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Warning: Links to Swedish language ahead!

Tjuvlyssnat.se, the single most popular blog in Sweden right now, will have a release party for its first book release on January 17th. 100 Swedish bloggers have been personally invited, and since I am one of them I am now planning for a trip to Stockholm next week. I still have a lot of details to sort out with flights and hotels, but if everything works out well I will definitely be there!

I did say that 2007 would bring new adventures, right? More about this later. I need to wrap up the new template versions now so I can upload them on OpenDesigns.org today!

For a limited time only, created and uploaded with some help from a friend so I could see how YouTube works. This unique clip is taken from the secret backstage video filmed by Isecore at the 2001 new years party in Gällivare, Sweden, where Lagoona was one of the invited artists. It was a really small club gig, but it had a lovely atmosphere with many happy faces. This song is the Lagoona "1999 edit" of "My Telescope" (available for download on the Lagoona music page), and it is "performed" (only 10% of what you hear is live music, the rest is the backtrack) by me and DJ Magho. Björn was in southern Sweden at the time, celebrating the holidays with his family, so he couldn't be there.

(link removed)

Update: The link to the clip has been removed, as this video was online for a short while just for testing purposes. Some day in the future, I'm hoping to make a couple of official Lagoona clips from various gigs and events. I have plenty of them, most from 1999-2002. But I better learn more about video editing first! If anyone still wants to see the clip, let me know and I'll send it to you.

But there is also a second test clip online. It shows 22 seconds from a later Lagoona live performance, the second last gig Lagoona ever did (in August 2004). The final Lagoona lineup (me, Björn and Åsa) performed "Into my dream" live, and it was filmed with a digital compact camera so the quality is really bad. But if you are curious, you can see it here for yet a while.

In the end of October, my old friend Petter and his girlfriend Ann-Sofi is planning to host a party to warm up their new apartment in Umeå. So I am planning for a weekend trip down to Umeå over halloween, and if everything works out well it will be a party to remember. One of the things that we are planning is a tribute to the completely unknown band: No Name Project!

Background story

Petter (who is also known as Isecore) did a number of gigs as a DJ on stage for Lagoona back in 2002-2003. Every now and then, he also spent some time in the studio, playing with the synthesizers and making lots of noise. One cold winter night in the end of year 2001, Petter and I recorded a full song just for the fun of it. The song was based on a drum loop from a Roland XP-30, an improvised supersaw synth arpeggio lead from a Roland JP-8000 and vocal samples that was run through a software vocoder on the studio computer. The song was given the title "Excellent", and mixed in two different versions - a radio edit and an album edit.

During this time, we were both students, and one of our school projects was to build a website based on a project - and provide a marketing plan for both the site and the project. With the new song ready, we decided to form a band and promote the song as an MP3 single. The band got the name "No Name Project" and the song was released on two free music sites. No band biography was made, and the names of the band members was never revealed. All marketing was focused on the song.

Live on stage!

On March 9th 2002, Petter debuted as a DJ for Lagoona. It was at a gig in Kiruna, Sweden, in front of a small but enthusiastic crowd. Björn (the other half of Lagoona) couldn't perform that night, so it was only Petter and I on stage. At the end of the gig, we surprised the crowd by performing "Excellent" live! Most of the surprise came from the fact that "Excellent" was much slower than the typical 130-145 beats per minute that the Lagoona songs had, but the fact that we introduced the song as an "exclusive world premiere for No Name Project" also contributed a bit.

This was the only time ever that No Name Project played live and the only time that "Excellent" was performed live! To our great happiness, the crowd response was amazing. The song worked well on the dancefloor. In reality, it was four minutes of a typical gig - but it was also the absolute peak of the career for No Name Project.

Project finished

A few weeks later, we had got our marketing plan and website reviewed and graded, and the project was dropped. The song was left online at one music site, but since all energy was put on Lagoona we didn't care about the song for a long time. Soon after this, No Name Project was forgotten. Today almost noone of the few people who knew about the project remembers it.

The two versions of "Excellent" has later been re-released on my own music page with my own name on it (although No Name Project is mentioned in the ID3 tag) and we can clearly say that No Name Project didn't make any impact at all. It wasn't meant to. It just happened, and the history of the band is really nothing more than the background story of the song.

Lost and found

But when I listened through some old MiniDiscs today, I found something that brought back all these memories: a recording of the live performance! It was made from an output channel on our on-stage mixer during the gig, and I had completely forgotten about it. Since I'll visit Petter soon (and bring a few synthesizers with me to maybe perform some music live at the party) I figured that I could surprise him with this post and share the recording with those of you who like the story.

Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy four minutes of music history - No Name Project performing "Excellent" live on stage:

No Name Project - Excellent (live).mp3

I've seen the "My blog is worth…" box for a long time, but never cared to test my own calculated blog value. I don't really care, but seeing that I've made it to the Technorati Top-100 Popular Blogs list I couldn't resist trying the value calculator. And according to the test, the calculated value of my blog was $2,108,556.90.

Now, if anyone want to make a smart investment, I'll let you buy it for less than a third of that amount: $700.000! Special price, only this week! Don't wait, contact me and we'll discuss the arrangements.

Edit: I took the test again and got an even higher number, so I updated it. I am now a virtual millionaire! To see the current value, visit this link)

Edit 2: As I predicted, the mentioning of the Top 100 Blogs list was a trigger. To save the world from evil injustice, some brave hero have reported to Technorati that my high rank has come from "forced" credit links in themes - which has resulted in me not only being removed from the Top 100 Blogs list but also being blacklisted from all searches. I have no problems with being removed from the list, because I don't need a list position to know that I'm doing good things here. But if they blacklist me because many of my links come from themes built from my templates, they are making a bummer which I will not accept. It doesn't make any sense. I have already written a long post about it but I want to wait for Technorati to reply to my e-mail before I publish it, just in case there has been some mistake somewhere. I'll give them a day.

Edit 3: I'm back in the search results again. Good, very good.

Today is the final day of the market, and I am just about to leave my home to spend the whole day out on the market area. When I come home, I will post photos and news from the whole week, and maybe tell a few fun stories as well. The highlight of the day is the nice weather and the temperature, which is currently -24 degrees celcius where I live. A typical Jokkmokk winter market saturday, in other words!

Interesting Jokkmokk links:

Realtime webcam from Jokkmokk - This camera is mounted on the building where my studio (which is currently an art gallery) is located, and the image shows you a small part of the market area. And if you watch this webcam all day long, you WILL see me waving to the camera today! I will appear on it atleast two times, but i won't tell you when. If anyone happen to see me (I will be wearing a gray jacket, a pink hat and black gloves), take a screenshot and e-mail it to inbox@ this domain. Everyone who has found the right person will win some kind of secret prize!

Temperatures in Jokkmokk - Measured at one of the schools, about 400 meters away from the market area.