Three years ago my lifeguard at the gym was Ian Hunter, who lived in Camden Town with his Swedish girlfriend, a photographer. After chilling out in London, following some colourful experiences in Argentina, Ian moved to Stockholm.
Now he’s back managing Molotov Jive, a group I saw at The Good Ship in Kilburn last night. It was a hilarious evening for this old beatnik but I won’t go into too many details.
Molotov Jive are a punky young rock group with sexual charisma. They play with a lot of conviction. When you see them slamming through Rich Girl’s Game you think : we mean it, maaaan ! Their playing and singing is tight and Anton has a star quality that I haven’t seen in a very young front man since I first saw Suede supporting Kingmaker at the T & C on Thursday May 21st, 1992.
And the little girls understand. As I was chatting to blond guitarist Oskar outside after the show, three girls came out and, one by one, hugged him and kissed him and then trotted off down the street.
I told the lad that success would take five years.
“It will be five years of hard work. Are you up for five years of hard work?”
Rather than being dismayed by this, Oskar looked delighted.
“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” he said.
Anton is the cousin of Arsenal’s on-loan midfielder Sebastian Larsson, and says Seb is enjoying playing for Birmingham at the moment.
The album, on Universal, has not been released outside Sweden yet.
Anton’s favourite song is Weight off My Shoulders and my favourite is Made In Spain.
Both are streamed at profile.myspace.com/index.cfm , so you can make up your own mind.
Molotov Jive play The Wherehouse,Tottenham Hale, on Saturday night, December 16th.
And the moral of Thursday night’s story is : today’s lifeguards are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.
My present lifeguard is the brother-in-law of Lubos Michel, the referee. They went to the same sports science college in Bratislava and Lubos married his sister.
“I’m also a teacher,” Peter told me one day.
“Would you teach over here?”
“No, the kids are too rude.”
If Peter is smart enough not to teach, he might become another entrepreneur.