I used to be a proud owner of a red Puch Dakota 1969 (it looked like the one in the image). Not anymore. I bought it in the spring of 1977. The price was 900 SEK (which is about 5000 SEK or $450 in today's money). I asked my father, who was a brilliant mechanic, for advice. Don't buy it, he said. It's got a lot of problems that needs to be fixed. Of course, I didn't listen. However, my father helped me innumerable times with dismounting and mounting, and fixing problems that I couldn't solve on my own (which initially meant every conceivable problem). To name a few: faulty kickstand because of a missing locking ring, faulty exhaust pipe support, missing bolts in the motor mount (quite dangerous), missing rubber on the kickstarter, which meant that you slipped and the kickstarter hit you hard on your calf. There were so much I didn't know. Clutch- and gaswires were consumables to me, until my father told me that they should be greased to avoid friction. I wasn't allowed to ride the moped initially. I was only 14 and you had to be 15 years old to ride a moped. I rode it anyway. There were two strong contenders to Puch Dakota: Zündapp KS 50 and Suzuki K50. A friend got a new Yamaha from his mother. It had blinkers. The very modern and expensive moped was scornfully nicknamed "the sewing machine" because it was silent, which was in contradiction with the very idea of a moped. I chose Puch Dakota for its looks, stylishness and roaring sound. The highest allowed speed was 30 km/h (19 mph). Speed was an obsession. How fast does is go? No one told the truth and we all exaggerated. In the small town where I grew up your unduly estimate were met by the hard and boorish phrase: "Yeah right, downhill and with diarrhea". Obsession with speed led to an obsession with souping up. There were basically five methods 1) sprocketing (changing to a front sprocket with more cogs than the original). A front sprocket with more cogs will lead to a higher top speed at the cost of quick initial acceleration, 2) jack the piston (filing a jack in the lower edge of the piston). Hereby, the motor will get more fuel, 3) removing the plug from the intake manifold. This will create a higher effect, 4) flatten the cylinder head. This will lead to better compression, 5) removing the insert plug from the exhaust muffler. There were other methods, but this goes beyond the concept of souping up according to my conservative view. Souping up meant engine wear, but we were young and lacked the basics of consequence thinking.   

In those days, riding a moped had a twofold purpose: as a means of transportation and as a vehicle (no pun intended) to impress girls (limited success). Owning a moped wasn't without incidents. One time someone had attached tin foil to the spark plug (prank). Another time someone had disconnected the fuel hose and opened the valve (evil deed). We rode all year on bald tires, which meant hard tumbles when you were riding on snowy and icy roads. I had a red seat warmer in artificial fiber which looked like the remains of a run over Afghan coat (it was the 1970s). Riding in cold winter climate meant freeezing. I've never frozen so much in my life. I still remember a tough guy who rode 10 km (about 6 miles) in just a thin leather jacket and jeans to a remote discoteque. It was minus 20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) equivalent to a speed/wind cooling effect of minus 35 Celsius (-31 Fahrenheit). The guy had to be lifted off the moped and brought inside for defrosting. Later that night when feeling and movement had returned to his limbs he casually sat up again and rode home. Appearance is everything. There were so many peculiar Swedish slang words: "snutjag" (cop chase), "soppatorsk" (run out of gas) and "xxxxxxxxxx" (unprintable obscene word for moped seat warmer). We revved our engines. We broke all traffic rules. We were born to be wild. What we didn't know was that the popularity was about to end. A law of mandatory crash helmets was introduced 1978, which meant that the "born to be wild" vibe was gone. Anyway, I had begun upper secondary school. A moped wasn't compatible with my new preppy style. I sold the moped. To whom, I don't remember. But, I remember that it was a bad deal since prices had plummeted. I could have kept it, but I didn't. Today, you will have to pay about 25-30000 SEK or $2250-2700 for a Puch Dakota on the used market. All I have left is the lyrics: "Like a true nature's child / We were born, born to be wild / We can climb so high / I never wanna die".

How can Spotify be profitable? Ambition, hard work and ingenuity? No, think again. It's greed, cynism and moral poverty that have made them profitable. Their business model is no longer to convert their freemium users to premium users. Their new strategy is to replace real artistst with fake ones. The bean counters have concluded that this is more profitable. In short: price dumping on real music and cutthroat pricing on real artists. The new strategy is called "perfect fit content", which is an euphemism for massproduction and playlists. One anonymous "creator" can fabricate tons of fake artists. Despite their biographies the fake artists are nowhere to be found. They don't exist. The "creators" have a strong incitament to be placed on a "curated" (which here means manipulated) playlist. The original Spotify motto jars: "Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it." If the supply side is built on fake, what about the demand side? Well, Spotify users have never cared about music, have they? Real or fake, it's all the same to them. They can't even explore or choose music for themselves, hence the playlists. The gravity of the situation could not be worse. I'm surprised that the record companies still put up with Spotify. When streaming came along the companies were desperate and struck a terrible bad deal. They left their artists out to dry. Since then, record companies haven't been able to change the playing field or change the rules. It's now a race to the bottom as to who can care less. Spotify will must likely win, while music dies in the dark. Save what can be saved. Buy music and merchandise directly from the artist or through Bandcamp. 

I try to predict the future for the gothic country genre. The predictions are limited to the data and knowledge available to me, and may not be entirely accurate or comprehensive. The seer of seers, Nostradamus, didn't present disclaimers. Nostradamus is known for his book Les Prophéties published in 1555, a collection of no less than 946 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events. Some people believe that his prophecies are true. Nostradamus has purportedly predicted the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and of Adolf Hitler, both world wars, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Moon landing, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Nostradamus has also predicted major events for 2025. War and plague. An asteroid threatens Earth. Global politics will shift. Natural disasters will increase. Economic instability is coming. A new world currency will emerge. A new power will rise from floods. Medical technology will advance. Space exploration will yield discoveries. All in all, a rather gloomy picture of what is going to happen next year. Should we be concerned? Well, it's in our nature to read into things that aren't there. Of the 946 predictions attributed to Nostradamus, only about seventy are considered to have had some kind of fulfillment, although this is only if you ignore the obvious and stretch credulity. For example, the Moon landing has been derived from "He will come to travel to the corner of Luna, where he will be captured and placed in a strange land". A very benevolent interpretation. The effectiveness is close to zero. Obviously, we want to believe. I also want to believe (at least when it comes to the future of the gothic country genre).  

This year turned out to be a modest year when it comes to number of releases. I count to six releases: Oldboy of the Fens (The Stillness And The Peace), Federale (Reverb & Seduction), Slim Cessna's Auto Club (Kinnery of Lupercalia; Buell Legion), Those Poor Bastards (Back To The Primitive), Lonesome Wyatt & The Holy Spooks (Afraid) and Swarme Of Beese (Waiting for a Sign). In terms of quality, 2024 was a good year. 

What about next year? I have three wishes for 2025. The first wish: a new gothic country album from Christian Williams. He relasead a cover, Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice", It's Alright" in November 2024 on Bandcamp so the dream is still alive. The second wish: to acquire one of the remaining three of the hard-to-find four missing albums, read more here (opens in a new window). The third wish: to get my Devil's Ruin Records collection complete. At the moment, I got 36 out of 40 registered albums on Discogs. The remaining four albums were probably never manufactured and distributed, read more here (opens in a new window). Well, then my third wish is a complete collection of Foddershock albums (this dream seems very far away).

What about new album releases in 2025? This is what I know: The Devil Makes Three (Spirits), The Woodbox Gang (untitled) is coming and Slackeye Slim is working on a new project. That's all. It looks like it's going to be a meager year, but you never know. Sons of Perdition will maybe or maybe not release their new album (Caul-Birth King and Other Abruptions). Those Poor Bastards release a new album now and then. So maybe it's time again. Antic Clay (Broom of Fire) has been scheduled for seven years in a row. Maybe the upcoming year is the year when it will finally happen? We will see what the future brings. 

Swarme of Beese first album "Backwoods of my Mind" was released in 2022. Their second album "Fruits of the Golden Land" was released in 2023. Their third album "Waiting for a Sign" was released in December 2024. You might get the impression that Swarme of Beese is stuck under a bad contract and forced to release an album a year due to a tiny, fine printed clause. Artists and bands doesn't seem to respond well when others try to limit their artistic freedom. No comparison intended, but Neil Young was charged by his label Geffen that he was violating his contract by recording "unrepresentative" albums. Backwood Modern Recordings isn't Geffen and besides Swarme of Beese make "representative" albums. The high production rate must be sought elsewhere. Swarme of Beese was orinally formed as The Victor Mourning in Austin, TX in 2008. They released their one and only album "A Handful of Locusts" in 2010. Between 2010–2017 the band members were divided between Texas and Tennessee, and relocated back to Austin in 2018. They decided to change their band name to reflect their new musical direction. Seems like that they now are making up for lost time. Swarme of Beese make timeless music for adults. From the product declaration of the new album: "Beginning with a meditation on bird migration that may be interpreted as a metaphor for the cycle of life, the album’s nine evocative songs travel through time, visiting places that include a WWI battlefield on Christmas Eve, and the cemetery of an abandoned 19th-century lunatic asylum. Whether imagining a young man’s daydreams in the depths of a Minnesota winter, or recalling a romantic awakening on a sultry Texas evening — and finally culminating in an urgent, apocalyptic lament on the climate/environmental crisis, the poetic songwriting is always imbued with a strong spirit of place and an American gothic undercurrent."

The third album from the Austin trio is a bit more folksy than gothic. I don't mind as long it's roots music with quality. A lot of thought and work has been put into the production of this album. The song themes are varied, to say the least. For example, the song "Christmas Truce". It refers to when British, Belgian and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the Western front in 1914. The military command didn't like it. Human actions like this could undermine morale. It happened anyway. Antother song is "Kill a Spider", which was recorded and released digitally by The Victor Mourning already in 2013. The song is inspired by the story of Frankie Silver who allegedly killed her husband with an axe in 1831. Frankie was charged with the crime, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Despite strong public support for clemency, Frankie was hanged, and her body was buried in an unmarked grave. This later version is different from the 2013 version. However, I like both versions. Despite the varied themes, it's a focused and coherent album.  

The best songs are "Gone on the Wing", "Red House", "Burn that Bridge Down", "Kill a Spider", "10 000 Frozen Lakes" and, last but not least, "Spaces in Between". Executive summary: another solid album from Swarme of Beese. You can listen to "Waiting for Sign" and buy it in the format of your choice at Bandcamp, just click here (opens in a new window).     

Do you want to start a debate? Then the quickest way is to join a forum or group for progressive rock and naively ask which band, Yes or Genesis, is the best. You will not receive any scorn, hateful comments or death threats. Progressive rock fans are kind, reflective and forgiving. You will probably start a polite academic discussion with arguments and counterarguments. Of course, with a few reservations or qualifications. My first encounter with Yes and Genesis was in the mid 1970s. I was listening to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple at the time. My neighbour of the same age had skipped the "Big 3" and went directly to listening to Yes and Genesis. In my eyes, very refined and sophisticated. But, I didn't get it. Pretentious song titles, stochastic tempo changes, weird song structures and high-pitched vocals. Not my cup of tea, which was doom and gloom. My second encounter with Yes and Genesis was in the early 1980s during my university studies. More people that had skipped the "Big 3". My initial repulsion had diminished somewhat. But it didn't really take the second time either. However, since then my interest has grown slowly but surely. In my collection today; "The Yes Album", "Fragile", "Close To The Edge", "Tales From Topographic Oceans", "Relayer" and "Going For The One", "Trespass", "Foxtrot", "Selling England By The Pound" and "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". In the coldly analyzing monologues in forums and groups the average progressive rock fan (and it's always a man) normally conclude: "It's close, but I have to go for Yes". Not me. Genesis is the best band. Every day of the week and twice on Sunday.