Hello everyone!

     I have had some requests about telling something about my former Icelandic band Drysill. Most likely of no interest for many of you, but for the chosen few - here it comes... ( at last ).

    Let us start in 1980 when I joined the band "Start". Really just another straight forward rock´n roll coverband, but after a while we startet to write our own stuff and that became my claim to fame in Iceland. A song of mine called "Sekur" ( guilty ) appearing on our only LP became a huge hit and was voted The Song Of The Year 1981 in Iceland. We had our highlights that same year and the follwing one as well. After that it was sort of down hill, ( New-Wave ruled ) but we kept it together till 1984 mainly based on pure friendship and a million miles of good laughs. But in the beginning of 1984 my Heavy Metal nerves were shaking so bad that I just had to do something about it. It was hard to leave my good friends - but I did,- immediately looking for the right gang to fullfill my dream ; the first real Hard-Rock band in Iceland since the early seventies.

    I already had the name ready - Drysill. That is the Icelandic description of a small, teasing demon. And we have a lot of those, living in the mountains or some holes in the ground, or maybe in somebody´s head. But I needed a 3-piece band. The first one to contact was a guitar player called Einar. He was the only axe-man I knew of in Reykjavik that had the same love & attitude for this music. With him in the family I was well on my way. He had played with, and strongly recommended a drummer named Siggi. I had never played with that guy, but - had I heard about him... ? Oh, yeah. And most of it had to do with drinking somebody under the table ( mostly himself ) or brawling up to a street-fight. Hey-hey - iI thought. If I  can tame this guy he´s a perfect match. So two out of three ain´t bad! But we needed a bass player. And that´s when I sort of went back to my roots and asked Jonni my previous bass player in Start. We always called him "The Rock, because he was steady as hell on the beat, no matter what kinda poison he had inhaled or gurgled down his throat.

    Ladies and gentleman - I had a band !!!  Oh, I´ll tell you my friends ; the months to come were  pure magic!  To cut a long story short,- this  was ( and sadly still is ) the most creative period in my life. During that summer I wrote songs & lyrics for what we hoped would be an album. And at the same time I had startet a home of my own and I had a fulltime job ( plus-plus ) as a road-worker. Looking back I can not even try to figure out where all that energy came from. But yet, I am guessing it was the pure pleasure and satisfaction of really doing something you burn for. I am telling you - a hundred horny female elephants would have been no hinder for yours sincere on the way to where I was headed.

    And while rehearsing for studio we, of course did some playing. And we, slowly but surely, gathered a good crowd of charmingly crazy and deadly faithful fans. Remember this is in the middle of  the "New-Wave" period, and guys like us that really could sing and play were totally out., really.  Well, you know me...always upstream and gainst the wind for this stupid old Bozo. But we did record an album....

    Recorded in December ´84 and January ´85,  "Welcome To The Show" was released sometime during the spring. We produced 1000 copies and they sold out.  Remember that Iceland is a small marked, so we did well, baring in mind that the Critics hatet us, no radio-station would play us and so on. And Drysill didn´t last too long either. You see, trouble startet after we had done the recording and it was time to pay some bills. None of the other guys had any money, so I paid for everything ; Studio time, technicians, mastering...yeah, basically everything. So how to get paid back? Sure, by booking gigs. But to be able to earn enough money for the expencives, we would have to add some cover songs to our play-list. And slowly we became just another rock-band, driving around Iceland again & again...until we all just had had enough. And we broke up. I am real glad to say that we are all still friends  and we have in fact had a reunion a few times. among others as a support for Megadeath some years back.    Here are the songs we recorded  :

Side A    1) Anthem for the insane    2) Left-right    3) Don´t shoot me down    4) We´re comming to rock you Side B    1) Welcome to the show     2) Play it loud    3) Little star       4) Fiesta for friends

    Obs! Time is running out. I am going to the local Pub for the usual Thursday-Quiz. If I am not traveling - I never miss it. Few pints of beer along with some wisdom... just can´t beat that. There´s so much more to write about really...all the sleazy, naughty stuff. All the roumors and yeah...the real rock´n-roll stuff. But I might add something to this later. Have to jump my friends....

 Love you always... Eirikur