this used to be our playground

early sunday morning the 7th of sebtember, skuteviksbodene 13 burned to the ground.
leaving ungdomskulen and 40 other bergen based bands without rehearsal-rooms.
not only that but countless of instruments,gear and personal stuff were vaporised in
the intense flames.
fortunately no-one was hurt!
its a tragedy, but there is hope!
money is raised and people are helping each other!

hallo trutnov!

wedding thrashers

being a band with no restrictions as far as playing-ground goes, ungdomskulen performed their most leftfield gig to date, at a wedding.
we didnt play covers mind you, we let the groom pick from our hardhitting back catalogue of prog-punk jams.
it wasnt any wedding though, it was a really nice, sweet wedding, with hints of greek passion and poetic grandeur of past times.
we where a little nervous at our arrival(we were afraid that we´d ruin the whole wedding and everyone would hate us) but when we left we had been part of
limbo-dancing, dancer-in-the-ring and a bona fide moshpit(some wedding).
we were all alittle touched,tired, in love with life and red-cheeked, all according to protocol.

here we are now with the beautiful bride and groom, oda and leiv otto

u.s in stereogum

hey folks
we are featured in this weeks "quit your day-job" column on stereogum,
its a good fun interview,an mp3 and a mix that i made, so its really worth a look.
so go check it out!
i recommend it HIGHLY!


stereogum.com

hove audience

so i merged three pics that i took of the audience attending the ungdomskulen show at this years hove festival, and this is what you all look like.
really nice to see some ungdomskulen shirts here and there!
here you are now...

Ungdomskulen @ Hove Festival

heres u.s doing an acoustic version of modern drummer for norwegian tv-show called lydverket.
håvard eliassen is playing saxomophone and two of our tent-neighbours joined in on percussion.

work in progress

good people!
do we have some news for you!
ungdomskulen are working on our sophmore record, and it is going really well.
we have 4 tracks as good as down, and we started just 2 weeks ago.
there will be a slow song on this record, maybe we can be so bold to even call it a ballad, but apart from telling you that, we are very secretive about it, our little gem, $ in the hat.
we are planning to release it in febuary 2009.
so be patient for chrissake!
we don´t have a working title for it, but if anyone has any ideas just hit us with it.
either here or there.
in the meantime...
here´s a picture of us taking a break from rocking out!




------------>arm-pit steve, smelly feet and stinky pants

new york

in this day and age its no biggie to have been in new york.

i remember my childhood friend mattias who went to florida with his family when we were 10years old.

it was pretty damn cool and i was impressed as hell when he came back with american candy and a miami dolphins cap.

but i guess it isnt really cool to be impressed these days.

i mean the echo of the 90s slacker-attitude lingers on, at least in the world of pop-rock(HAHAHAHA).

but we want to change that, and try to bring some enthusiasm back into the game.

so listen up, we were in new york, and it was mindblowing!

we went shopping, played shows for real newyorkans, we saw breakdancers on an underground-station.

we went hipster-spotting in williamsburg(they were everywhere!), we rode yellow cabs, we went to eat at the "seinfeld-diner", and we crossed the brooklyn bridge a hundred times.

we were totally amazed and knocked flat, and we feel really blessed about the XP.

and we love new york and cant wait to go back.

and to us its a really big deal, and for those of you who hasnt been, just go!

its amazing!

here´s the proof:

......................................him?, that guy?, and whats his face?

NYNOISE.TV | UNGDOMSKULEN

kids say the darndest things!

i guess we have alot of work to do, cause judging by this video
new york kids doesnt have alot a love for ungdomskulen.
we have some love for them though for being so frank and child-like in their harsh critisism.
here´s what they had to say about our video "modern drummer".
check it out!

everyone who are something is on tv.

when we were in los angeles,usa we did what everybody who goes to hollywood tries so hard to do.
we got on tv.
not only that we make our first tv-apperance ever,we got to do it on nobel peace prize winner al gore´s channel "current tv".

so this is what happened.
we came in good time to the studio and was escorted into a nice waiting room with a kick-ass leathercouch.
there was contemporary art on the walls and a big shiny black table filling the room, decorated with all sorts of exotic fruits and the most delicious italian sandwiches we´ve ever put our scandinavian eyes on.
and so we decided to check the fridge, and to our big amazement it was filled with imported beers, of which we instantly got our hands on.
so it was 13.00 and we were doing our first tv-apparance and we are getting good and tipsy.
can it get any better?
mmm-hmmm!

it was time to get some tv-makeup on.
there were two lovely ladies who painted our faces, and we requested to get whiskers and eyeshadow, and black noses.
they couldnt believe it,-you are going on tv, and you wanna look like cat drag-prostitues, they asked us.
well, it took some convincing but that was what we wanted.
so they did a marvelous job on us and we got three different eye-shadow colors.
just like t.m.n.t or kiss even, you know having your own color and all.
we felt sooooo good!
then we went and represented.

here we are now with the tv-host, im sorry but i cant remember his name, lets call him splinter.

also, check out the hollywood hills in the background, mezmerizing!

what if...

...we were more like GWAR?

well, then our logo would probably look more like this.

thanks to joey for making and sending this to us!

young knives

this is a tribute to (the) young knives(as pictured above).
listen to deerhoofs "heart failure" from their excellent LP "apple-o" when you read this.

lets start with some facts.

y.k´s consists of:

ollie who plays the drums, has a russian beard, is constantly on the phone and has one of the most contagious laughs i have ever heard.
he is steady as a rock and wears glasses which is a big plus in my book of pluses and minuses!
i also believe he is a total gentlemen, and dresses like one too.-let me hold the door for you, madaaaaaaaaaaaaam!

then we have the brothers.
henry on guitar and vocals, who does the best "dick-eating as your life depended on it"-imitation known to man,
and who in deep contrast sings like an angel.he also sometimes wears a vest!
plus he has a sort of quickness to him, that one would think he was a travelling snake remedy-salesment in an earlier life.

and then there´s tomas or house of lords(which is his cool artistname or pseudonym if you like)
who also sings and plays the bass, tom is like an awesome force of goodness who is swooshing through the room, seemingly in deep thought.
he has a vunerability to his singing, that makes me a bit sentimental and mooshy inside, and he claims that he never wore a pair of jeans.
sometimes onstage it looks like he´s in a trance!all good features!

we´ve played alot of gigs with these guys, and as one would fall in love with a somewhat unforseen colleague at the office over time,
this is what we did, we didnt trip and fall by the watercooler but by the stink and the stank of the "1000" backstages of the U of the K.
we drank their beers, we learned the words to their songs, they bought us presents that they forgot to give us, they showed us so much generosity and good spirit that we were amazed, and alittle affected too. we also tought them some norwegian.-slikk mine baller!

we´ve met them a couple of years ago when we played the low-brow "rock against happy-food"festival in bryne,norway.
thanks to master of grillé and "simply red" look-a-like omund, god bless his farming heart.
little did we know, what we would experience together in the years to come.
all the glamour, the rollercoasters, the stalker, the violence of the bouncers in southend, the anything-goes disco of dundee
and the feasting on the stickiest tables in europe, with some of the worst food england has to offer(that really says alot).

and i must also mention the awesome gigs they played every night, that we got to see from the side of the stage, v.i.p anyone?

we learned the songs, the dancesteps and the attitude.

you guys, we owe all these times to you!

so....smooshy smooshy our hearts out!

also thanks to their wonderful mötley crüe: jimmy(you´ll learn the riff some day),alex( :) you are the man of men ),ed( man! those new pants was nice),martin(don´t burn up kristian, bitch!) and ben(-that xs-tshirt looks good on you sir!(if its for sale he can sell it))

ps.hope to see all of you guys soon, in the meantime...remember the days.

washing machine

There are alot of things you experience for the first time when you´re on tour.
The most obvious that comes to mind are of course the new food, personal people and the locally brewed beers.
But, there are also new experiences facing you when practical issues occur.
Like, when you´re halfway through the tour and you´re dragging along a suitcase full of dirty clothes from city to city,
stinking up your act and keeping you on the i-can-use-this-tshirt-one-more-day path.
Very, hobo on the highway,get your motor bumming.
You need to see lady-laundrette, man!

There´s something esthetically broad-shouldered and nostalgically timeless to a public laundry.
The smell of fabric softener, the dirty vinyl floors(hey! don´t drop your wet clothes when you are moving them over to the dryer)
not to mention the queen of the cleandom, the loveable yet inaccessible lady with the crown of even change.
She has washed it all, seen it all, touched it all and gotten it all spotless and clean.
Her hands are smooth as an alley-cat and her nose is forever corrupted by the smell of the washing powder.
If you ask her she probably have stories about
dirty alligator hats, red soccer-socks mixed with grandpas white mafia-suit, ball-dresses with dazzle and
the thousands nasty sexy jeans that had to be cleaned in no-time.

Now, picture yourself in there:
Stacks of empty baskets waiting to be filled, the wooden benches waiting to be sat on, the hypnotic humming sounds of tumbling clothes wrestling
the empty blabber of mundane daytime radio, with the ticking of the clock emphasizing the waiting, on top of it all.
And then there´s the star of the show, the germ infected gossip-magazines.
Laying voyeurishly in sloppy piles next to the line of the shiny no-bullshit steel-momentums that are industrial washing-machines, they
make everyone into a total gossip-whore in no time!
Hey gang!, its time we got updated on the royale.

eyeballing life through the dirty windowshields of a 1998 mercedes sprinter.

spending half of your precious day in a crammy van, there´s nothing much to do but to sleep or look out the window.

we(ungdomskulen) doesnt travel in a nightliner so we travel during the day, and since we dont have an x-box,psp´s or wii´s in the van, the window is the source to our entertainment.

you are going so fast though, you only get to witness excerpts of little stories swooshing by, likekids chasing a school-bus or two horses feasting on the jingly hay-stuffed body of a scarecrow.

it happends too fast to capture on camera, so you just have to memorize it the best way you can.

one time we saw a guy threatening to jump from a bridge arching over the freeway we where on.

he was hanging outside the bridge-fence,grabbing onto the cold metal-grid like spiderman, with cops trying to convince him to climb back over and get into their custody.

it was nerve-wrecking.

another time we saw barebreasted bloody kids knucklefighting eachother in broad daylight.

we were sitting safe and sound with our wintercoats on just moping to the intensity of it all.

the thing is though, there is no end to the stories we get served, just the middle, see otherwise it would go unnoticed.

we dont see the suicide-jumper considering climbing the fence, or the kids making up after the rumbling.

no, we just get the juicy middle, the climax, the bone of the dog, the blizzard or nothing at all.

still, most of the time its just landscapes or neonlight-inthusing diners that are flickering by.

trafficjams and sweaty construction workers, cows taking dozy naps under the shade of a tree, or greenfingered taxpayers attending their private petite gardens.

no matter what you see though, it makes you feel really small, and vunerable in a way.

it´s you against the world, the speeding car against gravity, the sun and the moon, your future and past all battling for your attention.

and so it makes you think about alot of weird things.you get inspired, bored and emotional within the same minute.

your mind wanders free and hairy and you end up getting knots on your thread of thought, not getting any conclusions whatsoever.

no, there´s no peace of mind or fullfillments of your mental cascades.

and so after a while it just becomes a big grey gush of wheat-porridge, and you need a break.

so you sleep alittle, talk alittle, put on some new music on the carstereo or textmessage a loved one, and then... you simply just start from scratch.

eyeballing life through the dirty windowshields of a 1998 mercedes sprinter.

...so about texas...don´t mess with it/her...

--------------------------BEWARE OF THE BLOGG!

this is what happened: we flew out from bergen to london, stayed a night in a aspestos-infested uncle-fester sorta motel, with a hot water-roomheater from the bawels of dust-hell, not to mention the pink toilet where you had to go number 2 with the door open because of lack of space for the old knees-and-legs.

so, after that we flew 9 hours or so to minneapolis where we spent 3 hours halfasleep waiting for our next flight to austin which was delayed.all good.

we finally got there at midnight, and it was beautiful, warm weather,nice rental-car and open roads.
soar troats,shaking flight-knees and severe backpain aside, we were there.

so we woke up the next day to nice weather and blue skies.

indie-kids and biz-people walking hand in hands down the sun-kissed sidewalk, wading in flyers,posters and free beer-tickets.

we got our badges and goody-bag(very-well logistics sxsw) and sat in the sun and smiled for a little while, the earth stopped spinning and it was just great being alive doing nothing.

after the leisure that is life, we did biz-lunch with nikki and will, god bless them!,and we did an interview with a berlin-based radio-station and a programme called fritz.

we decided to return our rental-car, seemed that it was no use for it since we could take shuttles and stuff everywhere for 0.50 $ a head. we also stumbled into a party where "yacht" and "does it offend you,yeah?" was playing.in my humble opinion yacht should´ve stuck with the blow.

the hightlight of the day would come around 11aclock, when the slits were playing at the elysium. it was awesome!

the band was really loose and tight at the same time, vocalist "ari up" who was really tanned, mooned us to our amusement, at the end of the show. it was some moon i´ll tell ya!

she is fit like a panther.
i also have to mention the guitarist, who played so good it gave me goosebumps on my soul!
she was stabbing the guitar with the precision of a serial-killer, and she was funky as they come!

here´s a cute picture of her.

----------------------------------GUITAR-GODDESS
after that we went for some drinks with nikki, we ended up at a bar where this dude was singing about dollars and dollars and he really meant it.

20 dollars,40 dollars,30 dollars and so forth...
he must´ve been hallocinating or something, poor guy.
we called it a day and went back and slept like newly washed babies in diaper-commersials,
happy and pampered with the great day.

day two was hectic like a motherfucker!

we went for breakfast with chris at this family-restaurant way-off broadway,
and ate some big-ass omelettes and our waiter looked like the guy from "perfect strangers" or "balki and larry" as it was called when it aired in the 90´s in norway.
our guy looked like the one who was russian, i think that was balki, he also looked alittle bit like dweezil zappa, but this blog isnt really about people looking like famous people so lets drop that.

after the breakfast we went and had a really good interview with a guy from the wall street journal, he was really smart and warm and we took an imidiate liking to the guy.
he had alot of things figured out about us already, and i wish we could spend some more time with him.

he could totally crash our tour-bus at any time!

here´s his stuff:
http://blogs.wsj.com/sxsw/2008/03/14/26-years-old-and-5000-miles-from-home/

and the day was just getting better by the minute.
so..., after that we went and did an interview with mtv, with charlotte thorstvedt with her
haunting beautiful looks and camera-karisma.

--------------------------------------------COZY!

it was very cozy and pollite unlike the interview we would do later...
so then we went out to rural austin, saw a good show with sissywish, hijacked an ice-cream truck and got a bit of a sun tan.

-----------------------------------WHO´S FOR ICECREAM?

after that we did an interview with channel 4 in the middle of the street, there was a preaching farm-boy right next to us with a sign with a bible-quote on, and he really got on our nerves.

-----------------------------------------SAY CHEESE!

so we moved a little to the left.

the interview was as wacky as they come.

i cant wait to see it,it was fake-penises,spinning,attacking of the journalist and alot of nice verbal

tricketering.

they were really sweet guys, and their boss an australian curvy beauty was obviously drunk on tequila.

it was magic!

after that we went to do our show.

we played a really good set at maggie mays rooftop, it was a really lit up stage on a rooftop ofcourse.

it was calm wind swooshing in through the open ceiling blowing life into the puppets that are ungdomskulen, and oh! did it help.

we played as if it was no tomorrow, and no yesterday.

alotta love and dancing was a-going down!

after the show we all rushed off to the orchid where viper room had there party.

within 15 minutes we were playing our second show.

it went well, and we got to meet our favorite promoter melissa.

she is a sweet-heart, if there ever was one.

she took really good care of us, and pulled off some classic dancemoves during our set.

after that it was pretty much straight to bed, we were knockered, and a 26 hour flight the next day was waiting.

im not going into that flight cause it was so depressing long and boring, but we ended up in scotland eventually which is a good thing.

so that is where we are now reminiscing and stuff.

smell you soon!
U.S

scotland, dear scotland!

for you who pay close attention to the unfolding of the ungdomskulen flower,you know that we are on a two-week uk rampage-tour with the young knives.

it is going really well, apart from some cruel laryngitis popping out of our party-cake.

its cold though and windy, and not sweet like austin,texas where we were last week.

(we´ll get back to that).

so today we did some die-hard touristing, visiting the edinburgh castle, we didnt actually go into it cause we mendoksei to pay the entrance-fee.

visiting castles should be gratis!

this castle was´nt all that either, i prefer tyresö slott,in sweden myself,that castle has it all(the best snails there is).

so the gigs have been going really well, it seems like people are into our scandinavian trash-pop surprisingly,

and we´ve been gloriously blessed with the warm embrace of the young knives and their crew as well, they are really sweet people.god bless!

so...

here we are now at the AMAZING CASTLE!

niagara falls

this is becoming somewhat of a travel-guide, without the interactions with the locals and the useless bar-guides(who in their right mind wants to read about a bar?).

anyways, so we played lee´s palace(really awesome venue) in toronto on our 2008 us/canada tour , and so we swung by the niagara falls on the way there, we hear that the canadian side has the best view, so that was where we went.

it was freezing cold and the particles of water in the air stuck to our faces like bees to the honey.
the sight was intense and utterly beautiful and also breathtaking and it looked like the ice-world in lemmings.

we took our bandphoto there ofcourse,and some really nice italian tourist snapped the picture and we are adding it to the pictorial list of places where we have been as a band.
more globetrotter-bragging to come!
here we are now:

cry-baby LP

everyone loves the freedom to choose, and sometimes the choice is pretty easy.
just look at the beautiful lp and his plastic baby-sister.
who do you wanna rescue in case of a fire?
it took some time to get it pressed, the cd got released in october, and now the lp is finally done.

we used our advance from the record-label to press it ourselves,
they didnt want to release it on this format,

so now we have a 1000 copies lurking in our basement.
there is no distro for this the lp so i guess the only way to get it is to buy it at our shows or something.
if you live in bergen you can either buy it at apollon or robot, two very fine stores.
i guess we will have to spread it one way or the other, but at the moment we really don´t know
how,when and where.
we´ll let you know when we sorted that out, in the meantime:stay positive!

hotel califreezia

ungdomskulen recently played the wonderful northernlight-city of alta (pop:18.272 in 2008),
which is located way up north in norway.
on the day of our return we had some time to kill so we went to the igloo-hotel.
it is basically a hotel made of snow and ice, you can order drinks which comes
in glasses made of ice, and they only consists of spirits cause everything else would freeze.
it was really interesting and worth a visit,but dont go in may cause then the hotel is all melted to its ground.
they rebuild it every year with a new theme, this years theme was norwegian polar-explorers and such.here´s u.s in the hotel, contemporary norwegian explorers!

live! tonight! sold out!...sayler!

piccadilly line

there´s nothing like running late on a confusing subway-labyrinth-system during rush-hour.
carriyng your heavy stuff up and down stairs and escalators, sweat dripping from your forehead, landing on a strangers hand holding the morning paper.
him, eye-balling your eyes out.
-sorry sir.
it makes you think about japanese business men killing time by feeling up girls on crammed tubes on their way to work, how can they sleep at night?
imagine standing in a shitpacked train, unmoveable and morning-sick and some business-hand is grabbing your sweaty girl/boy-balls and there´s nothing you can do but give me hope johanna.
commute-traveling with your next-man is always a pain in the ass of some sort.
but, sometimes, sometimes you can slide down those escalators to the calm chill and refuge from
the summers intense heat, and just cruise through the underground like a flock of silly dogs, fresh like the wind, barking at the cctv´s.
even stopping in front of the fish-eyed mirrors for a little documentation.
so, this picture is from one of those rare occasions, it is taken in the london underground somewhere.god bless its picturesque honesty.

-------------------------- DON´T! FEEL US UP BUSINESS-MEN!----------

shopping in nottingham

as a relatively new and very un-jaded junior-rockband you get pretty psyched finding your record in a random recordstore, and if your band has its on little tag its even sweeter.
god bless that tag.

best buddies.

him, that guy and what´s his name.