Junipher Greene and Friendship

I have written about Junipher Greene in another post on this blog. Last night they held their yearly concert at Rockefeller in Oslo, starting their 50 year anniversary as a band. As support they had the new bands, Friendship, aptly named after Junipher Greene’s historical debut album, Friendship from 1971.

Freddy Dahl and Bent Åserud

Pictures from Junipher Greene’s concert at Rockefeller January 2013

Friendship

Fredrik Skaalstad from Friendship

The band Friendship was a nice experience. They are a power trio from Kongsberg, Ytre Enebakk and Bærum, and play 70’s bluesy prog.rock, sometimes reminding me of a young Cream. They are great musicians, with the drummer, Fredrik Skaalstad, as the singer, Magnus Kultorp on guitar and Njål Uhre Kiese on bass. I liked that they think as a band, not as individual egos, which is the universal danger with this kind of band. They have just released an self-titled album on colored vinyl, and I’m looking forward to listening to my copy.

Junipher Greene

Ger Bøhren

Øyvind Vilbo

Jon Willy Rydningen

Junipher Greene’s set built up to their epos, the Friendship suite, the main work of their debut album. They also played other songs from the album, like Magical Garden, Music For Our Children, Try To Understand and Witches Daughter. All of these are good songs, but to me, the fun starts when they play Take The Road Across The Bridge, the first song of the suite. From there and out it was pure pleasure.

Freddy Dahl

Bent Åserud

Since this year marks the 50 year anniversary for the band, they plan some more activity than earlier years. Hopefully they will play some festivals during the summer. There were around 1000 people at Rockefeller, but more people deserved to see them.

Freddy Dahl