Klubb Soul 20 years

For every generation, there’s always been people looking back with longing eyes towards a better time, rather than looking forward and seeing the white canvas of the unwritten future. I suppose it’s a typical human quality where we find comfort in knowing how something turned out, rather than taking some form of leap into what is unknown.

There’s a scene in the movie ”Midnight in Paris”, where Adriana (played beautifully by Marion Cotilliard) ventilates her thoughts with Owen Wilson’s troubled-writer-character Gil as they both go back in time. The fact that Gil travels back in time when he’s already a time-traveller doesn’t seem to bother anyone as much as it perhaps should. Adriana carefully picks her own brain and at the same time realizes that Gil and her both look back to a lost era of which they consider to be the Golden Age. For Gil it’s Paris in the 1920s, while Adriana longs to go back in time to la Belle Époque of the 1890s.

There, they learn from Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, after asking them which era they consider to be the best, that they consider it to be the Renaissance. The point which is trying to be made acquires some substance here, and the lesson to learn, if there even is one, is that there is always going to be, for every generation, people looking back to the past as something much greater than the era in which they are themselves living.

Together with my friends I always enjoy stepping in to the sweaty and vibrating venue Fasching at Kungsgatan in central Stockholm. Every time I come here, I immediately am brought back to an era of which I was never part of. Not even close. The Sixties undoubtedly had one of the greatest – if not the greatest – music scenes of the 20th century. You had the development and mainstreaming of musical genres such as folk, country, jazz, rhythm n’ blues and so on. But one of them stood out because of it’s closely related name to what it actually felt like to listen to this particular genre of music. Soul.

The word just leaps out of your mouth as you utter it, and then it bounces back and washes over you like a hot shower. The music made during soul music’s greatest era, the Sixties, is the definite foundation on which it still rests solid. You still have acts who try to make the same style of soul music like back in the glory days – see, I too have an opinion of a phenomenal era – but there’s nothing like hearing a scratched up vinyl record, probably recorded and pressed during the Sixties, being played way too loud at a venue in Stockholm in 2013.

Bodies shaking in all kinds of directions, young people twirling their bodies together with people whom were most likely alive when this music was new. Which makes Fasching and Club Soul such a fascinating and wonderful experience. You have the mixing of a lot of different age groups, a mix that you would in fact only see at concerts with artists like Bruce Springsteen or Elton John because of their connection with generations of the ’60s, ’70s, 80s, 90s, and ’00s. It’s all one symbiotic blob and there’s really no scene to speak of.

Fasching is Scandinavia’s largest organizer of jazz music, but they pride themselves in focusing a great deal on soul music as well. One night they might have a jazz jam, while the next a night full of soul music with all these different, nostalgic soul bands come together and play music. There’s also the fact that Fasching does not have a particular aim when it comes to cultural politics nor is it an institution of any kind.

Club Soul came about when the demand for American black dance music grew far greater than the supply of Stockholm’s nightlife during the early nineties. Robert Baum and Fredrik Ekander decided to do something about this, and in September of 1993, Club Soul was officially open. Baum and Ekander, together with resident DJ Munken, has since then been providing Stockholmers with one of the coolest and laid back clubs you could visit.

During the early Nineties, no other club in Stockholm played soul music on a regular basis, which made Club Soul gather up a fan base pretty quickly and people started returning to the fun-loving dance club.

Twenty years later, Club Soul celebrated their 20th anniversary on the 30th of November. Joining Fasching for the night was Patrik Kolar & His Funky Friends playing live, as well as resident DJ Munken and guest djs who took over the stage until the wee hours of the night.

The Funky Friends are an energetic live act, with an impressively substantial amount of people on stage. With four horns, two guitars, bass, congas, organs, drums and synthesizers, the sound image created by the band is pretty impressive.

Supporting them were a couple of special guests – Magnus Carlsson of the Weeping Willows being among them. I’m sitting on the balcony with an impeccable IPA in my hand, when Carlsson joins the band as they tear into Weeping Willows singer’s hit song ”From Now On”. The atmosphere is thick with excitement as Magnus Carlsson reminds the people how great it is to be playing at Stockholm’s finest club.

To this day, people come there to listen to well-made music, dance and enjoy themselves. Why this particular “Club Soul” has survived for twenty years in the same venue, legendary & lovely Fasching, is because of the fact that you don’t need to dress a certain way, act a certain way, dance a certain way or be a certain way there. You just be. That’s all. Nothing more is needed or asked from you. Which is kind of fantastic.

Words by David Johansson