Mecki Mark Men (MMM for short) were a Swedish 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 Stockholm'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. Mecki Mark Men went on to collaborate with other artists in the genres of pop music, opera, and musical theatre, and were one of the first Swedish rock acts to tour and release records in the U.S. History Origins Mecki Mark Men were founded by Swedish keyboardist Claes Bodemark. Bodemark's career began after he acquired his first Hammond L-100 organ at age 17 and then landed a job as studio organist for a Stockholm television station in the early 1960s. By the middle of the decade he was known as "Mecki," a name the long-haired musician shared with the 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 (MMM). First lineup: 1967–early 1968 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