Tore, Guttorm, Oddbjørn Oddvin, Terje

Tore, Oddbjørn, Guttorm, Bjørn, Terje

Tore, Sturla, Wenche, Oddbjørn, Terje, Bjørn

Laslo, Tore, Johnny, Kåre, Hans

Tore, Roger, Johnny, Hans, Laslo

Ola, Bjørn, Tore, Tor

Time passed quickly, and after awhile I found myself being in 1975.
Terje Laace came to me, asking me, to join him for to start up a new band.
At that time I wasn't especially interested, but said yes after miscellaneous
on pressure. When I have said yes, I starts with the serious work ......
First we needed a front figure on vocal, so I ask Oddvin Sørli from             "JIM ODDWINDS" to join us.
A good voice together with his guitar should be something.
A drummer wasn't easy to get those days, so we put in an classified ad in our local newspaper.
Got lucky, and suddenly did we have Guttorm Bjerkely placed on Drums.
On the next band exercise he came with his brother Oddbjørn Bjerkely (twins) said he could fix almost anything on his guitar.
We quick understood that we couldn't say no to such a good rhythm and lead guitar player.
I Tore Tveter played the bass part, and Terje Laache was on Keyboards.
We finally got a band, and the band needed a name.
Many different names came up, but none who could connect the
band name to the music we wish to play, the 50 - 60's.
At that time I smoked a norwegian cigarette brand called Teddy, and
after a look down on the package, Why not called it "Teddys".

Everyone said it was a good name, and in this way then we got our name.
I wanted a PA for almost nothing, so I had to construct and build it myself.

The quality on op-amps we had from before, had been substantial improved,
so I buildt a good and reasonable 6 channel mixser without to much noise.
Buildt also the PA loudspeakers , JBL elements JBL E150 and JBL 075 on top.
(Today, still plays very beautiful).

Needed also an poweramp, again a self buildt transistor amp with surprising 2 x 60W RMS in 8 ohm.
On the backline  an VOX AC30 and a self buildt Bass amp with loudspeaker.

We got lot of gigs, and the popularity just increased and increased.
Terje Laache believed it was time to record something in recording studio.
Had found a cheap home recording studio in a place called "Maura".

I came early to check out studio, and found big problems with the mixser.
Had to swing the soldering iron a lot, before we could start the recording.
The background (playbacks) on 2 tracks, was finish at 4 AM next morning.
I wasn't so happy with the results, so the studio owner had to take his tape recorder home to me, where we finished the vocal recording.

The job was done on our own stereo mixser ( I also had an 2 track machine).
The result was a promotion cassette, so TEDDYS got still more gigs.

All images to left is called band cards, it's a free promotion for the fans.

We were a very popular dance band.
The term Danceband or "Danseband" in Scandinavia must not be construed as a hip hop band.

The music is melodic and fits well with dances where two parties hold each other. Can remind you of Ballroom Dancing....

One time we were booked several years in advance, which was very nice.
At this time we recorded two productions. A single and a full Cassette (LP).

We played almost 5 years with the same crew, but at the end of this period Terje Laache told us that he unfortunately had to quit the bandfor medical reasons.
Terje had eczema on both hands and had almost no skin left.
Since he played keyboards, he had to play with thin gloves, but none help.
We realized that we stood at a crossroads, looking for a keyboardist who played in the same way that Terje proved to be difficult.

Again, we put in more Classified ad but our luck did not smile this time.
After a while we decided to take a break with the band,
in anticipation of a new keyboardist, something we did not find .....

In the meantime jumped Guttorm, Oddbjørn and Tore into "JIM ODDWINDS" to help them out of a difficult time.

We played in that group for almost 2 years, then the brothers Bjerkely
(identical twins) please asked me to restart TEDDYS again.

In 1994 we got new yellow bands suits that appear left on the band card.
This time we would try a different combination, with two keyboards,
we were a total of 6 persons. New members was Sturla Rosø,         Wenche Karlsen, and Terje Carlsen. Chemistry is important in a band.
It did not last long, and after a while, I Tore Tveter was alone.

I grit my teeth and want to start over.

At the time, we had a well-known band name, so the job looked much easier.

I contacted a local musician Hans Finland who also played the accordion,
to see if he would join the new Teddys.
He said yes, and had several ideas on how to solve problems.

The next, was to find and good talented singer who also played the guitar.
Our booking manager suddenly remembered Johnny Darmstadt
previously joined in a band that ceased to exist. After a quick call, our new vocalist in the box.

Our new findings were a musician from Hungary, who mastered saxophone,
clarinet, pan flute and guitar. Laslo Catai was made for our band.
The band card from 1997 to the left, show them all together with a white polarbear.

We had already decided that in this new band we should have none drummer, because we generally only had problems with these.
We went to the acquisition of sound box, who played like we wanted.
Problems with such devices is that they have to be programmed either by a programmer or a musician who could play the drum sound directly into a midi file.

It took quite a while before we figured out how to do this.
But when we got it right we could bring in musicians from all over the world
to play drums to our songs the way we like it.
We gradually built up a good network of contacts, rock and roll was recorded in Australia,
country music in Nashville and Swedish top (dance music) in Sweden.
Since we had decided to only have 4 people in the band, we had to tell the audience that the drummer was a teddy bear named Kåre Bjørnsen.

We wanted a new solo/rhythm guitarist, something that doesn't directly grow on trees in Norway. So we had to go to the neighboring country of Sweden to bring in a skilled guitarist. We found a Roger Pettersson from "Sunne" who happent to had his mother-in-law only 20 km from our start place.  Came from Sweden played in Norway and slept over with his mother-in-law on "Strømmen"
This was a good arrangement that worked ok for a while, until Roger moved to "Gøteborg". It was too far to drive 40 km round trip after the         mother-in-law died.

Found us a new Swedish semi-pro guitarist from "Torsby"
This talented fellow Christoffer Børjars (Crille) unfortunately did not have a driver's license, so he was dependent on others who would transport him back and forth.
This became a big problem, so after a while we found a Norwegian blues guitarist, Tor Dahl.

We had a gig 2 days in a town called "Kongsvinger" where some members want to drive their own car. Everyone came up except Laslo Catai.          We called him, but he claimed that we had no agreements about playing this weekend.
So there we were without a saxophonist. Started calling around the area for help and finally found a professional man Ola Welo who could take the job. He turned up for the sound check just 2 hours before playing. Listened to all the songs and wrote down the sheet music for all the melodies.                 Played flawlessly through all of them. We felt we had shot the golden bird.

This was the last group to play in TEDDYS                                                 Ola Welo, Bjørn Sørli, Tore Tveter, Tor Dahl.
By then the band had existed for 24 years.