer of Khoma.

It’s a small world. And it seems like the north part of it rocks it harder than the south ;)

Great. Wonderful. Remarkable. Really nice. Really well. Really nice. Really easy. Better and better and better. Smarter and smarter and smarter. Better and better and better. Really nice. Really great. Easier. Great. Great. Great. Awesome. Really nice. Really wonderful. Really fast. It’s wonderful. Really cool. Really nice. Very nice. Amazingly. Awesome. Great. Really outstanding. Jeff. Really easy. Really easy. Really easy. It’s that easy. It’s that easy. Really easy. Easily. It’s really easy. Just as easy. Really great. Fantastic. Amazing. Priceless. So beautiful. Really nice. Thanks Jeff. Phil. Absolutely incredible. Incredible. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Incredible. Beautiful. Great. Remarkable. Amazing. Great. Beautiful. Great. Amazing. Amazing. Great. Beautiful. Incredible. Great. Incredible. Great. Great. Just incredible. Great. Great. Great. Great. Really cool. Great. Great. Great. Great. Really cool. Great. Great. Great. Beautiful. Incredible. It’s amazing. Incredible. Incredible. Absolutely incredible . Amazing. Amazing. Just amazing. Really great. Amazing. Incredible. Just incredible. Amazing. Great. Great. Unbelievable. Amazing. Incredible. Incredible. Incredible. Amazing. Incredible. Incredible. Amazing. Incredible. Aright, next. Amazing. Great. Easy. Easy. Easy. Useful. Absolutely gorgeous. Back to Steve. So. Incredible. Incredible. Great. Amazing. Incredible. Great. Great. Great. Great. Beautiful. Awesome. Beautiful. Stunning. Great. Cool. Great. Incredible. Great.

That’s what we have for you today.
Thanks for coming, and we’ll see you soon.

Last weekend we had the pleasure of getting a visit from Matthew, Ali and Daisy Grey. I got introduced to Matthew (aka Tig) via Simon Waterfall 5 years ago as they were starting up their fashion label Social Suicide; lovely suits done by lovely people. The Greys came over with a campervan with the intention of driving around Scandinavia for 2 weeks.

The same weekend as they were here we bought a new car. A red Fiat Bravo 1.9 JTD from ‘07. So when we sat down looking at where Tig, Ali and Daisy were to go next, we kind of got coerced into following along.

Unfortunately Willow already had other engagements, and I was planing to fly down to Italy the following weekend. But as the days passed I just felt so reluctant to once again take the buss to the airport and once again fly (would be something like the 15th flight in the last couple of months), so, as the weekend grew closer, we decided to throw the tent and sleeping bag in the back of the car and catch up with the Grey family in Norway! We left Thursday at 7pm and passed the border before midnight the same day.

Above is a screen grab of the route we ended up driving. see map here, or here: http://bit.ly/16O74u.

The car was a pleasure to drive, so we covered the first stint with ease and met up with the Greys in Åndalsnes already for lunch on Friday. Besides the Greys, I also ran into a few distant relatives to me, Mr and Mrs Troll.

The day after, we drove Trollstigen together. Trollstigen is not far of being a car version of the Milford Sound Track in New Zealand.

After Trollstigen Willow and I left the Greys to continue south while we headed north to do the Atlantic Road before dropping on our way to meet up with our friend Maria Berge in Trondheim.

All in all. Lovely to meet up with the Tig, Ali and Daisy. I loved to drive the new car. We enjoyed being after the late season, and we will definitely visit Norway again very soon to do some walking.

And, next time the Greys are here on a visit, we decided to spend a few days kayaking around the Stockholm archipelago.

Willow was in charge of the camera, so befriend her on flickr to be notified of when more photos are available.

So, for now, the outdoor furniture has moved in with us, too.

Mark & Wendy

Mark and Wendy are Willow’s childhood friends. I had never meet them before the wedding, and Willow hadn’t seen them for 7 years. The story goes that Mark, Wendy and Willow used to hang out all the time. And, eventually a sparkle sparked between Mark and Wendy and the rest is history! Their wedding was in a castle in Otterburn south of Edinburgh, UK.

Adam & Jen

Adam is Willow’s older brother. He lives in San Francisco and his father (not same as Willow) lives on Maui Hawaii. So this wedding was held in a -12 hours timezone and required 3 flights going and 3 flights coming back. But it was worth it. I think the only thing missing to tick all boxes on this wedding was to add slow motion to the waves hitting the stones behind them as they were getting married.

Marcus & Elin

A unique location on a peninsula in a nature reserve in the north of Sweden. The wedding followed a eco theme where everything could be recycled. Dinner tables on the beach with sand between your toes followed by dancing under a clear sky and full moon. No. It wasn’t a movie.

Tobias & Åsa

Tobias is one of my oldest friends. He has always had the ability to put me in positions where I’m outside of my comfort zone. His wedding was no different. They asked me to sing Today by Joshua Radin for them in church. Like most times, it went well and I’m glad he asked and that I forced myself to do it. And it was a perfect ending to the 09′ wedding-athon.