During my time in bluesband B-sides me and drummer Öjje Forsberg were planning an new group. A full volume, fullt pelt, stage rock group. Because that's what's really fun to play on stage. We are drummer and bass so to find a guitarist to make a trio could not be hard. Me and Öjje we work really good togehter, almost intuitive, and that's important for bass and drums. Well, it turned out to be hard to find a guitarist. We talked to a lot of guitarist but they had other band's, had sold their guitars or ... was married (?)... We got some odd ansvers to our questions. After some time I thought I'd ask my long time friend Todde if he actually played all those guitars he had on his wall. And said: "-Yes of course! I had a punk band in the 70:s. But before the punk era" So he came to the studio to try and it worked out fine.
We formed RMF. The akronym comes from something we can't post but .... we translated it to swedish and it came out "Riktiga Män Får", or Real Men are Allowed" in translation. But just after setting up the webpage and making the logo the Metoo revolution rolled over the world. And then..... Real Men are Allowed ... it did not feel quit so ...fresh... anymore. And since we all are well behaved men, I promise.... we stayed with just RMF. No akrynym. But if anyone asked we said, Real Men are Aloud. Almost right.
We started of by learning some covers. But early on we played a song I wrote for the band. This is The Way We Roll, it was called. And we actually brought it to our first gig. That was big for me, playing one of my songs live. And people liked it. We often started our rehearsal with just messing around with a rhythm, a guitar riff or a bass line and some of those improvs became songs. We worked with them together and then wrote lyrics. So after two years we had a lot of songs written by us in our set list. In december 2018 we had 34 songs that were stage ready and 14 of them were written by us in some shape or form. One of them called Where at the time was released by Gus Muller as Susan's gone earlier this year.
On stage we only had a guitar, bass and drums. Know as a power trio. Don't know why. But to play covers from song that had more instrument originally always was a challenge. We tried to pic out the thing we liked or the things that carried the song and the emphasize that in our cover version. That meant that sometimes the guitar had to play a keyboard part. And then the bass took over the work the rhythym guitar did in the original song. That happend in guitar solos to when the guitar went off and then the bass did fill in rhythym guitars work. Often I would used my T-rex octaver pedal to fatten the sound and add a higer pitch tone to the bass when the guitar was of doing other things. Sometimes we even sang keyboard parts from the original songs to make a three man cover out of it. But we had a nice fat sound on stage. Yes we worked with intensity when playing and used fat bass and guitar sounds but the mainstay of RMF:s sound was Öjje Forsbergs intense drummin'. He's a natural with the drums and just made RMF:s stage sound work.
RMF was active for about two years. Unfortunately a smal quarrel grew over time and it finally made me quit the band. As It turned out that also marked the end of RMF. But we left some good songs behind. And a couple of videos from our gigs and rehearsals. So below you have a couple of vidoes from Rock club gigs and from our rehearsal studios. Some covers, some RMF songs. But keep an eye out for my favourite and very intense drummer, Öjje Forsberg. He's actually fun just to watch, too.
RMF with Tom Pettys Saving Grace
RMF with Creedence's Fortunate son
Morticia by RMF in rock club PSB
Rehearsal There must be more, by RMF
Rehearsal Back in the USSR by Beatles in RMF version
/Gus
