I believe strongly in the powers of the universe, the laws of attraction, fate, serendipity and such. I believe that what is meant to be shall be and that what you put out you shall receive, so long as you are open to it. Opportunities are everywhere and once you start focusing your energy and honing in on the frequencies of your true self then things seem to begin to fall into place.
We all have stories that have formed us and forged the paths of our lives. Hardships we have endured, some conquered, others not, People who have come and made an impact, some still around and others a fleeting memory. We all carry with us stories that we tell our selves, some of them true, others a perceived truth and some are façade’s or manifestations, created to protect us from the truth or to shield us from our own fears – sometimes out of necessity and sometimes holding us back from our true potential.
We as humans have a collective history and that is where the name “Our Untold Story” comes from. It came to me in a dream, so vivid that it woke me with a jolt – It felt right, in every way. It says everything that I want to say in just 3 words and it sounds like a band. I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night and began searching the internet to see if the name was already taken;
MySpace, Soundcloud, Facebook, Bandcamp – Everywhere that you could think of looking in the music industry and interwebs of early 2012. I found zero results and quickly began registering the name everywhere, signing up to everything and purchasing the domain name www.ouruntoldstory.com and decided right then and there that I would forever produce music under the name and tell my stories and share my experience in the hope that I would inspire others to pursue their passions and dreams.
Our rehearsals in the beginning were held at my small studio apartment in Vårby Gård, a southern suburb in Stockholm. Johan would bring his bass and plug into a small practice amp that I had, Oscar would keep the beat by tapping his drum sticks on an empty protein powder tub and I would practice holding a hairbrush or deodorant bottle in my hand as a microphone. In those early days I did not want to play guitar so we brought in a mutual friend, Carl Kedar and we would play covers of our favourite songs.
Our first set-list was:
- Smells Like Teen spirit – Nirvana
- Iron Man – Black Sabbath
- Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams – Green Day
- What’s my Age again – Blink 182
We had a lot of heated discussions regarding the sound and how true to the originals we wanted to be, which basically means that I was unable to hit the correct notes, keep the melody or keep the beat and find my queues.
I am a very stubborn person and when I decide I want to achieve something I am relentless in my efforts and will do pretty much whatever it takes to get there… As long as it is my own idea.
Instead of working on my music theory and practising the songs, I decided we should not be a cover band and just play our own original songs. I had a few from my old projects and showed them to the guys. I explained to them that cover bands don’t get famous, using U2 as an example – they didn’t take off until they stopped playing covers and started performing their own songs. Really though my reasons were purely selfish, I thought that if I sang my own songs, no one could tell me they were wrong because I could just say “That’s how it is supposed to sound”. (Let me just add, that even to this day I am still reminded from time to time about the structure, timing, rhythm and even melody and key of my own songs)
I also thought we needed something to beef up our sound and said we needed to find a second guitarist. Kedar was a great rhythm guitarist but I felt we were missing something. What we needed was someone to play awesome, face melting solos.
Johan had just started his studies at Karolinska Medical Institute and mentioned a classmate of his, Mamud [Myan]. Mamud is not human, he studied at Karolinska AND Stockholm School of Economics (Handelshögskolan) at the same time, he runs marathons aaaaand he can play guitar like a god! He came to practice one day and it was settled, he was in.
With our full line up and new set list of original songs we needed an audience to try our material out on. Our very first gig was a house party, in my 33 square metre studio apartment in Vårby Gård. We had 10 of our friends there and had a BLAST! We got a lot of great feedback and knew we had something special.
I knew we had to step it up and move out of rehearsing acoustically in my apartment if we were going to start playing proper shows. So I started researching and found a fully equipped rehearsal space in Alphyddan – Nacka, another Stockholm Suburb. It had everything we needed, a full PA system and drum kit, bass amp and 2 guitar stacks and was cheap.
We started rehearsing 3 times a week and wrote several of our most popular songs in that room. The guy who ran the space, Andreas [Westholm] was this 6 foot something giant with dreads and a beard who played sludge metal and was just awesome. He coached us in our early days and gave us loads of advice. After a while he told us that he recorded bands in his studio which was in the same building and that we should think about recording a demo with him – Which is exactly what we did.
During this time we had some issues with Kedar not turning up to Practice. As I was writing my songs on guitar and teaching him to play them I decided to step up and take over his responsibilities as rhythm guitarist.
We booked our first studio session on the 3rd of September 2012, which so happened to also be the day of our very first real show that I booked at Stampen, a really cool old rock and blues bar in Old Town, Stockholm.