Swedens no. 1 partyband? Might very well be.. The Manikins play infectious rockn’roll like the Devil Dogs, the Marked Men, Teengenerate or the New Bomb Turks. They hail from Nyköping (100 km from Stockholm) and have been playing for several years. They only came to my attention after their first single on P. Trash just floored me!
Whos who in the band? And tell us about your label Subway Star and any other bands you might be in.
Im Kalle and I play guitar and sing backup vocals. Then we have Jocke that does all the howlin and also play the geetah. Max is working the bass and Tommie beat the crap out of the drums. Me and Max are also representing Nyköping with Local Oafs and Tommie play oldmansrock with a couple of old men. I used to run a label called Subway Star Records but Im taking it easy at this moment (too much hard work for a lazy old sod like myself). I released ten 7″s with bands like The Nazis From mars, The Nearly Deads, The Monsters and Roy & The Devils Motorcycle. Pretty much just trashy stuff. Ken Rock does it better though.
The Manikins have been playing for a while now but suddenly you had two LPs and a single out on two foreign labels. What happened?
This is what happened. We recorded 8 tracks and sent them out to a couple of labels. Rockin Bones wanted to do a LP right away and P.Trash wanted to do a 7″. The 7″ was released instant and it took Rockin Bones quite a while to get the LP out. During that time we recorded 12 more songs and P.Trash wanted to release them on another LP in time for our european tour. Four months before the tour Rockin Bones got the first LP out and Ptrash released the new LP (Epileptic) right away. Thats why the were so little time between the two records. Now both theese records will be released on a CD on Screaming Apple (with two bonus tracks).
Was it because of Subway Star that you had these contacts?
Subway Star had nothing to do with that. P.Trash liked our first split 7″ with Local Oafs and contacted us because of that one and the Rockin Bones story I have already told you
How was your tour of Europe this summer? Any fun stories?
It was truly amazing! We were out for three weeks and that was the most chaotic weeks of my life. I had booked the tour and I have never booked anything in my life ha ha! We had a great time and there are a lot of memories. We had to steal money from a place in Belgium, we had to sleep in a packed van a lot of nights and we had to reschedule our trip home after having to burglaries on one night in England, one at the place were we sleept (all our money gone) and one in our van (all of our clothes and cameras gone). We met a lot of great people like Eric from the Ulcers, the Yakisakna Records crew, Peter from P.Trash Records, The Pits crew and the guys in Hawaii Samurai.
Whats your most memorable gig?
Ohh hard question really. We have done some really strange gigs. We did one in Bollnäs were I was so drunk that I fell over my amps in the second song and cut up my leg pretty bad but the most wicked gig have done most have been in Denmark were we played Fedebrö. Like a haschbar in Ålborg. We were just going out for a cheap beer on a night off and we ended up playing two nights at that place ha ha! The best gig we have ever played must have been in Rennes when we played Mondo Bizzarro. We had a pretty big crowd and everyone seemed to like us a lot
You might think that you wear your influences on your sleeves but I happen to know that even the Dire Straits are in there somewhere.. What bands have influenced you the most?
Well Thomas You dont know anything until you have walked the walk of life I think bands like The Devil Dogs, Teengenerate, AC/DC, The Saints and The Dead Boys got us going but we dont wanna sound as them in a lot of ways. We try to do our own thing but that is hard.
What bands would you love to play with?
We were supposed to have played with The Marked Men on our tour but it got cancelled but that would have been really cool. I really like The Minds a lot and I think they are playing the night before us at The Pits in December. The Spits are cool and Electric Eel Shock are amazing live! Heavy Metal!!!
What plans do the Manikins have for the future?
Tonight we will play in our hometown at our hang out bar called 26 80 20 (stupid fucking name! Its their phone number. Give em a prankcall!) and that will be really fun. The owners doesnt know shit about punkrock and wanted us to do three 45 minutes sets ha ha ha! I guess we will be off in 30 minutes taking care of the free beer. What do they expect!? This isnt Germany!
Then we will go on a two week tour in France together with Hawaii Samurai in December and we are thinking about going to Germany for a week in April together with a band called The Heartattacks. Dont know if you know them. They have released a 7″ on a crappy label in Stockholm run by two inbreeds.
We are also rehearsing new songs for a upcoming LP but thats in the future. We want to release some singles and have a couple of songs recorded.
www.the-manikins.tk