The official site has now confirmed the October 10th concert in Amsterdam – again…
Tickets will go on sale this Saturday, January 16th at LiveNation.nl.
The March 14th concert in Belo Horizonte has also finally been confirmed. Ticket sales for this show started, uh… last year. But a-ha.com claims there are still tickets available.
However, still no official word on the four remaining Brazilian dates in Bauru, Brasilia, Recife and Fortaleza.
As previously reported, concert organizers in Bodø, Norway have been in contact with a-ha Network about getting a possible date on the Farewell Tour.
The concert would have been held as part of the Aspmyra Live mini-festival, but it seems that the plans didn’t work out.
“As it stands now this won’t happen, unfortunately“, a-ha manager Harald Wiik tells local newspaper Avisa Nordland today.
According to the newspaper, a-ha will be doing concerts in Norway between August 20th and September 12th.
“There was a weekend during that period when we could have arranged Aspmyra Live, but that wasn’t a good time for the band. Aspmyra Live is usually held in June, but it wasn’t possible for a-ha to come here [that month]“, Gøran Aamodt of the event company Tag Productions tells Avisa Nordland.
As for which Norwegian cities that will get a visit from a-ha in late summer, there have been rumours about both Stavanger and Bergen.
On January 6th, a-ha.com announced a date in Paris, France on October 12th. And the previously known date in Santiago, Chile on March 6th was officially confirmed.
The following day, a concert in Amsterdam, Holland on October 10th was also announced by a-ha.com. But that date has since been removed from the official site, because all the details weren’t ready yet.
Magne and Hugo Opdal at Flø, February 2008
The first “Go with the Flø” art and music festival will be held at Flø in Norway on 5 – 6 June. The festival was supposed to be held in June 2009, but had to be postponed to 2010 instead.
In addition to exhibiting some new artworks, Magne will be performing at the festival – provided there is enough time between a-ha dates.
“Magne is touring Europe with a-ha around that time, but he will try to be here if it’s possible. And then he will take part in the festival both as a musician and an artist“, festival organizer Hugo Opdal tells local newspaper Vikebladet’s paper edition.
The 2009 statistics of the official Norwegian album chart shows that Foot Of The Mountain was the 8th bestselling Norwegian album of 2009 and the 15th bestselling when international albums are included. The whole list can be seen on Farojournalen’s website.
On NRK P1, Norway’s largest radio station, “Foot Of The Mountain” was the 2nd most played song in 2009, only beaten by Beyonce’s “Halo”. The 15 most played songs can be seen on NRK.no.
And on Hit 40, the official Norwegian radio chart, “Foot Of The Mountain” was the 4th most played Norwegian song in 2009 and 7th overall. The top 100 songs are listed here.
In Germany, Foot Of The Mountain ended up at number 22 on the list of the bestselling albums of 2009, which is available here. The album is actually still in the German album chart, currently at number 52 after 29 weeks.
a-ha’s backing musician Erik Ljunggren was recently interviewed by the German magazine Keyboards. Scans of the interview has been posted on the German forum by Elanur.
a-ha appeared on several UK radio stations today and over the weekend, including Forth One, Lincs FM, BFBS Radio and Wave 105.
Some of the interviews are also available online: Lincs FM (starts after 10 minutes), BFBS Radio (starts after 22 minutes) and Wave 105.
In between interviews, Magne found time for a quick visit to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark on Sunday, where he hung out with his friends in Coldplay – who ended the festival with a big concert.
There’s a backstage picture of Magne and Guy Berryman on Coldplay.com.
a-ha’s appearence on the morning TV show GMTV has apparently been re-scheduled for July 17th.
(Thanks to Catherine, Bunty, Sally and Carlos for links and info)
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Somehow I missed this when it was first broadcast, but Magne was interviewed on NRK P2’s radio programme “Mozart og Madonna” on June 15th.
The theme of the week was England, and Magne had been invited to talk about how a-ha went to London to make it in the music business. He says that staying in London had an important impact on Paul and himself as musicians:
“We discovered and opened up to more commercial music than what we had listened to before. We were rather stuck in the sixties, in a way. We had noticed punk music and thought it was cool, but we tried our best to hold onto the sixties-sound in the music we did ourselves.”
This month’s promotional push in the UK was also mentioned:
“We’re going to play and talk our way through July in London. There’s a surprising amount of interest and love directed towards the band over there these days.”
I have made a full translation of the interview, which can be found here.
And if you want to listen to it yourself, the June 15th programme is available for download from nrk.no as a podcast. The interview starts after 9 minutes.
Morten on stage, July 2nd
(Picture by Qouda)
“The Bandstand” made its live debut last night, when a-ha played a 7-song live set in front of 150 lucky ticket winners at the One Marelybone venue in London.
According to a-ha.com on Twitter, the setlist at the promotional mini-concert was:
1. The Bandstand
2. Riding The Crest
3. The Sun Always Shines On TV
4. Foot Of The Mountain
5. Analogue
6. Take On Me
– – – – – – – –
7. Hunting High And Low
An interview with a-ha will be broadcast on BFBS Radio on Monday, July 6th, on the show “Breakfast with Sim” between 09.00 and 10.00 (UK time).
The show should be available for listening at bfbs-radio.com. (Thanks to “feeb” on WOTM)
A concert at the Olimpiysky Arena in Moscow on 22 November has been rumored for a while – the ticket sale even started several weeks ago.
This date has now been confirmed by a-ha.com, along with a concert at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg on 20 November.
You can find these, and all the other upcoming dates, on our 2009 tour page.
The UK promotion schedule is slowly growing; a-ha will play live on BBC Radio 6 Music on Friday, 3 July. Update: Nothing was broadcast, so this may have been re-scheduled for a later date instead.
WOTM forum member Jomarac received the following info in an e-mail from BBC:
“A-Ha will be performing a HUB session for George Lamb’s programme on Friday. More details on his programme page at bbc.co.uk/6music“.
Picture from Oslo, June 12th
The first of many TV-appearances in the UK in July has been announced; GMTV on ITV1 on Monday, July 6th. Update: re-scheduled for July 17th.
According to the TV guide on itv.com, “Norwegian band a-ha stop by the studio for a chat and to introduce the video of their new single Foot of the Mountain“.
(Thanks to Verni for the info)
In its second week on the German album chart, FOTM is down from #1 to #2.
The single is still in the top 10, down from #6 to #9 in its fifth week. (Thanks to Sandra)
The German fansite a-ha-net.de has published a new interview with a-ha backing musician and producer/programmer Erik Ljunggren.
It’s available in English here.
And here is an English translation of the guys’ comments on Janne Møller-Hansen pictures from the 80s, that appeared in VG earlier this month (see June 13th news update).
