Monday, March 7, 2011

Sort Sol/Sods live on Beatbox 1987



About a year ago, I posted a different recording of the Sort Sol/Sods live clip seen in the above YouTube video. The video I posted back then is off my own Betamax tape which I taped when the concert was broadcast back in '87. And I must have played that tape at least 300 times over the years - and unfortunately that shows!! My tape is WORN!!!!! However, I've just discovered that someone else taped the same live show and uploaded it about a month ago ... and the picture quality is heaps better!!!

My comments from the original posting:

SORT SOL (aka SODS)
Three tracks live (DR TV, Denmark, 1987)

1) Blood on the Saddle
2) Searching Down the Block
3) Pinocchio Loose (aka Pinocchio on the Loose)
[the track list in the headline to the new upload is incorrect! "Fire Engine" is not played!!]

This is SORT SOL at their best! In 1987 Danish state tv ran a series of music shows entitled "Musicbox" and to me this was definitely the highlight of the series.

SORT SOL started out in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1978 as a full-on punk band under the name of SODS. Their debut LP "Minutes to go" is a mile stone in Danish punk music but soon after the release they got bored with the three cord limitations that punk music offered and on their second LP "Under en sort sol" they had moved in a more avantgarde'ish direction.

Their third LP "Dagger & Guitar" is the first one where they use the name SORT SOL but what many new fans don't realise is the band actually used both names for years to come. And if you were a "real" fan you kept calling them SODS. "Sort Sol" was for wanna-be fans, haha. I don't think I started using the Sort Sol moniker till 1990 or something. LOL.

On "Dagger & Guitar" SORT SOL recorded two tracks with LYDIA LUNCH. If you do a YouTube search you'll find their "Boy/Girl" track that features miss Lunch. It's uploaded by someone else in Canada (G'day mate, whoever you are) but (via other traders) the clip comes from a recording I did in 1984 when television in Denmark broadcast a documentary about the band called "OMKRING EN SORT SOL - et portraet af SODS".

There was a pretty big gap between the third and fourth LP and when "Everything that rises must converge" finally came out in 1987 their sound had become the violent music you'll hear on this live recording. Like I said this is the band at their best in my opinion. Later records never quite reached the intensity and violent rawness as on "Everything".

The original title of the LP was actually going to be "The Violent Bear it Away" but they change it before it was released. The CD version of the album, which wasn't released till many years later, contains a bonus disc for which they used the title.


For the initial post go here.

2 comments:

  1. This is so great, I was in Copenhagen looking for this video after seeing your Betamax version. Alas, no luck. I live in the US so finding anything by Sort Sol is next to impossible. I've managed to put the entire discography together through various trades and picked up a few records. I'd love to hear any concert bootlegs, particulary from the post "Everything" pre-"Flow". Cheers!

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  2. Hey there,

    I'm sorry to hear you spent time in Copenhagen looking for this live video: The upload is from a TV broadcast and was never released on video. Beatbox was a music show that used to be broadcast every two weeks back in 1987. This was the only time Sort Sol was on the show actually.

    Bootlegs: Someone gave me a CD bootleg from around that period but the sound was so-so and I'm not even sure where I've got it (I still have it somewhere tho, I don't throw away anything, haha). I'm sure you've already checked YouTube for live stuff but most of it is newer stuff, not from the late 80s (my fave SS period). I also have the documentary film "Omkring en Sort Sol - et portræt af Sods" which I taped from TV in 1984 (yes, I'm that old. Argh). The Lydia Lunch/SS video on YT is from that film.

    Very cool to hear from a Sort Sol fan in the US! :D

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