By:Larm – the Norwegian showcase festival – is a yearly event in Oslo, located in the center, around Youngstorget. The town square is filled with tents that function as venues for the festival. Yesterday night was the first night of showcases on these and the surrounding venues. Here are some pictures of the acts I managed to see last night. (Picture above: Veronica Maggio and a photographer)
The two big brit pop bands in the mid 90’s were Oasis and Blur. Suede and Pulp were also there, but didn’t reach the same level as the other two bands. I saw Oasis at the ACL festival in 2005 and wasn’t impressed. Yesterday Blur played at the Oya Festival in Oslo, headlining the big stage, and I saw a vital and well played band.
Kinky Friedman is an artist, writer, politician, but first of all Texan, even if he is born in Chicago. His songs and one-liners are witty, very politically incorrect, and sometimes quite provocative – specially to people of the republican persuasion. Yesterday night he played live at Café Mono in Oslo to an audience who knew their Kinkster history.
Next week the 17th by:Larm festival will be arranged in Oslo. From the start in Trondheim in 1997, it has grown to be an imoportant festival for the music business in Norway. Every year record company executives, managers, media people and an increasing number of international representatives gather in Oslo for four days of music and seminars. Here are some of the artists from last year’s by:Larm while we are counting down to February 13th. (Picture above: Bernhoft)
Granittrock is something as unusual as a free, non-alcoholic festival in Oslo, where some of Norway’s best and biggest bands play. The festival was arranged Friday and Saturday this weekend, and I was there on Friday.
Wednesday night Metallica are playing in Oslo, at Valle Hovin. They played in Oslo in 2009 and 2010, and I had the good fortune of photographing both events, plus when they played the SXSW in Austin in March 2009. Here are some of the pictures from those two concerts to shorten the wait for those who have tickets for the Valle Hovin event.
In February this year I saw Satyricon with the National Opera Choir performing To The Mountains at Norway’s National Opera House. The performance was part of a conference arranged by the Opera and the Olympiatoppen, an organisation set up to train Norwegian elite sport.
Lucky Lips are a Norwegian bluegrass band consisting of five excellent musicians. Each of them are really competent on their instruments, but together they shine. Wednesday night they played a release concert for their new CD Mountain Dust.
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.
Except for Mayhem, Arcturus is one of the longest living Norwegian metal bands. The started in 1987, and split up in 2007, then reunited in 2011. There were great expectations to their closing gig at the Inferno Festiival Saturday night, and they met these with flying colors.
Artist Pictures Blog 