Swedish vocals
International relevance: *
There are quite a few illustrious characters featured on these pages, but few are as illustrious as Kaj Robert Hansson, known as Räven ('the fox') due to his hair colour. Often homeless sleeping in the parks of his native city Lund i Skåne, and a criminal since early age. He was a friend of Clark Olofsson, the infamous criminal 'superstar' of the Norrmalmstorg bank robbery which coined the phrase the Stockholm syndrome. Hansson was initially a suspect too, but soon freed from suspicions when he phoned the police and said something along the lines, ”I readin the papers that I've supposedly robbed a bank but that seems unlikely since I'm in Hawaii right now”.
Besides his criminal career he had artistic ambitions, ambitions that were crowned by an LP release in 1980. It's impossible to imagine a well known crook getting a record deal – let alone with a major label like Metronome! – in those days when deplatforming for the flimsiest of reasons is the order the day. Those were other times, indeed. For better or for worse. The prison care was heavily debated and questioned in Sweden during the 70's, resulting in such albums as ”Kåklåtar” and Konvaljen's solo album. There was a strong opinion against the treatment of prisoners, which might explain why an album such as this wasn't considered as controversial as it would be today.
Metronome put a lot of effort into making Kaj R. Hansson's only album as good as possible. ”Till dom som bryr sig om” (' to those who cares') has a thorough list of studio musicians. Mats Ronander and Finn Sjöberg appear on guitars, and an entire lot of three drummers offer their services, Ola Brunkert, Rolf Alex and Per Lindholm, all respected studio workers. Hector Bingert in turn was a seasoned jazz saxophonist. And so on.
All songs were written by Hansson, all autobiographical in nature, delivered with his soft Southern nasal drawl. He's a pretty OK lyric writer, not nauseously self-pitying over his fate but rather matter-of-fact about his life gone wrong. The songs are pretty straightforward singer/songwriter rock, not hugely imaginative but sometimes quite catchy such as semi-Stonesy kick-off track ”Ta ett tag”. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but habile enough rock music from the dark side of society.
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