CAESARS PALACE - Rock De Puta Mierda LP

The genesis of the Caesars, or Caesars Palace as they were known at home in Sweden (but renamed for the U.S. so as to not encourage the legal wrath of the Vegas casino); lead singer Cesar Vidal and guitarist Joakim Åhlund, childhood schoolmates, fell into the band as a lark. Along with other friends David Lindqvist and Jens Örjeheim (who was soon replaced by Nino Keller) and armed with only rudimentary playing skills, the Caesars produced a raw, ear-splitting series of 7”s and EPs for the fledgling Dolores label.

“We knew this guy named Isse, and he ran a record label down in Gothenburg in Sweden,” recalls Åhlund. “So when he heard the stuff – he heard our first demo, and he just put that out right away as our first seven inch single. We had like 20 fans here in Sweden. But we got a good review in Maximum Rock’n’Roll for that single, which I’ve still kept. It says something like ‘This is good stuff if you like to annoy your neighbors.’"

The roots of the band’s current style were evident in those first recordings, according to Jocke: “We listened a lot to garage rock and psychedelia like the 13th Floor Elevators and Billy Childish and the Sonics and stuff like that, but also Sonic Youth and Pavement. In the beginning our sound was a little different from today. A lot rawer, but still with some great melodies somewhere underneath all those fuzzed out guitars. We didn’t have the organ at that stage, and since I’d just started to learn to play the guitar, I couldn’t play and sing at the same time, so there are none of those beautiful Beach Boys harmonies that we got to use later. But it’s still good stuff, and it’s not light years apart from what we’re doing now, just an earlier, more primitive version of what later became the Caesars' sound.”