News Page March 2002: News from the St. Thomas world, and updates to this page in March 2002. This page is not an official source of information, if in doubt of accuracy of info please get in touch with webmaster of this page or the info source. Click here for latest news.

March 30th 2002 - Thomas was interviewed by the editor of the new Norwegian music magazine Mute, Marianne Jemtegård, in Stockholm on February 3rd, and the lengthy article based on the interview that is available in the magazine should be an interesting read. Those who do not have the possibility to buy the magazine but still understand Norwegian can read the article here. Thanks to Franziska Ress for typing it up. I recommend that anyone who has a chance to do so go out and buy the magazine, not only because of the nice article and pictures of St. Thomas, but also to support projects that help highlight the interesting Norwegian music scene.

Stavanger Aftenblad recently published a short notice where the organizers of the St. Thomas concert at Folken in Stavanger, Norway state that they are indeed not seeking compensation after the concert. When it comes to the Stavanger Aftenblad journalist who was accused of sending abusive e-mails to Thomas, it seems like these e-mails were indeed faked by someone who wanted to put the journalist in a bad light, but this is yet to be confirmed.

Some updates to the articles section. Currently there are eighty-seven articles available, but a couple more, mainly English reviews of the "I'm Coming Home" album, will be added shortly. Also expect to see a slight re-design of this St. Thomas page, at least the main page, as I am not too happy with the way the way it looks at the moment. But no huge changes, though.

March 22nd 2002 - St. Thomas played a very good concert at Bastard@Prater in Berlin, Germany last night. All the members of Madrugada were present in the audience, along with Erlend Øye from Kings Of Convenience, who joined the band on bass for "Surfer's Morning" and "Mysterious Walks," even though he missed the soundcheck. The soundcheck actually started after people had been let into the venue, and consisted only of "Mysterious Walks," with few people in the audience seeming to care about the band being on stage.

The setlist consisted of "Strangers Out Of Blue," "Walk With Me," "New Apartment," "Institution," "Surfer's Morning," "Mysterious Walks," "Falling Down," "Goodbye Emily Lang," "Cornerman," "The Cool Song," "Bookstore," "A Nice Bottle Of Wine," "Invitation," "Born Again" and With The Feather" with "I'm Coming Home #2" and "Sunny Day" as encores.

Franziska Ress was at the concert, and talked to the band both before and after the concert. Thomas said that the tour had been 'up and down,' that everyone in the band had been sick but that they were all fine now and the mood was good, and that he likes playing in other countries more than in Norway, partly because they are getting so many bad reviews there.

There was a support act who had not been announced anywhere; two guys from England, either both playing acoustic guitar or one on acoustic guitar and the other on upright bass. They had been invited to play by Thomas.

Thomas talked quite a lot between the songs. He introduced the band members with their age, and said that everyone had a special task. Eivind was selling the merchandise, Frode was writing the setlist, Espen was rolling the joints "and me... um, I guess I'm writing the songs." When it comes to the setlist, he said that he had told Frode to put the songs in an order where he did not have to change his guitar after every time, but of course Frode had not taken care of that. In addition he said he did not like small stages, as there is so little space that it always takes him a minute to change his guitar.

He said that they were building up the set, quiet songs towards louder songs, and he hoped the audience would be dancing in the end. They were. He also said that everyone in the audience should buy their records, so that Berlin would beat Brussels, where twenty-five percent of the audience bought a record at the concert. Before "New Apartment" Thomas said that he wrote this song when he moved to Berlin three months ago, because he got a new apartment and a new hat from someone from the record label then. So he made a song about it. He would have worn the hat at the concert, but they had a little accident with it, so now it did not look that good anymore.

They used playback for "Invitation" and "Born Again," and during the first song it worked well, but they had to stop in the middle of the second song because the lyrics did not match the music. They were already through singing the line 'take a dance with me,' but the music for that line was not over. As it did not work out at all they stopped after that line had been through three times. Espen then said "I feel like Britney Spears," while Thomas said they had used that CD at around one hundred concerts and that they should maybe get a new one. Thanks a lot to Franziska Ress for all of this info.

Franziska also talked to Erik Hannemann, who is making a documentary about St. Thomas. He revealed that the working title is "The Cool Song."

March 18th 2002 - St. Thomas played at the London Calling festival at Paradiso in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on Friday, and the Dutch page VPRO 3VOOR12 put up quite a lot of interesting material about the performance. First of all, you can listen to the thirty-two minute concert in stearming RealAudio by clicking here. To be able to listen, you will need to have RealPlayer installed, which can be downloaded for free at real.com.

3VOOR12 also put up a review of the concert, available here and an interview with Espen and Thomas, available here. I have no idea what the articles are about, as they are in Dutch. First page includes two pictures from live performance and one of the plastic plate which they used to the setlist, while the second page includes three pictures of Thomas and Espen.

The setlist consisted of "Invitation," "A Nice Bottle Of Wine," "New Apartment," "Cornerman," "Goodbye Emily Lang," "I'm Coming Home #2", "Surfer's Morning," "Falling Down," "The Charity Ego" and "Born Again."

"I'm Coming Home #2" was stopped at the very beginning, as Thomas could not remember the lyrics. He said they had skipped that song on the tour lately, and as they did not have time to practice every day, they did not have time to learn it. So they started the next song, which they knew how to play.

March 17th 2002 - Marc Verhees posted this about the concert at Rotown in Rotterdam, The Netherlands on Saturday in the discussion forum: "What a nice concert! I love it when there are technical problems, people forgetting there lyrics, band not knowing what to play, conversations about soccer and a playlist written on a plastic plate. What a marvelous set of drums! Rotown is nice small club, they played all my favourite songs. Best quote from the show: "I have decided to go off stage, thank you," due to a broken monitor the band had to come off stage so that they could hear what they were doing."

The original setlist was "Invitation," "A Nice Bottle Of Wine," "New Apartment," "Cornerman," "Goodbye Emily Lang," "I'm Coming Home #2", "Bookstore," "The Charity Ego" and "Born Again," but they did a completely different set, so nevermind. Thanks to Marc Verhees for this information.

March 15th 2002 - The Norwegian newspaper VG put together twenty-eight of Norway's biggest musical hopes for a photo session which would yield a picture that ran over four full pages on March 12th. Thomas was one of the artists on the picture, which was taken by Espen Rasmussen at Hotell Bristol in Oslo, Norway. It is possible to order a poster of the pictures, this and more information can be found on this page, which is in Norwegian.

Claes Olsen from Racing Junior reports that things have been going very well with the band lately. The mood is on top once again, and the concerts are going well. In Gothenburg on the 12th there were lots of people, and the band got great reponse from the audience. There have been some updates to the concert chronlogy, thanks to Claes.

March 13th 2002 - The information in the article published by Stavanger Aftenblad concerning the organizers of the concert demanding compensation for the concert at Folken in Stavanger on the 6th is untrue. The article says that the organizers were seeking compensation and were scheduled to have a meeting with the band's management last Saturday, but when Racing Junior contacted the organizers about this, they were unaware of it.

The article was written by Tarald Aano, who tried his best at acting as a professional journalist by sending an e-mail to Thomas' personal e-mail address where he was mocking the band's performance. The sad thing is the article, based on untrue information, got a mentioning on the front page. Thanks to Claes from Racing Junior for the information regarding this.

March 9th 2002 - More bad news for St. Thomas, as the organizers of the concert at Folken in Stavanger, Norway on the 6th are seeking to get the money they paid the band for the concert returned. They are very unhappy with what they got presented, and are expecting to get all of the money refunded after a meeting with the band's management today. They might run into certain problems, though, as their contract with the band did not include anything about a minimum amount of time the band had to play.

But it looks like the management agrees that what was presented on Wednesday was far below a reasonably bad concert, and they have sent their apologies and their explanations to the organizers and the local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad, who rated the concert one out of ten. Article about money issue can be read here, concert review can be read here, both in Norwegian.

March 8th 2002 - Sometimes I wish I did not have to update a webpage, because it hurts so much to have to write bad things about people you care about. Last Wednesday I wished I did not like music at all, and I wished I did not have to care as much about the music I listen to as I do. St. Thomas played at Folken in Stavanger, Norway and the local newspaper rated the thirty-five minute concert one out of ten. I would fool myself if I disagreed.

It was a tragic concert, they played nine and a half songs with very little to no enthusiasm, and the instruments sounded horrible. People had been waiting for two and a half hours for the concert to start, got thirty five minutes of music before Thomas left the stage in the middle of "Sunny Day." They thought he went to pee. Eventually they all had to leave the venue, most of them disappointed, some very angry, a lot of them very confused. The story of the concert at Folken actually has more to do with what happened before the band went on stage than after they did:

It started after the concert at Rockefeller in Oslo on the 1st. It was a good concert, but Dagbladet rated it three out of six and insulted the band in his review. Morale got low, and was lowered by the fact that one moron in the audience at the concert at Studentersamfunnet in Trondheim on the 2nd threw beer at the band. After the concert, bass player Fredrik Rosland left the band and went home to Oslo because of illness. On their way to Volda on the 3rd, the band bus broke down, and had to be left behind along with the tour manager Ajey. The band and some instruments were crammed into a Toyota Corolla driven by filmmaker Hannemann, who was following them at the time.

The band got to Stavanger in the afternoon, but without their equipment. Soundcheck was re-scheduled to start at half past eight. Doors were supposed to open at nine. Both violinist Eivind, guitarist Espen and Thomas were feeling bad from fever and a cold, but the mood was fairly good until the band realized that the concert organizers had crammed another event into the scheduled, and this event was one hour overdue. At half past nine, the band finally got to load their equipment onto the stage. The problems started at around ten, when things were still not ready for a soundcheck, and the sound technicians from Folken were still trying to get the soundboard to work.

Thomas had a fit, threw a glass of beer into a wall, threw a table down some stairs and slammed some doors. The concert was canceled, as was the rest of the tour. After fifteen minutes of talking, Ajey, who had been reunited with the band only a couple of hours earlier, managed to convince Thomas that they had to play, or they would lose money. Understandable that they did not want to lose money on the trip, but in hindsight not a very wise decision.

Thomas agreed to do the show, but only if he got to sit in the back of the stage, with his back towards the audience and if he did not have to say anything. They finally got to do a soundcheck, and people were let into the venue. Chairs and tables had been put up, and I would estimate there were about one hundred and twenty people in the audience.

The band got on stage in total darkness, and Thomas tried to explain why things were this way, by saying that they had had problems for four days in a row, that they had not seen their clothes for four days and that he had not gotten his medicine for four days. He said he was not in the mood for facing his audience, that he could not look them in the eyes and that they were only playing for the payment that night. The audience laughed, as they thought he was joking. I can only imagine what went through Thomas' head when he heard their reaction, but I assume it did nothing to improve his mood.

The concert was horrible, and totally improvised. Thomas would start playing on the acoustic guitar, and the others would have to guess what they were about to play. Apart from the short speech in the beginning, not a word was said from the people on stage for the next thirty-five minutes, until Espen turned around and asked "did he just leave the stage?" when Thomas all of a sudden stopped singing and playing and ran off the stage. The Hives' "Hate To Say I Told You So" was put on the stereo, and a confused audience started chanting for more, which they got none of. Disappointed, they had to leave. What they got for the money they spent on their ticket was little to none.

I hate having to write all of this, because I love the people in the band and what they do, and I wish for only good things to happen to them. But the concert on Wednesday was bad, incredibly bad. But I was with the band since half past four until after the concert, and though I do not feel justified to excuse their bad concert, I feel I have to explain it by writing what I have. It turned out to be a very bad evening due to the organizers treating the band very badly, and other factors from the past couple of days adding to the band's and especially Thomas' frustration. They came from the best concert on the tour in Bergen one night to amateurish treatment the next.

I understand the way the band reacted, but I can not excuse them for it. It was a horrible concert, end of story. It was terrible that this happened to them, it should not have happened, but more importantly, they should make sure it never ever happens again. There were a lot of unhappy people in the audience, and these will probably never give St. Thomas a second chance.

March 7th 2002 - The concert at Folken in Stavanger, Norway last night was horrible. I do not feel like ever writing about it, but I know I should, because there were a lot of things happening last night that those who were not there before the concert will ever get to know about. It explains why things turned out so bad, but I do not feel like writing about it right now, maybe tomorrow. I have added the setlist to the concert chronology.

Before the concert, I had dinner with Thomas, and got to know a lot of interesting stuff. I also talked a bit to Eivind, Espen and Ajey the tour manager, and here is some of the information I got to know:

St. Thomas has covered "The Railroad" for the Lee Hazlewood tribute album "Total Lee" that is scheduled to be released on June 3rd by City Slang. Hazlewood has listened to all the covers that will be included, and says he likes St. Thomas' cover the best. Other artists on the album will include Madrugada, Erlend Øye from Kings Of Convenience, Evan Dando from Lemonheads, Lambchop, Calexico, Larmousse and Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley from Pulp.

The five concerts in Breat Britan where St. Thomas opened for Richard Hawley went very well, and Hawley reportedly liked the band's music rather well. They played in venues that took between two hundred and six hundred people. The band has been happy with all concerts on the tour so far, thinking the one in Bergen was the best one, followed by the one in London, while the ones in Glasgow and Trondheim were not such great concerts.

Erik Hannemann, the photographer from the Norwegian newspaper VG who is currently making a film documentary about the band, took over the role as tour manager after the bus collapsed before reaching Volda. Ajey the actual tour manager was left behind, and had to make his way over the mountains by himself, but he reportedly had a nice time watching football on the television on Sunday night, even though his favorite team Manchester United managed only a draw against Derby. Hannemann had to drive the band in his small Toyota Carolla, and became good friends with the band. Due to all the incidents during the first couple of days of the Norwegian tour, he should have a lot of good material already. He followed the band from Oslo to Bergen, and is planning on re-joining them in Germany.

Thomas played a solo performance at Spellemannsprisen in Oslo Spektrum in Oslo, Norway on the 1st. Spellemannsprisen is the Norwegian version of the Grammy Awards, and is aired on live television, but Thomas' job was to warm up the audience before the broadcast. He performed "New Apartment" and "Strangers Out Of Blue." He had a very busy Friday, as he was interviewed for Musikkmisjonen on the Norwegian radio station NRK Petre, filmed performing "New Apartment" and then interviewed by Stereo on the Norwegian television channel, interviewed for the English radio channel BBC Radio and the German newspaper Der Spiegel, he performed at Spellemannsprisen and then with the rest of the band at Rockefeller.

The interview for Musikkmisjonen was broadcast on Petre last night. It was rather funny, and rather informative, most of the information revealed in the interview can also be found on previous entries on this news page. Also, Stereo aired the footage they shot of Thomas at Route 66 in Oslo, they showed clips of him performing "New Apartment," a rather interesting interview with him about his social anxcieties, clips from the "Cornerman" and "Take A Dance With Me" music videos plus clips from Thomas' first appearance on television, an interview about half a year ago.

There will be a rather big article about St. Thomas in the Norwegian music magazine Mute, published today. Thomas was interviewed in Copenhagen, Denmark, and since 'cool' pictures were supposed to go with the article, he had to pose in a Gluecifer t-shirt, next to a lot of empty beer bootles. I have not gotten ahold of the magazine, but it is supposed to be rather good.

A fan told Thomas that in Bergamo, Italy, a local record store has "Mysterious Walks" displayed in the front windows. "Mysterious Walks" has sold more than "I'm Coming Home" in Italy, as they got a very good publishing deal for the debut album in that country.

The Norwegian band Madrugada have been recording demos for their next album in Halden, Norway for three weeks in February. Eivind joined them the last five days to add violin to some of the thirty to forty tracks they are working on. The album is expected to be recorded in about a month or two, whether Eivind will also join them during these sessions is unknown. Thanks a lot to Thomas, Eivind, Espen and Ajey for all of this information.

March 5th 2002 - Some sad news today, as things are not going very well in the St. Thomas World at the moment. The concert at Rockefeller got a bad rating in the newspaper Dagbladet, which has had an impact on the band's self esteem. Fredrik Rosland, the bass player, left the band after the second concert of the Norwegian tour, at Studentersamfunnet in Trondheim on the 2nd, where the audience threw beer at the band. Then the tour bus broke down on their way to the third concert, in Volda. There the band apparently had more than a little bit to drink before the concert, and played "the worst version of 'Cornerman' you will ever get to hear."

Officially, Fredrik is sick and has gone back to Oslo, but Thomas is quoted as saying "I do not think he's coming back on the tour. It's very sad." Thomas also claims they were not drunk on stage in Volda, but only got drunk afterwards. "That we do not have a bass any longer is a problem," he says. Due to this, the music is less rock-based, but Thomas says he thought it worked rather well. All of this was reported in an article in Sunnmørsposten, which you can read here. Nettavisen also put up an article about this, here.

The Lee Hazlewood tribute album is scheduled for release on June 3rd through City Slang. It has not been revealed which track St. Thomas has covered for the album. Thanks a lot to Raymond Hauger for this information.

March 4th 2002 - The Norwegian director Erik Hannemann is making a St. Thomas documentary to finish off his studies at the London Film School. He started filming in Sheffield on February 26th, and will follow the band on their tour this Spring, and sees the performance at Royal Albert Hall in London, England on May 7th as a natural end for the documentary. Hannemann hopes to have his documentary finished by July, and even though it is made as an exam for school, he hopes to eventually get to show it to others.

"I've thrown myself into this, cause it fascinates me that a person like St. Thomas can reach such a sophisticated press as the English one. The idea came after I saw St. Thomas at a phenomenal concert at a place called Spitz in London before Christmas. He has a dialogue with the audience that is very original, and not the least funny, and sometimes I wonder what is best, the music or the talking between the songs," Hannemann says.

Thanks a lot to this article in Oslopuls for this information. In the end of the article it is also mentioned that the German newspaper Der Spiegel travelled to Oslo for St. Thomas' concert on March 1st to write a piece on him, as he is currently living in Berlin.

The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet published a not-very-positive review of the concert at Rockefeller in Oslo, Norway on the 1st. The review, which can be read here rates the concert three out of six, and the complaints are mainly focused on lack of dynamics and variation, plus the reviewer thought there was too much un-focused talking between the songs, mainly in English, that was 'seldomly funny.' It has to be mentioned that other reviewers and audience members at the concert did not share this reviewer's thoughts.

When it comes to the concert in Egersund, Norway on next Thursday, I have been looking forward to this one as it is in my home town, and as I was supposed to write an article about it in the local newspaper. But at midday Monday March 4th, a mere three days before the concert is scheduled to start, the people at the venue are, believe it or not, still undecided on whether they actually want to organize the concert or not.

Some updates to the concert chronology and the articles sections.

March 1st 2002 - The program Musikkmisjonen on the Norwegian radio channel NRK P3 will air a St. Thomas interview next Wednesday, on the 6th. The program is broadcast between 21:00 and 00:00, and host Kristin Winsents has met Thomas and members of his The Magic Club for a talk. Thomas had some language problems, and mixed between north-norwegian dialect, his normal east-Norwegian dialect and English, while talking about the English concert audience, Royal Albert Hall and a little bit about Nashville. Thanks a lot to Terje Ramberg from Musikkmisjonen for this information. It should be possible to listen to the program online on the channel's homepage.

---