Oh the good old times... Part 2: Me and Rednex.
Hi everyone!
The 28th of August is a special anniversary for me. Thank god I wrote down the date 10 years ago, cause otherwise I could just do pure guessing. I write it today cause I´ll be barbequeing tommorow and hence won´t have time to post it, than. This is the day where I met up some guy in Brussels.
Last time I told you about my childhood and my best friend. And how she learned to hate my Rednex-Cd forever and ever. ;-) Now I´ll tell you how I met some of the nicest people ever, how things came true I didn´t even dream about in my wildest dreams. People wonder how you can actually be a Retro Pin up Girl and former fan of a country-techno group at once. I think this entry will explain a few things...
I was 13 years old and as if beeing a teenager is not confusing enough I was stuck in a new class full of bullies that happily jumped on every chance. Beeing not really the most out-going person anyway it was no wonder that I basically did my best to escape. It was nothing but hell. You can tell I badly needed a cheer up.
It came pronto in the fall of 94 in a unusual form though. It was back than that I heard the song "Cotton Eye Joe" by Rednex in Radio and loved it. Unfortunetly I had reacted to slow so all I managed to record on tape was about 40 seconds of the end. And I didn´t knew who actually sang that. or how it was called. It was frustrating. And it took weeks till the real craze with charts and everything began. I had actually SEEN Rednex in a newspaper by that time thinking "What the hell is THAT?". So it came as a surprise when I found out those are the guys that perform the song I like so much. Soon I found myself looking through magazines to find out more about them and re-reading what was written about them. To my surprise I found myself a fan of someone for the first time of my life.
Why does someone like such a band as Rednex? As you can tell by now I have a faible for the different. Let´s face it. I´m a pin up girl. That´s not exactly mainstream. Why go for the thing that everything loves? I love the underdogs. I love the freaks and i believe it is the losers in the world that will suceed in the end. That said it was the unusual in Rednex that caught me in.
Note: You see that red-haired guy banging the drum? He takes over a important role later in this blog.
So I started to trade with Fids. She was a fan of Take That and later on the Backstreet Boys so there was plenty of stuff from my magazines that I could give her and she kept her eyes open for Rednex-stuff for me. Soon I had a biiiig folder and the album. And all singles. And posters on my wall. My biggest wish was to actually go to a concert, but there was no possibility at this point. However I went for second best: Trying to find other fans! I suceeded, though most of them lived far away so we became penpals. Such as with my friends Anni and Benji. We are still in contact and occassionally meet. There was also a girl in my area actually and so we decided to start a Fanclub - unfortunetly just at the point at which Rednex stopped to perform altogether. It seemed we were fighting a lost cause.
Their record-company was less than supportive. We had to write to them with an back-envelope for 5 times in order to get at least a autograph-card and I even called them once to complain about it which finally resulted in me getting a few that I shared with my penpals. This just took one year. *lol*
After this we got an idea so simple it was genius. We´d just go and write to Rednex ourselves. As hardcore-fans we off course knew their real names already and that they lived somewhere in or around Stockholm. We didn´t have an adress, so we just wrote their real name on the envelope, that they are from Rednex and that it is supposed to be in Stockholm/Sweden. We had no big hopes, but than someday I found a envelope from Sweden in my mailbox. It almost knocked me out when I opened it and recognized it was Mary Joe, their female singer, that had written a personal letter to me and sended me some promo-pics and a signed autograph-card. Shortly afterwards there also came a letter from BB, also in Rednex, including a card with his phone-number on it, also autographs frim his latest project. in the end almost all of them actually answered. it was BB and Mary Joe with that we had the most contact though.
After a while we suggested a interview and BB said "Yes, call me." We would have never dared to do so ourselves, so together we went to a telephone cell, put on my tape-maschine and called him. It was freaking awesome! He also suggested to me that I should get internet, cause than we could mail more often as this was easier than that he had to write a letter, go to the post-office and send it away. I begged to my Mom until she gave in. It was also BB that introduced me to the joys of ICQ which enabled us to chat regulary.
Meanwhile the other girl that I did the fanclub with left and I found myself alone. This was an advantage, though, as she had started to loose interest and was wayyyyyy behind with the latest fanclub-magazine. Also I wanted to include photos and hence had now the whole layout to play with. My friend anni meanwhile started a fanclub for Mary Joe which had by that time switched to her real name Annika. As a logical result we became guest-editors for each others magazines.
Anni and me share a lobster soup in 2002
It was still 1997/98 and we had tons of time at hand until there was something destined to happen. So we killed time throwing Rednex-Parties with other fanclub-members at our homes where we dressed up in Rednex-manner and partied. We spended tons of time driving to each other via weekend-tickets as we live like 300 kilometers apart or so. Those were drives up to 7-8 hours but as we were just a few hard-core fans we took every chance to meet up someone like-minded.
d
Anni and me meet Rednex in their hometown for a picnic (I think this was 2001 or so?)
It was about the end of 1998 when BB told me that "some guy named Ranis" would call me up tommorow to "talk to me about the Fanclub". Me and Anni had finally met BB in person while we were in Sweden for vacation and this finally seemed to have convinced him it would be a great idea that I do their fanclub officially when they do a comeback. So it wasn´t so surprising that someone would call me about that. I had no idea who that guy actually was though. I was a bit nervous, but nothing too bad. Had I known who that "Ranis-guy" is I probably would have stuttered even more.
What I knew was that there are basically 3 founders/producers behind Rednex. Pat Reiniz, Örjan Öberg and janne Ericsson. What I did NOT know was that meanwhile Pat Reiniz had switched his name to... Ranis. I also did not know really why he wanted my adress so badly, but I gave it to him off course. One week afterwards I found a cd with a demo of their comeback-single in my mailbox, one year before it got released, it did struck me like lightening who that guy actually was that I had talked to as he had included a card actually saying "Ranis (Pat Reiniz)". I was like "Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!" This also happened to be the red-haired guy from the Cotton Eye Joe video.
So there I was, standing there with the demo of the Rednex Comeback-Single in my hands realising to whom I had actually talked to earlier that week. Somehow I managed to put the cd into the player and absolutely loved it. Naturally I called up Anni to play it to her on the telephone and taped it. In other words: I was over the moon. Can you actually top this? I don´t know about you, but he sure could.
In the next Sweden-vacation Anni and me did not manage to meet Ranis as he wasn´t there, however he found a sleeping possibility for us - at his brothers place. And a few months later we finally met him in person. We drove to the studio in Brussels, all curious cause we had never been to a studio yet. We had never been at Brussels before so we were scared wether we´d actually find it. He told us at which subway-station that was and off we drove. We walked up and down the street. Nothing looked in the least the way we imagined a studio to look like. We searched by number and ended up in front of a house which had curtains with little comic-figures printed on it. We looked at each other in disbelief. It looked more like Kindergarten-curtains. We rang the door and the fact that it was not Ranis opening but some guy called Stefan Sörin confused us even more. But we were at the right place anyway and 1 or 2 hours later he indeed arrived.
Stefan Sörin, Ranis, Anni and me eat corn and take a look in our latest fanclub-magazine
As I had mentioned that me and Anni drank Batida de coco on one of our parties he suggested we drink some together, too. It SOUNDED like a good idea, but it wasn´t. It is enough to tell that I made a total fool out of me and didn´t touch any Batida de Coco or any larger amounts of drinks since this day.
A group hug with Mr. Sörin and a ugly photo of me, where I stand around with Ranis in front of ONE of his golden records. He actually has 20-30 more ones standing around all over his place.
There are more people that I have to give credit, too. I really have to mention Örjan, whom I originally only contacted cause I badly wanted to have the songtext to a bonus-track. Actually I was shying away from contacting someone that never expressed an interest to know me in the first place. But Stefan told me it´s ok, so I did. Not only did i get the songtext, but a remix-cd they never published. So my fears that he´d hate me for mailing him were sheer nonsense. Later on we regulary did hang out on the yahoo-messenger to chat every day :-D I met him in person only once which I consider a damn pitty. Today he´s my facebook-friend and responsible for me getting banned there for a day cause I posted too much while discussing conspiracies with him ;-) For reference: http://retromodelsari.livejournal.com/126145.html
I also really have to give credit to Göran, who is the original singer in Rednex, despite never performing with them. Once I asked him "Oh, and which other songs did you record before?". It resultet in him digging out all his old records and putting them on a tape for me. I can only asume how damn time-consuming that was. Not to mention that he bought me my first lobster. :-)
Me, Göran, Benji and Anni in the apartment of an pervert egyptian. We stayed at quiet some weird places during our Sweden-vacations. I mean come on... If someone has a huge vase formed like family jewels there is probably something wrong.
And to everyone else that was like "Oh, would you like to get some old Rednex demo songs? Here they are" *hands over cd*. Seriously: you guys spoiled me. It is my believe that some of the nicest people in the world just happened to work for Rednex. I mean, not everyone would put so much trust in a stranger and hands out a bunch of unreleased songs! Funny enough Tomas Hegert, on the photo below, was so nervous about meeting us that he called up Stefan and asked him what he should actually do with us. He did more than well :-)
Me, Tomas Hegert and Anni in the "Bakelite Studios".
I remember another Ranis episode where I was amazed by the huge amount of cds laying around at his place. "Oh that´s all old demos." He had to go away for a meeting and let me listen through the whole bunch so I could choose which was interesting enough for me to take along. He did not even check what I had chosen and just showed me how to rip and burn them on another Cd when he was back. I went back home with almost 40 new tracks, both unreleased songs and alternate versions.
Than came what every child fears. The divorce. And I mean this as a metaphore. Some day Daddy (Ranis) called me up and told me that he´ll divorce from Mom (Rednex) and gets himself a new wife (aka. total exchange of members). However Daddys new wife turned out to hate the child of his former marriage (ME). I mailed multiple times and tried to find out the reasons in order to solve the problems, but whatever I said and did was used against me. Hence I do not care about the new wife cause I did try my best to solve things and got ignored. Her loss, not mine. At least Dad still likes me and mom still likes me. And that is the most important thing. I still hope that some day Mommy and Daddy will love again or a more Sari-friendly wife will show up. I´ll stop with the slightly disturbing images now so you won´t think I´m totally nuts. Wait.... I assume you read my blog not for the first time, so who am I kidding? ;-)
Despite this part of the Rednex-world totally gone this didn´t stop me from hanging out with Ranis anyway who sort of sneaked away between soundchecks and concerts to see how I´m doing when he was around and it was nearby. And I´ll never forget how he showed up at a chatter-meeting-camping I was at. How many people can say they went camping with one of their favourite producers or that he drove all the way from Berlin to Düsseldorf to cheer me up when I had a horrible heartbreak when a friend of his broke up with me? The break up killed it all for me though. I was disappointed and gave it all a break for some years. I wasn´t even able to listen to a Rednex-track cause it just re-awoke bad memories. Now with enough distance to it all, they sometimes make it on my MP3 Player still when I get into my nostalgic moods. :-) And if it all hadn´t been killed I had not found the time to kick off my pin up career.
However now i look back to those good old times as the best ones of my life. The majority of people were nothing but wonderfull and sweet. And I shouldn´t let a few people spoil all the fun for me
Next week I´ll tell you how another red-head suddenly entered my life - cause than me and John will have our 4rth anniversary!
The 28th of August is a special anniversary for me. Thank god I wrote down the date 10 years ago, cause otherwise I could just do pure guessing. I write it today cause I´ll be barbequeing tommorow and hence won´t have time to post it, than. This is the day where I met up some guy in Brussels.
Last time I told you about my childhood and my best friend. And how she learned to hate my Rednex-Cd forever and ever. ;-) Now I´ll tell you how I met some of the nicest people ever, how things came true I didn´t even dream about in my wildest dreams. People wonder how you can actually be a Retro Pin up Girl and former fan of a country-techno group at once. I think this entry will explain a few things...
I was 13 years old and as if beeing a teenager is not confusing enough I was stuck in a new class full of bullies that happily jumped on every chance. Beeing not really the most out-going person anyway it was no wonder that I basically did my best to escape. It was nothing but hell. You can tell I badly needed a cheer up.
It came pronto in the fall of 94 in a unusual form though. It was back than that I heard the song "Cotton Eye Joe" by Rednex in Radio and loved it. Unfortunetly I had reacted to slow so all I managed to record on tape was about 40 seconds of the end. And I didn´t knew who actually sang that. or how it was called. It was frustrating. And it took weeks till the real craze with charts and everything began. I had actually SEEN Rednex in a newspaper by that time thinking "What the hell is THAT?". So it came as a surprise when I found out those are the guys that perform the song I like so much. Soon I found myself looking through magazines to find out more about them and re-reading what was written about them. To my surprise I found myself a fan of someone for the first time of my life.
Why does someone like such a band as Rednex? As you can tell by now I have a faible for the different. Let´s face it. I´m a pin up girl. That´s not exactly mainstream. Why go for the thing that everything loves? I love the underdogs. I love the freaks and i believe it is the losers in the world that will suceed in the end. That said it was the unusual in Rednex that caught me in.
Note: You see that red-haired guy banging the drum? He takes over a important role later in this blog.
So I started to trade with Fids. She was a fan of Take That and later on the Backstreet Boys so there was plenty of stuff from my magazines that I could give her and she kept her eyes open for Rednex-stuff for me. Soon I had a biiiig folder and the album. And all singles. And posters on my wall. My biggest wish was to actually go to a concert, but there was no possibility at this point. However I went for second best: Trying to find other fans! I suceeded, though most of them lived far away so we became penpals. Such as with my friends Anni and Benji. We are still in contact and occassionally meet. There was also a girl in my area actually and so we decided to start a Fanclub - unfortunetly just at the point at which Rednex stopped to perform altogether. It seemed we were fighting a lost cause.
Their record-company was less than supportive. We had to write to them with an back-envelope for 5 times in order to get at least a autograph-card and I even called them once to complain about it which finally resulted in me getting a few that I shared with my penpals. This just took one year. *lol*
After this we got an idea so simple it was genius. We´d just go and write to Rednex ourselves. As hardcore-fans we off course knew their real names already and that they lived somewhere in or around Stockholm. We didn´t have an adress, so we just wrote their real name on the envelope, that they are from Rednex and that it is supposed to be in Stockholm/Sweden. We had no big hopes, but than someday I found a envelope from Sweden in my mailbox. It almost knocked me out when I opened it and recognized it was Mary Joe, their female singer, that had written a personal letter to me and sended me some promo-pics and a signed autograph-card. Shortly afterwards there also came a letter from BB, also in Rednex, including a card with his phone-number on it, also autographs frim his latest project. in the end almost all of them actually answered. it was BB and Mary Joe with that we had the most contact though.
After a while we suggested a interview and BB said "Yes, call me." We would have never dared to do so ourselves, so together we went to a telephone cell, put on my tape-maschine and called him. It was freaking awesome! He also suggested to me that I should get internet, cause than we could mail more often as this was easier than that he had to write a letter, go to the post-office and send it away. I begged to my Mom until she gave in. It was also BB that introduced me to the joys of ICQ which enabled us to chat regulary.
Meanwhile the other girl that I did the fanclub with left and I found myself alone. This was an advantage, though, as she had started to loose interest and was wayyyyyy behind with the latest fanclub-magazine. Also I wanted to include photos and hence had now the whole layout to play with. My friend anni meanwhile started a fanclub for Mary Joe which had by that time switched to her real name Annika. As a logical result we became guest-editors for each others magazines.
Anni and me share a lobster soup in 2002
It was still 1997/98 and we had tons of time at hand until there was something destined to happen. So we killed time throwing Rednex-Parties with other fanclub-members at our homes where we dressed up in Rednex-manner and partied. We spended tons of time driving to each other via weekend-tickets as we live like 300 kilometers apart or so. Those were drives up to 7-8 hours but as we were just a few hard-core fans we took every chance to meet up someone like-minded.
d
Anni and me meet Rednex in their hometown for a picnic (I think this was 2001 or so?)
It was about the end of 1998 when BB told me that "some guy named Ranis" would call me up tommorow to "talk to me about the Fanclub". Me and Anni had finally met BB in person while we were in Sweden for vacation and this finally seemed to have convinced him it would be a great idea that I do their fanclub officially when they do a comeback. So it wasn´t so surprising that someone would call me about that. I had no idea who that guy actually was though. I was a bit nervous, but nothing too bad. Had I known who that "Ranis-guy" is I probably would have stuttered even more.
What I knew was that there are basically 3 founders/producers behind Rednex. Pat Reiniz, Örjan Öberg and janne Ericsson. What I did NOT know was that meanwhile Pat Reiniz had switched his name to... Ranis. I also did not know really why he wanted my adress so badly, but I gave it to him off course. One week afterwards I found a cd with a demo of their comeback-single in my mailbox, one year before it got released, it did struck me like lightening who that guy actually was that I had talked to as he had included a card actually saying "Ranis (Pat Reiniz)". I was like "Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!" This also happened to be the red-haired guy from the Cotton Eye Joe video.
So there I was, standing there with the demo of the Rednex Comeback-Single in my hands realising to whom I had actually talked to earlier that week. Somehow I managed to put the cd into the player and absolutely loved it. Naturally I called up Anni to play it to her on the telephone and taped it. In other words: I was over the moon. Can you actually top this? I don´t know about you, but he sure could.
In the next Sweden-vacation Anni and me did not manage to meet Ranis as he wasn´t there, however he found a sleeping possibility for us - at his brothers place. And a few months later we finally met him in person. We drove to the studio in Brussels, all curious cause we had never been to a studio yet. We had never been at Brussels before so we were scared wether we´d actually find it. He told us at which subway-station that was and off we drove. We walked up and down the street. Nothing looked in the least the way we imagined a studio to look like. We searched by number and ended up in front of a house which had curtains with little comic-figures printed on it. We looked at each other in disbelief. It looked more like Kindergarten-curtains. We rang the door and the fact that it was not Ranis opening but some guy called Stefan Sörin confused us even more. But we were at the right place anyway and 1 or 2 hours later he indeed arrived.
Stefan Sörin, Ranis, Anni and me eat corn and take a look in our latest fanclub-magazine
As I had mentioned that me and Anni drank Batida de coco on one of our parties he suggested we drink some together, too. It SOUNDED like a good idea, but it wasn´t. It is enough to tell that I made a total fool out of me and didn´t touch any Batida de Coco or any larger amounts of drinks since this day.
A group hug with Mr. Sörin and a ugly photo of me, where I stand around with Ranis in front of ONE of his golden records. He actually has 20-30 more ones standing around all over his place.
There are more people that I have to give credit, too. I really have to mention Örjan, whom I originally only contacted cause I badly wanted to have the songtext to a bonus-track. Actually I was shying away from contacting someone that never expressed an interest to know me in the first place. But Stefan told me it´s ok, so I did. Not only did i get the songtext, but a remix-cd they never published. So my fears that he´d hate me for mailing him were sheer nonsense. Later on we regulary did hang out on the yahoo-messenger to chat every day :-D I met him in person only once which I consider a damn pitty. Today he´s my facebook-friend and responsible for me getting banned there for a day cause I posted too much while discussing conspiracies with him ;-) For reference: http://retromodelsari.livejournal.com/126145.html
I also really have to give credit to Göran, who is the original singer in Rednex, despite never performing with them. Once I asked him "Oh, and which other songs did you record before?". It resultet in him digging out all his old records and putting them on a tape for me. I can only asume how damn time-consuming that was. Not to mention that he bought me my first lobster. :-)
Me, Göran, Benji and Anni in the apartment of an pervert egyptian. We stayed at quiet some weird places during our Sweden-vacations. I mean come on... If someone has a huge vase formed like family jewels there is probably something wrong.
And to everyone else that was like "Oh, would you like to get some old Rednex demo songs? Here they are" *hands over cd*. Seriously: you guys spoiled me. It is my believe that some of the nicest people in the world just happened to work for Rednex. I mean, not everyone would put so much trust in a stranger and hands out a bunch of unreleased songs! Funny enough Tomas Hegert, on the photo below, was so nervous about meeting us that he called up Stefan and asked him what he should actually do with us. He did more than well :-)
Me, Tomas Hegert and Anni in the "Bakelite Studios".
I remember another Ranis episode where I was amazed by the huge amount of cds laying around at his place. "Oh that´s all old demos." He had to go away for a meeting and let me listen through the whole bunch so I could choose which was interesting enough for me to take along. He did not even check what I had chosen and just showed me how to rip and burn them on another Cd when he was back. I went back home with almost 40 new tracks, both unreleased songs and alternate versions.
Than came what every child fears. The divorce. And I mean this as a metaphore. Some day Daddy (Ranis) called me up and told me that he´ll divorce from Mom (Rednex) and gets himself a new wife (aka. total exchange of members). However Daddys new wife turned out to hate the child of his former marriage (ME). I mailed multiple times and tried to find out the reasons in order to solve the problems, but whatever I said and did was used against me. Hence I do not care about the new wife cause I did try my best to solve things and got ignored. Her loss, not mine. At least Dad still likes me and mom still likes me. And that is the most important thing. I still hope that some day Mommy and Daddy will love again or a more Sari-friendly wife will show up. I´ll stop with the slightly disturbing images now so you won´t think I´m totally nuts. Wait.... I assume you read my blog not for the first time, so who am I kidding? ;-)
Despite this part of the Rednex-world totally gone this didn´t stop me from hanging out with Ranis anyway who sort of sneaked away between soundchecks and concerts to see how I´m doing when he was around and it was nearby. And I´ll never forget how he showed up at a chatter-meeting-camping I was at. How many people can say they went camping with one of their favourite producers or that he drove all the way from Berlin to Düsseldorf to cheer me up when I had a horrible heartbreak when a friend of his broke up with me? The break up killed it all for me though. I was disappointed and gave it all a break for some years. I wasn´t even able to listen to a Rednex-track cause it just re-awoke bad memories. Now with enough distance to it all, they sometimes make it on my MP3 Player still when I get into my nostalgic moods. :-) And if it all hadn´t been killed I had not found the time to kick off my pin up career.
However now i look back to those good old times as the best ones of my life. The majority of people were nothing but wonderfull and sweet. And I shouldn´t let a few people spoil all the fun for me
Next week I´ll tell you how another red-head suddenly entered my life - cause than me and John will have our 4rth anniversary!