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yesterday was linköping jazz & bluesfestival. i went there with two guys from work. since i live next door to the festival i invited them for a drink before it started. i tried making gimlets again, this time using rose's lime instead of fresh pressed lime juice, and it turned out great. have to remember to make those in the summer - but not too many, since they're not exactly long drinks.
as previous years, there were so many cool bands to see at once that it was hard to know where to be. first i went to viktoria tolstoy and stayed a couple of songs. it was best in the beginning, when they played quirky jazz instead of coffee commercial songs. there was this one song - i think it was the second one - that was really cool. it started with just double bass. it was called something with caravan - "my secret caravan" or something. first the song came in, then after a while the drums and piano, but i think i'd have liked it even better if it was only bass and vocals. it's really cool when you have to concentrate to stay in rhythm because the bass does all sorts of weird things to try to throw you off beat.
there was a guy outside in the foyer that sold old records. i asked him to pick out three old vinly records with quirky jazz where much happened, and with the help of another guy buying records he managed to gather some up, though he had aimed mainly at swing and big band for this festival. i havn't played them yet though, since i don't have a vinly player. i'll listen to them next time i go home visiting my folks, and see if i can manage to rip them to digital somehow.
there was this guy from last year i wanted to catch, and this time he played three times. i only saw him twice, but it was really cool. he's called andreas öberg and looks sortof like an underwear model - a guy you'd expect to see in magazines leaning against a slab of granite in his boxers. anyways, he plays amazing guitar. last year it was django-style, but this year he had a guy with a hammond organ (he looked finish and had a wicked moustache, but they said he was straight from norway with roots in norrköping) and a drummer. the second time he played it was just him, and then he did a really cool thing with his guitar. what he did was, he put a business card between the strings and it sounded like calypso music. i'll have to try that on salma.
slidin' slim was also cool. this time he was playing with some other people, which wasn't as cool as the first time i saw him, just him sitting on his amp playing a resonator guitar he'd bought from the guitarist in white snake, but it was good. i bought his album, from his son.

today's st patrick's day, so me and two guys from work went to bishop's for a pint. the guy in the bar made a great effort in informing us not to drink the guinness until it had settled - like we'd never had one before. i guess i don't go there enough. anyways he poured them good, and they tasted great.
i just got out from the bath, after finishing re-reading the great gatsby. i only had the ending left to read, and since i've already written about this book once that's what i'll deal with here - spoilers ahead.

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i went to a concert tonight - first one this year, and it's march already, i feel i've lost some of the momentum i had last year in that respect. guess i'll just have to pick it up a notch. some people from work joined in. we met at my place first for some pastis. i've never had pastis before - at least i don't think so - but i've been reading a bit about anise-flavoured spirits lately, and i felt it was time to try pastis. i guess it all started when my uncle treated me to raki a couple of years back that tasted great. i never got around to ask him how he mixed it to get it as good as it was then, and i've never been able to get it like that myself. anyways, pastis was good. it's a bummer though, because if i put too much water in it (wikipedia claims it should be five to one, which sounds really off) it tastes bland, and if i put too little in it the alcohol gets through but the taste is ok. guess i'll have to experiment a bit more, and see where i end up. but anyways, back to the concert - i'm baffled we have such skilled musicians in tiny sweden. ia is just unbelievably good, and his awareness on stage is beyond anything. that guy has got a seriously skewed sense of humour - in a good way. it was cool to see them with the orchestra too. they really did something with it, not just playing their songs with some extra instruments - there was some real synergy there. and they had a conductor that also played the saxophone, using not only a wah, but a digitech whammy to boot. yay
tomorrow i'm going to nkpg to pack. i'm going up north monday, boarding with some friends from way back. i've been monitoring the weather and snow for like a month. the best thing is, in another two weeks i'm going up again, with sis. life is good.

i'm reading varulven now, by aksel sandemose. i started with it last weekend and i'm only something like 1/4 done, which totally botches my reading progress this year. it's a combination i guess, of working late, perhaps a bit smaller font (though i havn't checked, really) and me reading in swedish. i almost never read in swedish these days, and it seems to have an impact on my reading speed. it seems to be a good book though, albeit a bit strange. tomorrow i'm going back to sweden again, which will be nice.

since it's hard to keep track of what happens when, i'll post stuff i've done this year here.

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