Solving the Goodiepal equation

A few years ago I was asked to introduce a documentary film about an old friend of mine. It was shown on the same night that England played a football match, so only 3 people heard me read it. What follows is a revised version of my introduction, compiled to mark his 50th birthday.

The Goodiepal, holding a tumor in a jar. Screenshot from the film ‘The Goodiepal Equation’ (2017), dir. Sami Sänpäkkilä

I’m still not sure why the Goodiepal made multiple requests that I introduce ‘The Goodiepal Equation’, especially as I hadn’t seen it at the time. It could be the same reason that he once accused me of poisoning him during a live performance; or the same reason he named three tracks after me on his 2014 live album ‘Morendo Morendo - My Paris Is Called Colchester’; or the same reason he decided I should play the recorder for his band Goodiepal & Pals, despite my inability to play the recorder.

The Goodiepal wanted me to introduce a film I had not seen, did not make, giving no reason.

That feels like a perfect distillation of my relationship with the Danish musician and cultural hacker known variously as Parl Kristian Bjorn Vester, Mainpal Inv., Gæoudjiparl Van Den Dobbelsteen, Pruttipal or, as I insist on calling him, Kristian.

Goodiepal and One Man Underground, Christmas 2013

Clearly he has his own modus operandi, one that the film attempts to explore, just as I have in the 20 years since I first encountered him, via the man now best known as The Caretaker.

Despite a friendship with Kristian that has seen me watch, open for, and participate in his live show more times than I care to remember over the years, the man and his work remain somewhat unknowable and impenetrable. The film does do a good job of capturing snapshots of his life and work over a roughly 5-year period in the 2010’s, and you can certainly learn something about his life from watching it. Yet, despite the soundtrack, you won’t learn much about his music. Laying somewhere between techno and folk, his work comprises some of the strangest records ever made. Literally.

I own vinyl records of his in the shape of jigsaw pieces, circular saw blades, Swiss cheese, and tractors.

Photo by One Man Underground

Film School 101: like all documentaries, any attempt at true objectivity is doomed to fail. As soon as you decide to point a camera in a certain direction, or cut a scene in a particular way, an inherently subjective narrative has been crafted.

This is likely not a point lost on the Goodiepal. Because while I have no hesitation in describing him with terms like “renegade”, “anarchist”, or “genius,” there is another key term:

“trickster”

It’s hard to know which stories about him, and those he tells, are true or not.

Did he really steal a synthesiser from a Danish music academy, only to return it with major modifications?
Did he really release an album with 500 Kroner bills attached, at a cover price of 250 Kroner?
Did he really get kicked out of giving a lecture at NASA because his ideas were too radical?
Is Goodiepal & Pals an art-rock band or a refugee charity?
Does he really live on a recumbent bicycle? (‘Kommunal Klon Computer 2’. Screenshot from the film ‘The Goodiepal Equation’ (2017), dir. Sami Sänpäkkilä)
Is he even from the Faroe Islands?

Did I really spike his tea?

Just as documentary cannot ever hope to find a truly objective truth, the Goodiepal appears to have blended his reality with fiction - in the film, in his performances, and through his art.

Mythologically, the trickster is said to exhibit great intellect and occult knowledge, but uses this to confuse society, defy conventions and break the rules. Without using a lazy term such as, “an art-school Slavoj Žižek,” I can’t think of a better way of describing the Goodiepal. It’s certainly better than calling him a composer or folk musician - both true, but both missing the point entirely.

In my hometown, where he and his colleagues performed an annual Christmas show for over a decade, he is a minor folk hero. So much so, he named the aforementioned 2014 live album after the town. As he turns 50, at the time of writing, he is on the verge of returning for the first time since the Great Plague, and once again, I will be opening for him in Colchester (STOP PRESS: and in London). What will he do? I haven’t got a clue. Over the years I have watched him play intergalactic chess, display records made of chocolate, introduce a mechanical bird, offer a running commentary of a televised lecture he gave for Danish television, lecture on (possibly fictitious) things we “do not know about electronic music”, and impersonate Sigur Rós.

Goodiepal. Screenshot from the film ‘The Goodiepal Equation’ (2017), dir. Sami Sänpäkkilä

Like The Fall before him, the Goodiepal is always different, and always the same. May he continue to confound my expectations.

But I didn’t spike his tea, damn it.

Your homework: ‘Narc Beacon’, his only “album”; a mammoth Ubuweb archive; the film I introduced.