2013 has been a good year for live music. At least it has been great for me. I have been to fourteen festivals, I have seen somewhere between 150 and 200 concerts this year, and I have enjoyed most of them. For some of them I have seen only part of it, but many I have seen the whole concert. Here are 15 of my best 30 concert experiences this year. (Picture above: the audience at Kvelertak’s concert at the Slottsfjell festival)
The Norwegian band Hellbillies released their 13th CD two weeks ago to great reviews in newspapers and blogs. Some have held this as their best CD so far. Saturday night they held their 20 year anniversary concert as a recording band at a sold out Oslo Spektrum together with some good artist friends.
Ida Jenshus released her third CD Someone To Love a couple of weeks ago. Now she is on a club tour to promote the CD, and yesterday she played the Crossroad Club in Oslo. The concert was sold out, and the expectations were high.
This year’s Blues In Hell is over, and it has been a great two days with good artists, good blues and friendly people from all over Norway. The festival is held some 20 miles east of Trondheim at a place called Hell, which means a shallow cave in old Norwegian. The headliners at the festival were The Original Blues Brothers, Johnny Hoy, Tommy Castro, Vidar Busk, Roy Rogers and Rory Block. (Above: Johnny Hoy and The Bluefish)
Kaizers Orchestra at Sentrum Scene.
Now you don’t have to go to New York, London or LA to be updatet on what’s hot and what’s not. Oslo and Atlanta have been declared by The Independent as the two main trend-setting cities. For Oslo, much of the honour goes to the showcase festival by:Larm. But there are other important contributors to Oslo’s new status that deserve to be mentioned.
Artist Pictures Blog 
