mylittlepony....not the toy, the band.

Recently, the up-and-coming Norwegian band "Mylittlepony" came rollicking through the American countryside in search of shows and etc. Buffalo (oddly) was one of the cities they hit upon on this trek. My man Billy Leland opened for them, actually! Anyway, band member Ola Innset was more than nice enough to answer a few questions.

He shares the band's plans, differences between American and Europe and some interesting perspectives!

1.) You guys recently toured America! Was it your first time touring here and how was that? It was our first time, and it was a lot of fun! It's incredible to travel to the other side of the world and play your music for people. We got a lot of good feedback, and in fact we felt the feedback we got here in America was usually very detailed and to the point. We love hearing that we're "cute", or "funny" or "create a cosy atmosphere," or other things that we usually count as great feedback, but Americans seemed to take us a little bit more seriously. They also seemed to, if not think more than Europeans, perhaps share their thoughts a bit more. That was refreshing. We also enjoyed the Texan sun, the hospitality of Toronto, the friendliness of Massachussets, and the everything about New York City. The insanity of St. Patrick's Day in Buffalo was also highly interesting, all though not very encouraging when having the future of the human race in mind. But even in Buffalo there were lots of great people in our show, so there is hope. Even there.

2.) From where or from who do you guys seek inspiration from? There's a lot of inspiration coming from a lot of places. So much so that it doesn't even need to be seeken out. It comes from everything: great bands, good books, beautiful sunsets, break-ups, homeless people, tsunamis, wars, newborn babies, and grandparents. The trick is to try to tap into this amazing source of humanity and nature, work with it and try to create something beautiful from it in a way that seems appropriate. This sounds stupid, but it's kind of true.

3.) How has the past year been for you, musically-speaking? Due to a harddisc crash we had to record our second album "Making Marks" twice. This was a bit of a drag, but we're glad we did it, because the second version turned out much, much better. We're very happy with it, so we hope a lot of people listen to it. After finishing recording and mixing around November we've been practicing our live set, trying to make live versions of those new songs that were more or less conceived in the studio. It's been a long process, and in the end we've ended up on our current twee/motown-sound with two reverbed electric guitars and a swirling organ, all playing very detailed parts that we think go well together and reflect all that other stuff on the album really well. At the same time though, being something quite different and independent. Since January we've been playing shows like crazy in Norway and then US and Canada. In a few weeks we head off for Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Austria, hopefully with a few brand new songs rehearsed too. If we can only shake this damned jetlag....

4.) Are you playing at any big summer festivals or just touring through Europe currently? We don't have many plans for the summer yet, a few festivals only so far, but maybe something will come up. Summer festival are always nice, so that would be great!

5.) How did you guys meet and form your band? (it says you are from two different parts of Oslo on your website...just wondering! Oslo or Norway, my computer is being slow). The three male members all went to high school together in the sleepy town of Moss. Nina is from Spikkestad, an even sleepier place not far from Oslo, and Marie is from Kirkenes in the north east end of Norway. There they can't sleep because they always have to watch out for the Russians. Due to the sleepiness of our country, most young people move into the few actual "big" cities, (Oslo has 500.000 people and I remember thinking it was huge when I moved there). There young Norwegians for the first time meet other people with similar interests, and great stuff happens. Then they marry and have children and move back to sleepy places to wait for the circle to continue.

6.) Finally, why did you name yourselves "my little pony?" (had to ask!) Honestly we didn't really know that "my little pony" was such a huge thing. We thought it was kind of a funny reference to something a few people might remember from the eighties. We wanted a name in the "my this and that"-structure, and then we thought my little pony would be funny. Guess we should have checked a little bit better, but we never really thought our band would come to anything anyway, it was more something we did for fun. We wanted to have a country band actually. When I didn't have a band I spent all my time thinking of all the cool things my band would be called if I had one, now that I have one it has a really stupid name... Oh well, at least people remember it, and a lot of good bands have horrible names when you think about only the name. Now we're called mylittlepony in one word, by the way.

THEIR MYSPACE (by the way, to be honest, I think this guy (((((sorry, I am a bit slow))))) had the best answers of anyone I've ever sort of interviewed....hope to see them in person someday!)