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Let me introduce you to The Swell Season, the band I went to a concert with this Sunday in Pumpehuset Copenhagen. The Swell Season refers to the assembly of musicians, Irish Glen Hansard and Czech Marketa Irglova, who also stares in the independent movie, Once – most enjoyable and truly inspiring.

When I first saw Once six month ago or something like that I was stunned by the music. I quickly figured that it had a soundtrack with all the great music, but afraid of getting bored with it or maybe ruining the experience of rewatches of the movie, I decided that I’d only listen to the music when I’d see the movie. That way I’d always get that certain energy the movie has.

When I showed the movie to my brother a while later my plan broke though. Fearlessly he fetched himself the soundtrack, and only a few weeks later I couldn’t resist anymore. Luckily I didn’t grow bored with it. I’ve had it in my car since and I still listen to it regularly. Great every time. Sure, some of their songs are what some may call corny. They’re all about love, heart stabbing and stuff like that. I’ve nothing much against that myself but it’s also not the main reason I listen to them. The main reason is definitely the melodies – so simple and surely not to be found elsewhere. Hansard’s and Irglova’s voices also complement each other very nicely, though I must say that Hansard’s the best.

Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard at Pumpehuset 9/11 2008

Anyway, to make a long story short, my brother and I ended up in Pumpehuset Copenhagen this Sunday to see them, The Swell Season obviously. You were supposed to sit down and there were people of all ages. Really nice, intimite and sold-out concert.

The Swell Season at Pumpehuset 9/11 2008

After watching the movie and also the concert you just can’t help liking the couple. They seem really down to earth and talented.

I particularly remember one performance, the one of Mighty sword. Mighty sword is actually a Frames song (the band where Hansard normally is the lead singer), but it left the venue almost ecstatic, I know I was. It’s such a beautiful song.

So that’s where I’ll leave you tonight – with a video of the Mighty Sword. Maybe a bit “hippie”-ish and bad quality but it’s alright. Couldn’t find better.

G’night.

One of my main interests is music. I’m simply fascinated by the way it sometimes hits me. Naturally, I also like concerts. According to me, there are only few things better than being in a dark, crowded room, listening to loud, great music with a beer in your hand. Actually, I’ve been going to concerts since my early teens, 14-15 that is. This post is about my latest efforts to hear some great music and thereby enrichen myself with a brand new experience – my weekend trip to Dublin where the band This will destroy you (TWDY) performed October 12th at Whelans.

During a walk in the city, we saw a TWDY concert poster.

Looking at my notes for this post, I suspect it’ll get long. Simply because it is a long and complicated, but hopefully interesting story. I’ll try to leave out unnecessary details. I took some pictures with my new camera which I’ll also include a few of.

The tickets. It all started in my summer vacation 2008 where a couple of mates, Søren and Morten, and I decided that we were going to hear The Lymbyc Systym (LS) live some time soon regardless of the expenses. As they’ve only toured in the USA so far, we talked/joked about going over there to see them. Fortunately, we didn’t have to, because it turned out that they were going on a EU tour in the fall as warm-up for TWDY – not passing DK though. Still, we had to consider this our cue, our cue to finally see them. After this realization, it all went very fast deciding on Dublin as destination and booking stuff like a hostel, concert tickets and plane tickets. Clearly, we couldn’t bear to miss out on this opportunity. We were really excited.

A month or so had past when we for no apparent reason clicked into the MySpace profile of LS. To our horror, we found out that only a few weeks after we booked the entire trip they had postponed their EU tour to January – JANUARY! We couldn’t believe it. We were speechless. Nothing to do. Our plane tickets were of course bought without insurance to save money and we had deposits hanging too many places to cancel the trip. So we didn’t. It was going to be a great trip anyway and after all, LS was only playing warm-up.

So what was this other mystery band they’d play warm-up for? That was the question I asked myself. When I wasn’t going to a LS concert, I may as well enjoy whatever name showed up. I slammed all of TWDY’s material on my Ipod and started listening to it – that’s one or two months ago. I haven’t stopped listening to it since. I think I’ve heard it every morning on my Ipod – absolutely amazing music. Won’t even start describing it, but give it a go when you don’t know what else to put on your Ipod. If you won’t like it the first couple of playthroughs, you will the next – if you’re into that kind of music of course : ). But anyway, we ended up liking it a lot. It took the edge of the LS disappointment and we looked very much forward to the trip.

The trip. So, the trip took off last Friday afternoon. We went on a plane, got to Dublin and found our hostel – The Abraham House. We had a room for three – bathroom, breakfast and TV included.

The front of the Abraham House. The building is really confusing once you get inside.

I’ve only stayed in a hostel a few times, but I think this place was great – at least for its purpose. Clean, centrally located and relatively cheap (around 200-250 dkr). There was even a snack machine. Wuu!

After another meal at the King. Our standard meal was the "Double meat beast whopper super meal with coke" - kind of hard to say in one breath.

This leads me to my next subject: The food we ate. To say it mildly, I’ve rarely lived unhealthier. The first building in front of us when we stepped out of the bus from the airport was a Burger King. I guess it was fate. From that point we went there twice a day. If not there, then Donalds or some pizza place.

Tough choice.

Between these visits we lived off the snack machine, coke (the drink of course) and beer. Okay, we had two decent meals, bananas and steak at a restaurant. Still, so unhealthy, so good : ). My concious is definitely not was it was before. Good thing I still have my morning runs and fitness visits going – they’re definitely kicking in again tomorrow.

The concert. When it became Sunday (concert day) we were a bit tired after a couple of late nights. Still, we had a great concert coming up at 8 pm. I know I was excited when we stood in front of the venue.

Outside the venue - Whelan. A small, but definitely nice place.

After walking through two wrong doors into the same building we finally found the place. The first warm-up band Mom was already playing, so we ordered something to drink and threw our jackets in the corner. The place was really cool – underground, small and very intimate. I don’t think there was room for more than 150 people.

TWDY preparing their encore.

Anyway, the two warm-up bands were alright, especially the last band Halves. No one beat TWDY though. When then they took over the scene, it was dark and the venue filled. It was a great, informal concert with great music. Even though they only played for something like forty minutes and didn’t talk much to the audience, there were definitely times when you thought they’d actually destroy you with their complicated, beautiful, big sounds, their intriguing rhythms and crushing effects. There was also a lot of great build-up and they really dedicated themselves to it. Big words, they don’t describe it rightfully though.

TWDY in action.

The informal atmosphere was really cool. It established itself in the facts that it was a small place, only one step up to the close scene, the warm-up bands became part of the crowd when TWDY went on, the bands acted roadies themselves and you could just go exchange a few words with them afterwards if you felt like it. I/We didn’t though : ).

Of course, I also had to get some merchandise – as I always do. The guy who sold it was really a character. Seemed so stoned, but also really nice. He’d made a small sign on which it said “I work for PINTS!”

The man who sold merchandise in the corner of the venue. Disturbed picture, I know, but we were told to leave at this moment.

Anyway, to make a long story short, due to some misunderstandings over the merchandise booth in “rush hour” right after the concert, I came home to the hostel with LS’s and TWDY’s new Field Studies album, Halves’ only album and a really cool, white TWDY t-shirt – in Large. Darn! I normally use XL or XXL. There’s was nothing to do. Fortunately, I had a grateful, smaller brother at home who was happy about the incident. I think I’ll search the web some time for another t-shirt for myself.

The photography. This paragraph may seem a bit out of place. I’m including it anyway. So.. I took a lot of pictures over there, 300-400 or something like that.

A man playing guitar in the street. It's his dog too. I think he was playing Hallelujah at this moment. It sounded alright.

They were mostly results of experimenting and random clicking when bored, but there were also few where I tried to make an effort. So some were okay, but frankly, I’m not satisfied with the set (or whatever you call the entire outcome) at all. It sure was fun to play with, but I really feel that I missed a lot of good opportunities for taking some great pictures.

We walked past Trinity College on our way to the concert. I like this picture. The colours are almost surreal.

I was bad at taking the time necessary to focus the shots – did too much “walk, (stop, )click and walk again”. That has been my main problem, and I’m quite convinced that isn’t the camera’s fault.

I guess you could call this the main street of Dublin. A sample of my "clicking away" randomly when we walked. It could have been a cool picture.

I’ve also had trouble in darkness. When I turned up the ISO, the shutter became way too long, which made it impossible to focus.

Too long shutter time. I have no idea what I was trying to get a picture of here, but it looks alright, doesn't it?

Don’t know why I didn’t adjust the two settings at the same time. Guess I didn’t have a qualified idea of what they should be. At least I know a little more about that know. I’ve generally needed to know more about what the camera was actually capable of. The blitz was also a bitch to figure out, but I’ve definitely learned a lot. Also about what to actually take pictures of. Till now, I must admit that the photos taken with the auto buttons are best : ).

The main street again from another angle. It is taken with the auto buttons. They do a great job at daytime.

Fortunately, I only see it as an exciting challenge to take good pictures, and I look forward to clicking away some other time.

The end. So, I guess I was right when I suspected the post to get long. Thanks for reading so far anyway. To put an end to it, we got home Monday afternoon, and I can honestly say that I think it was a weekend well spent. It’s always fun to visit new, foreign places – Dublin was a really cool place, loads of people, weird beer. A trip abroad like this is also a great interruption of a stressful everyday. It was incredibly relaxing to just “chill around” in Dublin.

So, I’m looking forward to another trip, maybe another place – maybe even with the fantastic LS as main attraction.

That, and I also wanted a camera. After gradually spending more time on sites like flickr, I figured it’d be cool to have one, and since I just got an extra, unexpected pay check from my summer job, could it be more convenient? So a couple of weeks ago I started checking out the market. I’ve never had a camera before nor found them particularly interesting. In fact, until a couple of years ago I didn’t know the slightest about the impressive “science” behind it. The shooting itself is one thing. You have to find a motive, maybe a subject, get influences like light, focus, colours, angle, zooming, the moment, everything right. I obviously don’t know the fancy words, but I know that it can look quite amazing if carefully thought out. After that – the other thing – there’s also the whole post-processing phase if you’re up for it. My impression is that most use Photoshop, and apparently there’s also a tendency of photographers using/liking Apple – just something I noticed. Anyway, some find post-processing unnecessary, some indispensable. It’s all a matter of taste and of course the specific picture. I like when the photographer captures certain kinds of moods, atmospheres, expressions, quirks by using alternative, maybe even experimental methods. I also like dust, black/white, transparency, age, etc. No definite taste though.

Right now, I’ve no intension of becoming an (amateur) photographer like the above briefly describes. I find their photos very interesting to look at, but I have enough interests to take care of and I also simply can’t afford a camera that’s worth the considerations – that would be a DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) camera, way too expensive for a novice.

Instead, I’ve thrown my money at the “Canon Powershot G9” digital camera. In it’s price range (around 2800 dkr) I haven’t been able to find anything better. I can only find positive reviews of it, and I also read something about that it’s the DSLR users’ prefered compact camera. Without insulting too many, I guess one could call it a worthy middle ground between the two kinds. I bought it with a few accesories – that is a bag, an extra battery and of course some SD memory (4 GB). Total cost of everything together: 3440 dkr.

So Friday (it’s Monday now), I went to the cheapest place in DK – kamerashop.dk – and ordered it to get it delivered today. Of course it got too late in school, and on my way home I could therefore only wave to the postman driving past me in his car. In Aalborg DK you have to be home to sign the reception when the postman comes. If you aren’t, you’re forced to wait until the next day before picking up your package at the post office. Stupid system. That’s why I – nearly with tears in my eyes – stopped my bike to watch the postman drive by me. I had come like fifteen minutes too late, obviously unable to stop him (even though I seriously considered throwing myself in front of his car). Still, I refused to give up. I started giving the bike all I had – pedal with my entire weight. I got home, ran up the stairs (four floors), locked up my appartment and threw myself at the key for my car. Got out again, smacked the door back in, ran down the stairs (still four floors) and into the car. When I backed out from the parking slot I nearly hit a cyclist. I didn’t, but it made me think “Slow down, Anders, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get that camera today.”, took two long breaths, thought “Okay, maybe it is.” So I sat off in pursuit of catching the postman. When I got past the point where I’d met him on my bike, I started searching every side road. Eventually, I got to the end of the “big” road which divided in two. I choose the most likely and searched for another 2 km or something. It may seem that I looked for hours but it all took around 20 minutes. That was when I decided to accept my defeat and go home. Now I’ll have to wait till tomorrow and pick it up after school.

Till then I’ll keep considering a question I (probably should’ve but) haven’t answered yet. What do I want to take pictures of? No clue. Anything at any time I guess. When I get it tomorrow I’ll post a few test shots ASAP – just for show. After that, I don’t know of anything specific, but I have my Dublin weekend trip on which I’ll probably bring it. Stay put and in a week or so, you can read about that. I know I can’t wait : ).

By the way, this is my first post on the “new” domain. It has been mine for a long time but it has always just pointed at my own server. Now it points here – to my blog – and it’s nice to get rid of the subdomain.

Have a nice evening.

Yeah, I know, it’s been way too long since my last post, and I am indeed sorry for the delay. To excuse myself I can tell you that I’m working on a couple of entries. They should be done within the next few days, but again, don’t shoot me if they aren’t (like you care). In the meantime though I’d like to share the lyrics of a song I found stumbling upon this cool profile on flickr. The song is Empty by Ray Lamontagne and it is just beautiful. I wish I could write lyrics like that.

You can listen to it here:

And the lyrics:

she lifts her skirt up to her knees,
walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing.
i never learned to count my blessings,
i choose instead to dwell in my disasters.
i walk on down a hill,
through grass, grown tall and brown
and still its hard somehow to let go of my pain.
on past the busted back of that old and rusted cadillac
that sinks into this field, collecting rain.
will i always feel this way?
so empty, so estranged

and of these cut- throat busted sunsets,
these cold and damp white mornings
i have grown weary.
if though my cracked and dusted dime-store lips
i spoke these words out loud would no one hear me?
lay your blouse across the chair,
let fall the flowers from your hair
and kiss me with that country mouth, so plain.
outside, the rain is tapping on the leaves,
to me it sounds like they're applauding us the the quiet love we made.
will i always feel this way?
so empty, so estranged

well i looked my demons in the eyes,
laid bare my chest, said do your best, destroy me.
you see, i've been to hell and back so many times,
i must admit you kind of bore me.
there's a lot of things that can kill a man,
there's a lot of ways to die,
listen, some already did that walked beside me.
there's alot of things i don't understand,
why so many people lie.
its the hurt i hide that fuels the fire inside me.
will i always feel this way?
so empty, so estranged

Enjoy!

Today I finished five weeks of work at Supergros the Herning department – the same place as last year. Great to be moving on. Supergros is a big, danish grosserer that delivers food, drinks and loads of other goods to all of Denmark and various other countries.

What I have been doing there is driving around on a truck and pack these goods from the huge store room on pallets. There’s about fifty others of my kind and we’re basically at the bottom of the hierarchy. But it’s all right. I like that the only worry you have is which order you’re going to pick the next time – is it too big, too small or does it fit. It’s all about timing so you won’t have to work over – even though I haven’t been afraid of doing overtime. Most of the people out there are all right, and when you come home, you can forget all about work and just do nothing – something I’m not used to from school. My mate Morten – who has also been working there, for a year actually – made a video using his cell. I’ll see if I can get that sometime soon and maybe post it to give you an insight to the everyday life at Supergros.

I’d also like to tell something about what kept me alive out there. It is pretty humdrum and usually it is the breaks that keep you alive (a pre-caution: to workers of Supergros, don’t get me wrong here, it’s a great place to work and I’d like to come back next year) but I found something else to boost time a bit.

A couple of years ago I started listening to the pod cast of the Ricky Gervais show and when I finished that, I moved on to the radio show. There’s many episodes since it ran every week some years ago. So I never finished it. But then a few weeks ago when I sat on my truck at Supergros and scrolled down on my ipod, I came across The Ricky Gervais radio show. I started to listen to it again, loved it and didn’t stopped until every episode was heard. I really love this show, it’s just brilliant even though it’s just three blokes talking. It stares Ricky Gervais obviously and Stephen Merchant, the brains behind The Office and Extras (which I also love), and Karl Pilkington, indescribable. Sure, it may work best when you do stupid work that doesn’t require much brain activity, but I’d still recommend you to listen to it or at least try it. I’ve attached a small audio clip here as an appetizer. Enjoy!

Contact me if you want to know where to get all of the shows.

I like to watch movies, especially good ones. Lately I’ve become more passionate about finding these, watching them and dig further into them if they’re worth it. So what kind of movies do I like? I don’t really have a clear, unambiguous definition of my taste. I do know what kind of movies I don’t like though, and also what movies I probably won’t like. Knowing that, why not just invert it to figure out which movies I like? But there’s also the middle ground, isn’t there? Different levels of good movies, movies that one doesn’t hate but also doesn’t love.

What I’m searching for is the very peek. The best movies of all time in my opinion, and it is this taste I can’t really define. But I want movies that leave me dumbfounded and completely blown away, like when the credits start rolling and you just stare at the reflection of the screen for minuts. I want movies that don’t lose their energy no matter how many times you watch them. Movies that are too good to be slapped on a DVD, stuffed in a box and stashed on a shelf only with its back visible, disappearing in the crowd.

So, I decided to share my findings so far in form of a top ten. I don’t even know if I like the idea of “boxing” pieces like these but I’ll do it without ranking them, so I guess it’ll be fine.

This is my top ten. For now at least, I reckon some it’ll change over time. All highly but also subjectively recommended by me of course. As said, they aren’t ranked by anything, just listed randomly. The “top ten” limit is just there to set a limit, so don’t put too much into that. I’m be able to mention loads of others but I won’t.

• Into the wild
• Garden State
• Dogville
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Trainspotting
• The usual suspects
• Once
• Cashback
• One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• La Vita è bella

That’s it. I actually had a hard time deciding on these, but bit of an anticlimax to this entry, right? I guess it would have to be read aloud by David Letterman or someone like that : )..