Teddys

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, starts the serious work ......
First we needed a front figure on vocal, so I ask Odvin 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 back the 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 the cigarette called Teddy, and
after a look down on the package, I said the name should be 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 this time I had to construct and build it self.
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.
I had also buildt up the PA loudspeakers with JBL elements JBL E150 and JBL 075 on top
(Today, still plays very beautiful). Needed also a poweramp,
again a self buildt transistor construction with surprising 2 x 60W RMS in 8 ohm.
On the backline we had 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 our time now, to record something in recording studio.
Had found a cheap home recording studio in a place called Maura.
I came early to check out the 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.

The images to left is called the band card, this is free promotion for the fans

We were a very popular dance band.
The term Dance band in Scandinavians should not be construed as a hip hop band.
The music is of a melodic and fits nice dance between two parties that hold in each other.
Can remind you of Ballroom Dancing....
One time we were booked for several years in advance, which was very pleasant.
At this time we recorded two productions. A single and a full Cassette (LP).
We played for 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 band for medical reasons.
Terje had eczema on both hands and had almost no skin left.
Since he played keyboards, it was difficult to play with thin gloves, but he had tried.
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 his 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 .....
So 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) asked me to restart TEDDYS again.

1982.
We would of course provide us with keyboardist, which was not easy.
Attempted several but found none. As we were to restart the band,
we had to also find us a new lead singer, on vocals and guitar.
Bjørn Sørlie occupied the space. Terje Laach had come up with newer methods of
treatment for his eczema, and would love to come back.
Years passed and we were mostly out there to play every weekend.
New people into the band Roland Jansson on drums Sturla Rosø on keyboards.

In 1994 we got new bands suits that also appear on the band card to the left.
This time we would try a different combination, with two keyboards,
we were a total of 6 persons. Mutual chemistry is important in a band.
It did not last long, and after a while, I Tore Tveter was alone.

I'm biting the teeth together and wanted to start over again,
we had a useful and familiar names such work would certainly be enough.
I contacted a local musician Hans Finland who also played accordion,
to see if he would join the new Teddys.
He said yes, and had several ideas on how to solve problems.
The next man was to find and good and 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.
We had already decided that in this new band we should have no 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 be programmed either by programmer
or a musician who plays the music directly into box by way of a pad drumset.
It took a fair amount of time before we understood how this would be done.
But when we got it, we could bring in musicians from all over the world
to play the drums to our tunes as we like it.
We eventually got a good network of contacts, rock and roll was recorded in Australia,
country music in Nashville and svensktopp in Sweden.
Since we had decided to be only 4 people in the band, we had to tell the audience
that the drummer was a Teddy Bear named Kåre Bjørnsen.
To make a story short, we needed a multi-instrumentalist of the band,
so a new ad in the capital's largest newspaper, was rescued.
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 playing horny white polarbear.