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Heidi and Magne arriving
Princess Märtha Louise celebrated her 40th birthday at the Royal Palace in Oslo tonight.
Magne and Heidi were among the celebrity guests attending the party, along with people such as director Harald Zwart and singer Lene Marlin.
Pictures of some of the guests arriving can be seen at VG.no and Dagbladet.no.
Posted in Magne 
Tags: heidi rydjord, magne furuholmen, oslo, royal palace 
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Confetti at the end, followed by fireworks.
(Picture by Jakob)
a-ha impressed audience and critics alike when they opened their Norwegian tour at Ullevaal Stadium in Oslo on Saturday, featuring a massive stage and an amazing video show.
The concert was a special celebration of a-ha’s career in front of their home crowd, and after performing “Butterfly, Butterfly”, Morten said:
“We would like to thank you for 25 years. [Long applause] During these 25 years that we have created together, the three of us… I read in the paper today that we are incompatible. I’m no a-ha expert myself… [Audience laughs] …but that statement is not compatible with how I have experienced things. But these are 25 years that you have been a part of as well, and which I would like to thank you for.”
The reviews in VG, Dagbladet, Aftenposten and Dagsavisen all give the concert 5 out of 6.
An amazing video show. Here’s the moon during “Minor Earth, Major Sky”
(Picture by Jakob)
The concert had a bizarre opening though, with the classical Tchaikovsky intro suddenly interrupted by Nelly’s hip-hop tune “Hot in Herre”, before leading into “The Sun Always Shines On TV”. Who came up with that combination?
No new songs in the setlist, but “Butterfly, Butterfly” was done acoustically for the first time, “Crying In The Rain” was back and “(Seemingly) Nonstop July” was performed live only for the second time since 1994. And unlike all the other concerts on the Farewell Tour, the songs were not played in reversed chronological order this time, but instead old and new songs were mixed up. “The Sun Always Shines On TV” was back as the opener, like it was on the FOTM tour in 2009.
Picture by Jakob
Setlist (with YouTube links):
1. The Sun Always Shines On TV
2. Move To Memphis
3. The Blood That Moves The Body
4. Scoundrel Days
5. Stay On These Roads
6. Manhattan Skyline
7. Hunting High And Low
8. The Bandstand
9. Looking For The Whales
10. Butterfly Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)
11. (Seemingly) Nonstop July
12. Crying In The Rain
13. Minor Earth, Major Sky
14. Forever Not Yours
15. Summer Moved On
16. I’ve Been Losing You
17. Foot Of The Mountain
—————
18. Cry Wolf
19. Analogue
20. The Living Daylights
21. Take On Me
More video clips:
TV2 interview with Magne and the vocalist in Shining before the concert:
Magasinet
The opening song filmed by TV2:
The Sun Always Shines On TV
On Saturday, NRK had an interview with P. A. Stenersen, who owns the biggest a-ha collection in the world. Stenersen, who has donated parts of his collection to the upcoming a-ha exhibition at the national museum in Oslo, meets up with Morten in the clip and receives a few very rare additions to his collection:
Lørdagsrevyen
Posted in a-ha, Ending on a High Note Tour Tags: a-ha, ending on a high note, oslo, ullevaal Comments Off on Ullevaal concert
Setting up the stage at Ullevaal, August 18th
The largest concert of the farewell tour is now being prepared at Ullevaal Stadium in Oslo.
The stage construction – reportedly the largest ever built in Norway – weighs 1500 tons and takes four days to set up. 65 meters wide and 18 meters tall, with a 600 square meters video wall, it has been specially designed for these Norwegian concerts by Stageco. It will be brought around Norway using more than 40 semitrailers, and a team of 200 people working on the rigging.
Parts of the stage have been tested indoors at Oslo Spektrum during the last few days. A video clip from this can be seen at Dagbladet.no.
An additional 1500 tickets have now been released, which means that nearly 30.000 people will be in the audience on Saturday night.
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Oslo City, June 15th
Hundreds of people stood in line to get their Foot Of The Mountain CDs signed at Platekompaniet at Oslo City shopping center in Oslo today.
More pictures from the signing session are available here and here.
And here is a blog with pictures and a video clip: Frank Eivinds verden
Morten’s longtime collaborator Sigurjon Einarsson has directed a new movie called A Name is a Name – titled after one of the songs on Morten 2008 solo album Letter From Egypt.
According to info on WithMacedonia.org, A Name is a Name is “a road film that follows an intrepid Scandinavian traveler as he journeys across Macedonia by motorcycle. Along the way, this traveler – who never speaks on camera – listens to the Macedonians he encounters, people from different regions and all walks of life, as they tell their stories.”
Morten visited Macedonia in October 2007, where he had a meeting with Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski. He also attended the “World Conference on Dialogue Among Religions and Civilizations” in Ohrid, and visited the Marita Macedonia Foundation in Skopje. But it is not known if Morten also appears in the film.
According to the same website, the movie is set to premiere this month, with a DVD to be released in the fall. In addition to Morten’s solo song, the soundtrack will also feature contributions by a-ha and Graham Nash, among others.
The movie’s official website is now online at anameisaname.net.
An interesting new interview with photographer Stian Andersen is now up on a-ha.com.
The official website also has new details about Andersen’s upcoming a-ha photo book.
And the FOTM single remains at number 9 on the German singles chart this week, which means that it has managed three weeks in the top 10.
Oslo, June 12th
a-ha were back in Oslo today, to meet the Norwegian press at Grand Hotel.
They were interviewed both together and seperately, and the first press reports have started to appear.
Varden.no has an article here, while TV2 had a report in their evening news. A video clip of the TV2 news report, as well as the new music video, can be seen here.
a-ha.com reports that Magne and Morten will do a signing and an acoustic performance of the single at HMV Oxford Circus in London on 13 July.
Unfortunately, it seems that Paul won’t be able to join them for this event.
a-ha.com also reports that the UK release dates have once again changed. Now they’re back to the original dates, with the single out on 6 July and the album on 13 July.
On Wednesday, Morten answered listeners’ questions on the German radio station FFN.
Twelve short extracts of his answers (which were, by all accounts much, much longer), are now up on the radio station’s website here.
As West Of The Moon forum member Claudia points out, Morten says in the last answer that 2010 will be a much bigger touring year for a-ha, compared to 2009. So that’s good news.
In another of the answers, you can also hear Morten managing to use his favorite word “response” four times in 12 seconds. An impressive feat, even for him.
