Things move around so fast at SPOT Festival that you’ll have the horrible feeling you’re missing the good stuff, no matter how hard you try to be on time at each event. That feeling hit me in the afternoon of day three. I felt unarmed before the magnitude of the festival and quite disappointed by the size of the GoBoat—as for some reason I had pictured in my mind a fancy yacht rather than a catamaran. So, upon suggestion of the photographer, I decided to hide at Fidels’ while sipping an Old-fashioned and wait for the interview with Go Go Berlin.
By Alessandro Amato, photos by Justin Yang (Jutland Station).
All five members Christian, Mikkel, Anders, Emil and Christoffer were waiting for us at Pica Pica Vin Bodega sitting on leather chairs and wooden barrels. Because they were waiting for us, I felt the urge to make up for it by showing off my far-from-complete knowledge of wine. It worked; the Italian Langhe Rosso broke the ice and set the right atmosphere for a delightful conversation.
How do you like the wine?
Christoffer: Okay, I puked five times this morning but I’ll try it… Mmm good!
Christian: I think this is really soft, nice!
I’ve been wondering about the name Go Go Berlin, does it have a story?
Christoffer: We’re still wondering about that too. But yeah, it was a pretty random decision. The first show we had was quite spontaneous; I remember they called me and said “Listen, we play again in two weeks” and I said “Ok, what’s the name of the band?” “Go Go Berlin!” “Alright!”
Christian: You can say it’s somehow linked to Whiskey a Go Go, but we never really thought about it. But hey! It’s better than Cane Sugar!
Mikkel: Haha yeah it was never meant to be like that, we just came up with it.
Do you consider yourselves as a local band?
Mikkel: Yes, it’s always been Aarhus. We are all more or less from this area; if we needed to go out or do anything else we would come here in town.
Christian: Since the music academy, we moved back to Aarhus and we have always been around here. So yes, you can say we’re an Aarhusian band.
So where can you find the Aarhus, or the Jutland influence in your music?
Christian: This is a good question. Since Aarhus is not such a big city, although with a lot of young people, you always feel like, hmm, like you’re fucking the same girls or having the same friends (laughs). No wait, you always have common friends on Facebook, Aarhus is a student city so people want you to read books and this made us want to break out and distinguish ourselves. We were different from a lot of people and for us it was a rebellious thing, even if we didn’t want to be different.
Mikkel: I think that you can see these feelings in our lyrics, but I would say that it’s more the sound of us trying to get away from Aarhus. You can say there is a Scandinavian sound in our music, a sort of humbleness in our sound.
Christian: Yeah and even if we play rock’n’roll our melodies always have some melancholy in them, which is something that we don’t seek at all.
Do you think it’s hard to be yourself as a band here in Scandinavia?
Christoffer: I remember in the beginning that some people would say “hey what’s that hair you have, are you a girl or something?”, but it happens to everyone.
Mikkel: I think that it’s actually pretty easy here in Denmark. You can be gay, you can be a freak or whatever you want here and everything’s cool. It’s not like Russia…
Christoffer: There is one thing though, especially here in Aarhus people tend to have the same haircut and wear the same clothes. They all go to the same shop, what’s it called again? Oh yeahWeekday! You see, they have a tendency to live and think within a square, and if you’re out of it they can be really judgmental.
Christian: And you know, here in Denmark if you are alternative people would think it’s on purpose. People would tell you to get down from the high horse as we say.
You went to Germany and the Netherlands on tour lately, where else have you been or are you planning to go to?
Mikkel: Oh we went to a lot of places, even China and India. But when you go to a place just once it’s like the water washing the shore, and if you do that in too many countries you’ll break your neck too early. So we’re trying to narrow it down to Europe and especially Germany, Switzerland, Belgium. It also takes a lot of time to break even money-wise.
Christian: Yeah it takes like six or seven tours to break even. We decided to focus on certain countries so that bookers from other countries would see how good we’re performing here and would offer us something abroad, maybe in the States or UK.
I saw that you signed a contract with Sony Music, how’s that like?
Mikkel: It’s pretty good actually. We like working with them, they’re professional. There might be some improvements to make here and there because so far it’s not been explosive. But in the end it’s also about putting the winner smile on your face, go to places like L.A., write some new music and so on…
Christoffer: Exactly. Visiting studios, meeting people, shaking hands and at some point you find a good contract, a good producer, who knows?
Can I ask one last thing? What’s that tape you have on your shoulder Emil (a green tape on his jacket)?
Emil: Oh I broke my shoulder when I was in Switzerland. I found myself in a massive bar fight and now I’m 0.05% Iron Man because they used some metal to put the bones back together. Actually I was just skiing and I fucked up.
Thanks for the fun interview guys, good luck with the concert and your next tour. Vi Ses!
