<doc.id=1069.a2>
<title> HOUSE OF KICKS: THE UNDERGROUND'S ENEMY #1. </title>
In recent times, the last two or three years, traditional back-to-basic hard rock has caught the attention of Swedish mainstream media. The figure-heads of this "revival of rock"-trend is unarguably the Swedish bands The Hellacopters and Backyard Babies, together with Norwegians Gluecifer.
This essay is about why these bands have managed to make a name for themselves and why, sadly enough, it's not likely that any new Swedish bands will challenge them at the top. 
	 To be able to fully understand my arguments, some background information about the rock-underground in Sweden is necessary. Now, the only nationwide distributor of small independent record-labels dealing with metal/punk/hard rock, Swedish labels as well as foreign ones, is House Of Kicks. This almost monopoly situation puts them in the position where they alone can decide which labels' or bands' records they want record-shops to have in their assortment. They have the same power when it comes to promotion towards the media. The people in charge of the music/entertainment-sections in national or local press have, in general, little or no knowledge about the underground-scene, especially when it comes to "extreme music", and they tend to rely on House Of Kicks' recommendations. In addition to this, House Of Kicks also put out their own records under various label-names. Needless to say, they of course promote these records harder on the expence of other labels they have agreed to distribute and promote. Having explained House Of Kicks' dominant position in these fields we can go on discussing the topics I mentioned in my introduction. 
	 So, if the music-press do not always have the interest for new and exciting bands, they certainly always have interest for another aspect of the music-industry; new and exciting trends. Well aware of this, and their position in Swedish music-industry, House Of Kicks decided to pull off a daring promotion-stunt in 1996. They invented a new label called White Jazz, dedicated to "true action-packed rock 'n' roll" (actual quote), and as their first signing they chosed Stockholm's The Hellacopters. This was of course no coincidence, as The Hellacopters had already made a name for themselves in the underground through a couple of self-financed EP's. However, more important was the fact that the band was the brainchild of Nicke Andersson, who was already well-known to the mainstream audience for his work with the metal-band Entombed. White Jazz (i.e. House Of Kicks) promoted The Hellacopters as "Sweden's only real rock 'n' roll-band", a slogan that trend-seeking music-journalists on national, Stockholm-based, newspapers found irresistible. Therefore, The Hellacopters began to recieve huge attention from these people, who of course started to act like they had always liked this kind of music, although they had never before mentioned similar bands in their columns... Anyway, these born-again rockers now praised Rock 'n' Roll in their influential, not to mention hip, Friday entertainment supplements to the regular newspapers. This made the ball roll, the mainstream audience began to look for Hellacopters-records in their local stores and the hip Stockholm-critics suddenly started to mention long forgotten bands of yesterday as their all-time favourites (yet again, no-one had mentioned them before...). Rock was alive again! 
	 Meanwhile, in the not so glamorous world of underground-rock, other bands playing similar music saw their chance to rise to stardom, since everybody in the music-business apparently loved their kind of music, many of these bands already had recordcontracts so what could possibly go wrong? Well, for some reason these bands' records simply didn't got any attention from the distributor, House Of Kicks. Consequentely, they recieved no back-up from media and for the audience in general they remained in obscurity.
	 In fact, the only other "Hellacopters-style"-bands that have made an inpact on the market is the above mentioned Backyard Babies, mainly due to the fact that their charismatic guitarist Dregen also played in The Hellacopters, and Gluecifer, which eventually also is signed to White Jazz. 
	 In conclusion, Sweden have a lot of talented hard rock-bands and many of them should appeal to fans of The Hellacopters and the like, given a chance. However, due to House Of Kicks' corrupt money-making policies and the laziness and shallowness of the coat-turninging music-journalists in general, the majority of the record-buying public is kept in the dark. The fact that House Of Kicks claim to be part of the underground-movement is merely an insult to the genuine underground's motto of "co-operation, not competition", or to paraphrase The Rolling Stones: "It's only rock 'n' roll, and I don't like it".
</doc>