Name: Harald Bjervamoen
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Recreational Interests: Music, sports, movies, magazines, litterature and partying.

Professional Interests: Working as a consultant in the "Computer Business" for nearly 20 years. 

The Early Years

Singles!. It was all about singles in the 60's and Paperback Writer by The Beatles started it all for me. During that period of time they were my heroes but I soon got others too like The Who, The Rolling Stones,  Manfred Mann, The Troogs etc. Most of these bands were Pop or mainstream Rock bands and even if I had heard glimpses of "heavy" guitar oriented rock like Cream and Jimi Hendrix it was not until later namely 1970 before I really got into it.

The Awakening

My first encounter with Deep Purple : In Rock changed my musical tastes... completely. It was a chock to hear the incredible guitars from Richie Blackmore, the singing from Ian Gillan and the amazing all-out heavy music. After this there was no turning back and I started to discover other bands in the same genre like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Even if  these bands are very different they still struck the same musical cords for me. Other heavy bands that I got into att that time was Budgie  who's first album still is one of my favourites. Most of my favourite bands came from Britan but there were some exceptions like Grand Funk, Mountain and Captain Beyond.who came from the US.

During this period of time another musical direction "progressive" rock caught my attention and bands like Jethro Tull , Yes, Gentle Giant, Genesis , ELP and King Crimson became favourites. All these band consisted of great musicians and the same can be said about another musical direction called "fusion" that had been pioneered by Miles Davies but it was John McLaughlin and The Mahavishnu Orchestrea that grabbed  my attention the most

Around mid 70's I discovered two new bands Rush < b>and Kansas and they have remained personal favourites ever since.

THE DARK AGES

Punk came along 1977-1980 and nearly destroyed everything. Talent,musicianship etc did not matter anymore at least in Britain. Admittably some of the progressive giants like ELP and Yes released boring albums during this period but in retrospect what we got from punk was also mostly very dull and conformist bands like Sham 69 and UK Subs.

Despite being very unfashionable Rush evolved from being a hard rock band into a progressive band by releasing the very good and inventive records Farwell to Kings and Hemispheres. The emergance of Van Halen also made it easier to get through this period of time.

REVENGE

Anything remotely heavy had been repressed by Punk but the revenge came in the early 80's when hard rock bands like Iron Maiden, Def Leppard smashed it to pieces. The rest of the 80's had it ups and downs for me musically. Whitsnake 1987 was released and is one of my favourite albums from this period. Yes came back with multinstumentalist Trevor Rabin and made some great and underrated albums.

90's

At the end of 80's hair rock was very popular. A backlash was inevitable and it came in form of Grunge.

Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden was leaders of the pack. Of these bands Soundgarden really made a big impression on me. Nirvana on the other hand grabbed most of the attention but in my opinion they were vastly overrated.

THE RETURN

Progressive music had existed as a underground movement and together with the emergance of The Internet suddenly lots of band like Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, Transatlantic came along.

Together with old bands like King Crimson and Yes who are still around the musical future looks bright. Of the new bands one in particular The Mars Volta looks very interesting.

Me and John Garner (The Lizards/Sir Lord Baltimore)
06/10/2003 at Fasching, Stockholm, Sweden

Me and Burke Shelley (Budgie)
21/11/2003 at Sala Rockland, Sweden