Okay – odds are you have no idea who this band is. The Ark is a Swedish neo-Glam band who were hugely popular in their hometown of Växjö. They got started in 1991 – had a slow start but managed to get a following around Sweden, but nowhere else. They called it a day in 2011 but got restarted in 2020.
Looking back on the period, I’m not sure Glam was getting any resurgence in the 90s. Coupled with the fact that the 90s were still pretty much shrouded in mystery as far as exposure of new bands from Europe making it over to the States was concerned. Streaming audio and instant access was a concept for the 2000’s.
In the winter of 2000 The Ark went on tour as the support act for Kent during their Hagnesta Hill tour, with the premiere in Gothenburg on January 28 and finishing in Stockholm on March 9. They opened their set with the song “Laurel Wreath” and played soon-to-be hit singles such as “Let Your Body Decide”, “Echo Chamber” and “It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane”. Halfway through the tour, on January 31, the first single “Let Your Body Decide” was released. The song peaked at #9 in the Swedish charts.
The second single, “It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane”, was released on May 15. The song became a huge radio hit and the music video was on heavy rotation in the music channels. The song was also successful in Europe, especially in Italy where it remained a top 10 in the charts for four months.
The debut album, entitled We Are The Ark, was released on September 25. Another title, “Electric Body Design”, had been considered based on how a friend of the band had misheard the chorus of “Let Your Body Decide”. The album sold 120.000 copies, making it one of Sweden’s most successful debut albums of all time.
A recurring theme on the album is to find strength and joy in being an outsider, to choose joy and lust in life and to go one’s own way regardless of the stagnated norms and views of the world. This was also the message that Ola Salo and the rest of the band would often speak about in interviews and during concerts. This theme was to remain constant throughout the remainder of the band’s career.
On October 18 in Gothenburg, the band began an extensive club tour of Sweden. The setlist for the concerts consisted exclusively of the songs from the album, except the ending song “Racing With The Rabbits” which was the only song included from their former 1990s era. Life on tour was filmed for a documentary titled “Vi är the Ark” (the Swedish translation of the album title) broadcast on Sweden’s SVT. A second documentary was later filmed for Sweden’s TV4. During the year of 2000, The Ark made more than 60 live performances and ended they year by performing “It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane” together with singer Tommy Körberg on New Year’s Eve on Sweden’s TV3.
In the summer of 2001 the band played the largest stage of the Hultsfred Festival and teamed up with fellow Swedish pop acts Magnus Uggla and Håkan Hellström for a tour of 22 concerts across the country.
The songs “Echo Chamber” (October 14, 2000) and “Joy Surrender” (April 2, 2001) were released as the third and fourth singles from the album, also to good success. All four singles had music videos.
The Ark was nominated for six Swedish Grammy Awards in 2001, winning Song of the Year for “It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane” and Artist of the Year. Swedish National Radio awarded “It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane” as Most Played Song, and the band won the reader’s choice Rockbjörnen award for Group of the Year.
That’s a bit about the band up to the point of this concert.
Here they are the Popstad Festival in Växjö on August 2, 2003 and recorded for Swedish Radio. The first few seconds are missing and it fades out at the end during a solo which means it had to be a longer concert than the 47 minutes it shows. Still . . .
