In the winter of 2003 I interviewed Caesar's Palace guitarist Joakim (Jocke) Ahlund by phone as part of a big roundup feature on Swedish rock bands that I wrote for the Big Takeover (it appeared in issue #52). Because the Big Takeover feature covered so much ground, it was impossible to use more than a few quotes from the Caesar's Palace interview, so I figured it deserves a standalone feature. I probably should be chastised for not writing a longer introduction describing their CDs in great detail – suffice to say discs like Youth Is Wasted On The Young, Cherry Kicks, Love For The Streets or the new one, 39 Minutes Of Bliss, are all terrific trash pop. If you liked the first Blondie album, you can't go wrong with Caesar's Palace.
Steve: When you were called the Twelve Caesars I got the Youth Is Wasted On The Young CD, I guess three years ago now, and I really liked that one.
Jocke: That's cool. We're going to re-release some of those songs again in the US.
Steve: Your publicist sent me a CDR of what you're going to release and it seems like it's about half from Youth Is Wasted On The Young. (editors note: this became the CD called 39 Minutes Of Bliss (In An Otherwise Meaningless World), this after the band subsequently told me it would be called Cheap Glue, which was the name used in a review I wrote for Big Takeover.)
Jocke: Yeah, and some new stuff and some stuff that's picked form the three lps that we've done here in Sweden.
Steve: Do you know what it's going to be called?
Jocke: No, not yet. We don't have a title for it yet, and we basically have the weekend to come up with something. Our deadline is on Monday to find a title for the album. We've been toying with Cheap Glue for a title. I really liked Youth is Wasted On The Young – I think that's a brilliant title. But it's already been used, so we can't name this one the same. But no, we're not sure yet. We're still working on it.
