The Thousand Dollar Playboys
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR PLAYBOYS
In the fall of 1996 Lars Bygdén convinced some of his friends to start a band. The $1000 Playboys played their first gig that December at Pipeline (in Sundsvall) and totally stunned the audience. And this was just the beginning. Peter Svensson of the Cardigans saw the band perform and he realized that this was a band aiming for the stars. Svensson financed an album recording at Tambourine Studios in the fall 1997. The road to fame seemed paved and ready. But after 1½ year of fruitless negotiation with several labels they still had no record deal.
In the winter of 1999, the band signed with independent record label Massproduktion. A new recording session was planned. Meanwhile, national Swedish radio P3 broadcasted the Playboys live during the PopStad event and The Rope was released as a track on the promotional CD. The $1000 Playboys were now in rotation on national radio despite the fact that they still hadn’t released anything! In May the recordings started, now with Linus Larsson as producer. A wide variety of guests are featured on the album and several of the tracks were captured live in the studio…only three tracks from the Tambourine recordings made it to the self titled debut album (released 25 October 1999).
The first single Preacher was play-listed for 8 weeks by the National Radio P3. Spring 2000 meant a new video, a new single and more gigs all over Sweden. The fall tour under the name ”Järnvägar!” was filmed by National TV and resulted in a documentary that was broadcast late 2000.
With the release of their second album “STAY!” they developed into a band ready to compete on the international scene. Produced by Micke Herrström, the album was recorded live at the legendary Atlantis Studio (ABBA, Elvis Costello etc) in Stockholm. The prospect of a live recording scared the band a bit but Herrström’s vision prevailed: “…everything sounds much better if you record live, you think less- and regarding Lars, I wanted to bring out the Johnny Thunders in him…” At the time lead singer Lars Bygdén saw it differently: “…everything was so terrible, I almost fired Micke, too much pressure…”
STAY cuts a wider musical path than the debut. The single Got to Keep Moving and albumtrack As The Desperation Comes was frequently played by National radio P3 and P4 found their favourite in Stay. The press was great. Featuring more guest artists and showcasing the band’s strength as a fantastic live act; “STAY!” is an album to brag about.
(And by the way, during the summer of 2001, Lars Bygdén and Micke Herrström started a Johnny Thunders Tribute band, playing at summer festivals all around Sweden.)
The Playboys Christmas-single A very special Christmas got a fantastic reception and on the 23:th of December 2001 The $1000 Playboys played A very special Christmas live on of the most watched national TV-shows in Sweden. A great end to a great year for The $1000 Playboys.
During spring 2002 the new album was released in Europe and Canada receiving great reviews and the band also played gigs in Paris and London. During Christmas 2002 A very special Christmas got even higher rotation on regional and national radio than during the release year. 2003 the band toured the US for the first time, receiving good reviews and quite a lot of attention – even by CNN. 2003 also meant that radio stations in Japan and France picked up the latest album and played it a lot. The Japanese even made a whole radioshow about Stay! May 2003 the band did a session for Radio Station P4 and recorded four new songs.
During spring 2004 Lars toured with his other band – The Bukks – which debut album “Rockets ahead” was released on the 24:th of February. Since Anders Bergman left the The Playboys late 2003 The Playboys need to regroup and collect strength and will be back… someday.
Lars have released one celebrated solo album - Trading happiness for songs - in 2005.
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