Mecki Mark Men
| Mecki Mark Men | |
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Mecki Mark Men's 1968–71 line up, fronted by Mecki Bodemark (lower left) and the three members of the Baby Grandmothers: Bengt Linnarsson, Pelle Ekman and Kenny Håkansson.
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Genres | prog rock, psychedelic rock, jazz-rock, progg, rock opera |
| Years active | 1967–1979; 2000; 2007; 2010 |
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Mecki Mark Men (MMM for short) were a Swedish progressive rock band fronted by keyboardist Claes "Mecki" Bodemark. The group originally formed as a dansband in the mid-1960s, then called Mecki Mark Five, before adopting elements of psychedelic rock, jazz, and experimental music. A breakthrough performance at 's Experimental Jazz Festival in July 1967 helped establish the group, placing them at the forefront of Swedish psychedelic rock and its fledgling progg subgenre.
Claes Bodemark acquired his first Hammond L-100 organ at age 17 and worked as a studio organist for a Stockholm television station in the early 1960s. By the mid-1960s he was known as "Mecki," a name the long-haired musician unfittingly shared with the German word for crew cut, and more appropriately with Mecki the Hedgehog, an impudent, bristle-haired, vest-wearing character who was often given to smoking opium in children's comic books and had appeared in stop motion puppet films shown to troops during World War II.
In the early 1960s Bodemark played in Stockholm groups The Adventurers and Nilla and the Blackbird, and a popular Finnish group called Savages. In 1966 he appeared on two singles by Örjan Englund's pop group Vat 66 before devoting himself as bandleader on his own Mecki Mark Five, which would become the more alliterative Mecki Mark Men. Shortened from Bodemark's surname, the word "Mark" connotes "" or "outskirts" in Swedish and other old Germanic languages, thus giving "Mecki Mark Men" the meaning "Mecki's men who come from the outskirts."
Mecki Mark Men's original 1967 lineup was a septet of two horns (Hans Nordström on tenor sax and flute, and Anders Sjostedt on trumpet), two guitars (Claes Svanberg on six-string electric and Jan-Eric Olsson on bass), two drummers (Björn Fredholm and Thomas Mera Gartz, the latter of whom also played vibraphone, bamboo flute, tenor saxophone, and sitar), and Mecki Bodemark on Hammond organ, vibraphone, flute and vocals. The group was one of the first big psych-rock bands in Sweden. MMM, along with the improvisational rock trio Baby Grandmothers, served as a house band at Stockholm's famous Filips club run by Janne Carlsson of the instrumental music duo Hansson & Karlsson. MMM first entered the studio in September 1967 to record their premiere single, "Midnight Land" b/w "Got Together," after which Sjostedt and Olsson left the group. The following month Mecki Mark Men's residual five members went into Stockholm's Philips Studios to create their eponymous debut album. A tour of the U.K. and an appearance on the BBC television program Popside soon followed.
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