Emanuel Lundgren from I’m From Barcelona

I'm From Barcelona is not from Barcelona.  They're from Jönköping, Sweden.  But they sing in English.  All fucking 29 band members.


Chief Magazine: How did the band come together?

Emanuel Lundgren: I wanted to squeeze maximum fun into my four-week vacation in the summer of 2005. I had an idea of some euphoric pop songs and I asked the friends that I hang out with if they wanted to participate on these recordings. It was extremely spontaneous.

Are there cliques within the group? What other activities do you do as a group... dodgeball, team sports, etc?

In a big group like this, there are always natural groups within the group. You could say it like this: we have the ones in the front of the bus, the ones in the back, and some people blending in-between. I know that there are people watching Twin Peaks episodes a day a week, and we tried playing football once a week this summer. A lot of people got injured. Sometimes we take a coffee together on Mondays. It’s almost like a real version of the TV series Friends when that happens. People kind of drop in and out.

Is 29 the magic number or would you keep growing whenever talented friends wanted to join up? How big is too big?

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I don’t know if there’s a magic number. Maybe that’s what we’re looking for. When we’re doing gigs we are everything from 18 to 29. It’s a question of bus size and taking time off work.

Who's the toughest of the bunch?

 Good question! I think the ladies in I’m from Barcelona are the toughest of our bunch.

What does everybody do when I'm From Barcelona is off? What kind of hobbies, side bands, excursions have you taken?

There are a lot of singers and songwriters in the band that are worth checking out. There have been some crazy after-rehearsal jams in IFB, and I believe interesting things will appear in the future. The dream is to have our own support act within the band. Check out: Art Vayelo, Working Man, Mathias, Sebbe, Valley Days, Membrillo,The Sound of Julius Larsson.

Tell me about the recording process. Is there a strategy – like an athletic team – everybody plays a position? Is it hard to reel everybody in to focus?

There is no strategy, other than trying to squeeze everybody in and having a good time while doing it. Often I think it’s nice to record a couple of songs in one day, working as fast as possible. It’s often a bunch of people having a party in one corner and a couple of us trying to record in the other. There are of course a lot of background noises on our tracks.
 
Your music is quite accessible/happy - a frolic-in-the-open kind of vibe. Is there a dark side to IFB? Skulls in the closet?

I think if you ask people one by one you’ll find some skulls, but as a band there’s actually a very good vibe going. There’s a guy with some fruit problems though. I can’t go into that.
 
How does IFB travel together? Any good group travel stories?

We often go by bus. Sometimes we have to use low budget airlines. When we were going home last tour, we ended up in Brussels and the flight was cancelled. There we were, twenty people in the middle of the night, and there were no flights until three days later. We had to rent a bus that took us all the way to Sweden. A nightmare.

What does IFB like listening to? Are there any bands that the whole lot of you can agree on?

We have all musical tastes in the band I guess and it’s hard to find something that everybody likes. People listen to everything from Prince and Lionel Richie to Nitzer Ebb and Balkan music. One night we had a DJ session with the band at a local bar, and I’ve never seen a more confused crowd. We played like 15 minutes each, and it was like traveling around the world with the last 50 years of music.

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In your video, “We're From Barcelona”, you take a class picture setup and turn it into a fun and crazy display, school gym and all. How did you come up with that? How long did it take to shoot? Is that a fan blowing your hair or a fellow bandmate?

The director of the video (Andreas Nilsson) saw a picture of us lining up after a rehearsal. We reminded him of a school class and he came up with the idea. I think it took around six hours to shoot. Actually it’s not a fan blowing my hair. I’ll reveal the secret now: Two people from the band are waving things to create air from one side, and David the trumpet player is waving my tie so it looks like it’s blowing in the wind.

What do you see as the future of IFB? Where will you be in 5, 10, 100 years?

I thought that this band would last for four weeks, so looking into the future really isn’t my thing. But we’ll keep going as long as it’s still fun. A reunion tour with us as seniors would be great!

Are we going to see a tour of Spain?

Why not? If someone there wants us to come, we’ll come! We had a really good time In Barcelona at the Primavera Sound festival last summer!
 
Why sing in English instead of Swedish?

Only around 8 million people understand Swedish, so you exclude a lot of people if you sing in our language. And we grow up listening to English pop music, so in a weird way it feels more natural to sing in it. I even sang in made up English before I knew how to speak it.

Non-IFB related: what is the biggest adrenaline boost you have ever experienced? Biggest risk you ever took? Craziest thing you ever got away with?

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It must have been when I almost was born four months to early.  It was so dark in there that I couldn’t see my watch. I even tried to count 1001, 1002, 1003 and so on, but I must have counted too fast. So I kind of panicked and tried to get out. My mother had to stay in hospital for several weeks.

Downloads

Barcelona Loves You.mp3

Websites

www.imfrombarcelona.com
www.myspace.com/imfrombarcelona

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