• The Embassy - State'08

  • 1 State'08
  • Do you realise that the name Spotify is a verb, meaning "to litter [something) with advertising spots"? Can you imagine my response when someone from that start-up called and asked for my opinion about PLACING ADVERTS ON OUR MUSIC?

    An absurd insult.
    Ask Francis Bacon if you can defecate on his paintings in order to enrich yourself...

    
 Service Clan was an attempt to reject this nightmare scenario, while accepting that music will be predominantly digitally distributed. The idea was that I would send all future Service releases digitally (and a sew-on badge if I remember correctly?) to anyone who joined the membership (life long, at the price of € 30). Now would be the time to return to this idea...

    Even though State'08 was our first and last digital only release, and came out in a vacuum without the context of an album or tour, the song was an unexpected radio hit. It spent several weeks on highest rotation on Swedish national radio, making it one of our most publicly successful releases.

    The song is eminently product of the local culture of real life relations that I'd like to understand as the essence of Service. It was produced and recorded by Dan in his studio on Nordhemsgatan, where TTA recorded A New Chance etc. The Embassy photo is from that place. Studio's (the band) administration folders are visable in the background.

    The artwork, titled "Whatever you destroy, we'll create it again", is a watercolour by Carl Hammoud, a classmate and friend of Dan's at Valand Art School. We'd frequently hang out during those days. But while me and Dan were doing label work and Dionysian mischief, Carl, a disciplined and talanted painter, was developing a great body of work and an actual career. It makes beautiful sense that he is part of the catalog.

    There was a release party at F12. Not sure if it makes sense, but the Service intern Benjamin and a girl took off into the Stockholm summer night on a lawn mower.

    ”When every beat of your drum is wasted and every song that you sing is a fake every word is a hesitation you did it great”

  • ARTWORK: Carl Hammoud
    RECORDED BY: Dan Lissvik

  • SERVST8 2008