Cabaret Cafe Cobra (from left) Marlou Mönnig, Anita Prytz and I staged a girl-cabaret which we called Café Cobra. The show was sold out during its run in Stockholm 1980-81, and it got a lot of attention in the press. The cabaret was also filmed and shown on television. Cast, crew, musicians, technicians and artists were all female. It was a period of learning, both inspiring and challenging for me. I wrote a lot of the material. We also had numbers where we improvised on stage. (This was very much fun, but difficult...)

Invitation to the blues..
What a wonderful song by Tom Waits. I love to sing it. To achieve the perfect smoky, after midnight feeling, I had to smoke, or rather send some smoke up in the ray of the spotlight, and sip a glass of whiskey. Well, on stage the whiskey is usually tea - lucky for me, because I didn’t drink or smoke. But I managed to puff on a cigarette and made smoke rings without inhaling.

And the makeup was as everything else, very exaggerated. But false eyelashes were not enough; we painted extra long and thick lashes on our faces. Not very attractive on close examination, but we had fun.

We had great ideas in Café Cobra. Not always greatlooking.. but let's say.. somewhat different. If you look closer, you'll see that that my dress has the shape of a bottle. On the sides it's quite transparent, see through.. iiiiiii no caution at all. It's cabaret!

Oh my, here is Café Cobra; the unbelievable number Ockulta Hörnan (The Occult corner) A totally improvised, hysterical and flipped out part of the show, very much enjoyed by ourselves as well! Sometimes we couldn't help ourselves and burst out in laughter, rolling on the floor. From left Anita, she was a medium who spoke to everything, chairs, tables and whatever popped up in her little head. I was the host of the show, in love with and always focused on wherever the camera was. Marlou was some kind of expert, it differed from time to time. And what about our designed clothing in stretch and beige. Oooo beautiful (except me, I wore my Melodifestival-dress. If you're the host of the show you're aloud to be a little more fancy, don't you think?) And to finish it all, check out our baldheads. We were leading the way, showing how to look. And we looked just GREAT! Others followed in our footsteps, we had a lot of ideas and it was so much fun. Café Cobra! = ssssssssss

Greta and I had a very funny perception of clothes and how you should be dressed. We were raised in the spirit of the Fattighuset cabaret, which says that you grab what you have and make the most of it. We lived up to that every day. I have something old and broken (totally rad with a few holes here and there). In any case it didn’t matter if my shirt had some holes. On top of that I wore a leopard-patterned blouse and an old belt that I found somewhere. To top it off there was a boa with feathers. Voilá, the creation was complete. This relationship to clothes has always attracted me. The result is not always very elegant, but it’s always personal.

Here I am singing a song that I wrote with Bengt Carlsson 'Jag dricker igen' (I drink again). It may seem strange for me to sing a song like that since I never drink. But to want something that you cannot live without, that I could relate to. I know how cravings and desire feels in my body. It doesn’t matter if it relates to sweets, sex or alcohol. The dress I am wearing looks like a bottle. Funny concept isn’t it...? Ah, well... Lyrical photo by Barbro Paulsson.

Here I am at the Cabaret Flygande Maran in Gothenburg. Greta and I alternated between the Fattighus cabarét in Stockholm and Flygande Maran in Gothenburg. We felt very busy and sought after! Emphasize that which is beautiful or extraordinary was one of the founding thoughts of the cabaret. I have always had a deep décolletage (if you have big breasts you should show them), although this was comparatively modest. Sometimes the décolletage was so deep that my breasts popped out. That would immediately wake up the audience in case they had fallen asleep. And to wake up and shake up, that’s what we wanted them to do. Was it necessary for one of us to go and sit on the lap of some man in the audience, well...guess who they picked? It was always me. And I was the heaviest of all of us. Gosh, that poor audience had to put up with a lot of stuff. Check out my wig. Isn’t it gorgeous?

If you click on the picture you will also see Bongo! He was the MC at Fattighuset and also at the Flygande Maran. Nobody could talk qualified bullshit at any length of time like he could. Bongo mixed wonderful madness with great warmth and presence. Often he had this long monologue about what cabaret could be, and his ability to associate always astonished me. At the same time he was very charming. Oh, Bongo, there is no one like you, you are irresistible!

It kind of shows that I was working with cabaret, doesn't it?! The body with dots on, well I still have it and I just love dots!