Our best performance of all times

Mando Diao at MTV Unplugged

 “If you don’t count Stockholm where we live, we don’t spend more time in any other city of the world as in Berlin, not even in our hometown Borlänge”, Björn Dixgård confirms the  impression.   

Bleary-eyed  but  well-dressed,  he  and  his  band  member  Carl-Johan Fogelklou of the quintet Mando Diao appear in Berlin again.

In the beginning of September the band had arrived here to record an exclusive, purely supported among others by the Hollywood star acoustic concert for MTV Unplugged, and singer Juliette Lewis. It was an absolutely special evening: “I haven’t experienced anything like this until now”, remembers CJ. “It was great from the beginning till the end.And yet it feels like it has never happened”.

Dixgård adds: “People would often ask us what our best performance would be, and that was it. I don’t know if we’re ever able to top that”.

Ray Davies, the singer of the legendary The Kinks (“You Really Got Me”) and a music idol, had also contributed to this, even if it wasn’t big. The old master sang his classic item, a satire on monarchy “Victoria”, live with the Swedes though it didn’t extend to something more than a professional relationship. “We wanted only to play with him, not really get to know him, and I think it was the same with him”, says Dixgård.

But he doesn’t want to dedicate this item to the current crown princess Victoria: “I don’t have any aversion towards her, however monarchy is an obsolete idea that shouldn’t exist any more”.

But the Prime Minister Reinfeldt must be a Mando Diao fan right? They have recently received from him the Music Export Award. CJ: “As far as I know he used to listen to things like The Cure and Depeche Mode earlier. The Minister of Social Affair Hägglund must be a huge fan of Pink Floyd. We’re not in that category”.

Do we have now, after eight years since the debut album, the first Best Of Mando Diao?

“It’s more of a summary, it’s neither an end, says Dixgård who, according to his own words, without the success of  the band  would have become  a telephone operator, metaphorically speaking. 

The secret of the way to where they are now?

 “I believe that our success is due to the fact that we always change and develop ourselves, though everyone always says that it would be commercial death”. 

And has anything been written for a new album?

“Yes, we already have a lot of songs for that”confirmed CJ who would have become a music teacher or a van driver.