Oh! Custer – Answers E-mail Questions
Oh! Custer the band out of Lund, Sweden that I had written about here. They are a mix of shoegaze/pop and I enjoyed quite a few tracks from them.
Anyway, I wanted to know what was thee deal behind the name “Oh! Custer”. I am usually lazy about these things and Esbjörn ended up contacting me prepared to answer anything. He was pretty thorough in answering and he took the time to answer in the late hours of the day (9pm here would be 4am there?)
Here’s what Esbjörn had to say:
Allan: What was the story behind choosing the name “Oh! Custer”?
Esbjörn: The name just popped up sort of. We started the band on a festival where we thought most of the bands sucked and that we probably could be as good as them. So we needed a name. And I thought that I had a pretty solid one but since I had to convince Josef I hid my preferred name in a bunch of other names, such as Oh! Custer. Of course Josef didn’t pick out the one I obviously believed to be the best one. He took the second best Oh! Custer and that’s it. So that’s how we choose oh! custer for a name but it doesn’t explain how I came up with the name.
I guess general Custer is almost a mythic person to us in Europe. We’ve heard his name and maybe read about him in school but we don’t know much about him. But the name has a certain something that makes us drift away I guess. I liked the name and by adding Oh! it became even more strangely attractive. And as a bonus: when pronounced in the southern Swedish tongue it sounds very much like orchestra. That could be it.
Allan: How did you become affiliated with Series Two Records? It seems like a world away in Nebraska.
E: We released a single on Cloudberry Records which lead to some recognition on internet. Chris from Series Two heard us (Allan: Chris has been e-mailing me about some of his labels bands), I think he’d heard us before that too, and asked us if we would like to put out something on his yet to be started label. As Sweden is crowded by good bands and the current scene is not one that is particularly fond of or music we found his offer to be a good one. Somehow our music is more appreciated outside of Sweden/Scandinavia.
Allan: How did the organizers of the New York Popfest find your band?
E: Popfest found us, like chris and all others, through myspace. Chris told us he heard that they might be interested and suddenly we were booking tickets. I think Chris and his hard work promoting us has paid off. A cool thing is that both Cats on Fire and Pants Yell! are coming and almost two years ago I had members form both of those bands in my car in Sweden, driving to another summer festival. Back then no one knew about oh! custer.
Allan: Are there any bands from Sweden that you would recommend?
E: Well, I’m pretty sure that the best swedish band is Fireside and their best album is Elite. It doesn’t get (any?) better! Silverbullit is great too, I think they’re called citizen bird in the states. Monster was a great band and so was Refused and Bob Hund. Cats on Fire is almost swedes so I’ll recommend them (from Finland). I tend to stick to my old goodies these days when the amounts of music you can get your hands on are so overwhelming. It’s too much! But I still explore new bands, they just happen to be from other countries.
There are many good bands but I’m not to into the swedish scene. I think it’s changing now but for a while it has been too much of the same thing. Reusing 90ies eurotechno ideas, sounds and aesthetics. I was never a fan of that. I like it less produced and more straight forward. That scene is/was too much surface. At least that’s how I see it.
A: Anyway since I’m from Toronto and Sundin is a god here. Who’s your favorite hockey player? Sports athlete?
E: Hockey players… Sundin is a good one. Always solid. Zetterberg is good too and of course Forsberg was a gigant and still is which is crazy. Salming is a swedish legend!
But oh! custer is more about soccer. And the best player to come out of Sweden is Henrik Larsson. Ask anyone whos a fan of Barcelona, Manchester United or lives in Scotland. He is one outstanding player. King Henrik of Scotland they call him over there. And we like Scotland because we love Arab Strap.
