song performed: “Long Before Rock’n'roll” from the album Ode to Ochrasy
conan’s reaction: “Wow!  that was great! *shakes lead 1 hand* sounds like they mean it *shakes lead 2 hand* mando diao everybody we’ll take a break, we’ll be right back. *claps four times, shakes bassist hand*”

us network television debut!  nice!

so mando diao has been around theoretically since the days of boy meets world.  they’re a swedish band, and along the lines of their brotters The Hives, Düngen, and even those cute The Cardigans - they represent garage punk rock, but in a much cleaner form.  and I think cleaner all around.  there were nods to the Hives on stage, only instead of white ties on black dress, it was black sweater vests over white work shirts.

I found tonight’s performance entertaining.  the two leads (one of them is daniel and/or björn?) brought out their Swedish minimalism, sharing a single mic which they went back and forth  in rounds of lyrics.  the song started out looking at the audience and quickly picked up energy.  there was no messing around - veins promptly popped out of necks during shouting, hair that was tennis star length started shaking, and pillow was pronounced “peeeelow”.

there was a lot of energy throughout the song.  monitor speakers were decorated with what looked like a lot of crayon coloring.  I specifically like the anthem “la la la’s” toward the end, which I find is a big part of Swedish rock.