Archive for December, 2021

Japanese a-ha tour cancelled

After having been rescheduled twice since March last year, the seven Japanese tour dates planned for next month have now unfortunately been cancelled altogether due to the current Covid-situation. The Japanese promoter Creativeman posted this message on its website:

For a-ha Japan tour in Jan of 2022, we were supposed to grant Special Permission for the visa issuance as a case with special exceptional circumstances. We were working on its application, but due to the omicron variant’s aggressive spread worldwide, the Japanese government has suspended all entries of foreign nationals for a month from Nov 30 as a part of the emergency precautionary measure from a preventive perspective against the Omicron variant and this has put our aforementioned application on hold. No further guidelines or specific plans for the easing of this restriction are announced yet and no words on whether the government will start taking “special exceptional circumstances” cases again soon or not either.

While all the governments offices will close for the holidays, under this current uncertain circumstances it’s highly unlikely to obtain visa in time and also hard to assume that this emergency measure against the omicron variant will be lifted before the tour considering more omicron cases are being found in Japan everyday. Therefore as much as we’d like to carry on we have no choice but to cancel the tour.

After the series of postponements, we are very sorry to deliver the news, but we’d feel more terrible to ask you to keep holding on to the tickets for another postponement in this uncertain situation and we sincerely appreicate your kind understanding.

Your tickets will be refunded at your poinst purchase during the refund window, Dec 24th-Jan31st.
(Please kindly note that the refund is only available during the set dates above and no refund can be accepted after)
Please refer to Creativeman’s website for further details of the refund process.

This means the next opportunity for the Hunting High and Low Tour to resume, is in South America in March 2022.

Magne appears in Kalvøya documentary

Magne in the documentary

Magne is one of the people interviewed in a new documentary film about Norway’s legendary Kalvøya music festival.

The festival was held on the island of Kalvøya in Bærum near Oslo, nearly every summer from 1971-1997. It became Norway’s largest music festival and over the years featured headliners such as Frank Zappa, U2, Leonard Cohen, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Neil Young, Pearl Jam and David Bowie.

“Kalvøya was in the immediate area from where both Morten and I lived during parts of our adolescence, so the festival used to be the big event of the year and there was always something you wanted to see. You’d actually go there regardless if you liked the bands or not, as it had this magnetic effect on the whole region of eastern Norway”, Magne says in the documentary.

In June 1988 a-ha headlined the first day of the festival, as part of the Stay On These Roads tour. It was also their very first outdoor concert in Norway. The headliner the following day was Leonard Cohen.

“I think the concert at Kalvøya was an important moment for us, as it was one of the first major concerts we held in Norway”, Magne says.

“One of the highlights for us was meeting Leonard Cohen, who has been a great inspiration as a songwriter. Festivals are often a meeting ground for artists who wouldn’t otherwise meet each other.”

a-ha’s former FOH engineer Sven Persson (2000-2008) is also interviewed in the documentary, as he worked as a sound engineer at Kalvøya over many years.

The 105-minute documentary premiered on NRK TV on Monday and can be seen here (regional restrictions may apply). The segment about the a-ha concert is from 59:05 – 01:06:38.

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