Where is it:
Spectrum of Oslo
Spectators:
1500 approx
“Big party.“
There is always something special about anniversary performances, especially since as an artist you always stretch a little more. A concert with the Kringkastingsorkestret, KORK, is something many artists desire. Tonight it’s Morten Abel’s turn.
“Local Band”
He brought with him “a popular local band”, as he puts it. And KORK really does something with both the artist and the audience. Conductor Reid Gilje and the NRK Concert Orchestra ensure that we can touch They. Good songs get better and less good songs get better. It’s grand and powerful – and very hard not to like. CORK makes a big difference tonight.
FIRST RELEASE: Eva Bjerga Haugen is the first to come out with her interpretation of the Mods song “Me to går altið aleina”. Photo: Lars Eivind Bones / Dagbladet
sea View
The large stage is completed by the Safari gospel choir and musicians Christer Slaaen (keyboards and guitar) and Thomas Gallatin (drums and keyboards), both of whom also play in the American group Darling West. Everyone is doing something with these songs that weren’t there before.
Stories
Abel chose a slightly surprising opening, a five-minute juvenile story called “Skeptical (sweet dreams)” from his brand new album “The Final Victory”, illustrated with a minimalist cartoon.
The only guest soloist of the evening, Stavanger artist Eva Bjerga Haugen, sings “The two of me always go alone” since Mods’ debut, 41, “Revenge!”, and it’s clear that Abel will embrace his entire career tonight. He has “happened” in both Norwegian and English and then again in Norwegian, with the emphasis on the latter here.
He himself starts with the most streamed song of The September When, “Cries like a baby” since 1994 – and follows with the fairly recent ones “Old man”. It’s not because the 60-year-old feels old, but it’s a personal song that feels absolutely right to sing on a night like this.
Abel impresses
Ups and downs
Abel shines on stage, elegantly dressed in black and with a hat: the cool and slightly superior Abel, the fashion-conscious artist with “fresh” clothes and dandy trends, the “king of pop” with ups and downs in his career, the creator scandal. Yes, sacrifice too “Birmingham Ho” since 2003, after a memorable trip to England, he gets a place in the retrospective playlist, served with a great dose of marine irony and humor.
As Abel himself says about the ups and downs: – It gets boring if it goes flat. And there will be songs out of it.
THE BOSS: Morten Abel gave an insight into his career at Oslo Spektrum tonight. Photo: Lars Eivind Bones / Dagbladet
sea View
He also has humor when it comes to Mods’ most famous song, «Tang Tower», which is served in many versions. The evening is muted and “dignified”, away from the jubilant handball stars.
Peltz and napalm
For those of us who are the same age, Abel has always been there, even if we weren’t that passionate about Mod in the early 1980s. The band was arguably more of a local phenomenon that in recent years celebrated concert triumphs in a nostalgic spirit.
Only with The September When in 1987 came the great national turning point. The band lasted until 1996, but reunited in 2008-2011 and 2019. “Publish me” is the only song from there besides “Cries Like a Baby”, here in a dramatic arrangement that makes a good song many times more exciting. The Peltz band hasn’t gotten big, and they joke about that too, but about the instrumental “Napalm in the morning” get their meager four minutes in the spotlight.
Morten Abel, tender and vulnerable
With his solo career, Abel has established himself again since 1997 as an artist to be reckoned with, first in English and in recent years in Norwegian. “Lidia” is a very good representative of the solo debut “Snowboy”.
It was shot
20 years ago, Morten Abel Spektrum filled two evenings – with a total of 17,000 spectators. Maybe it says something about his career direction that “only” approx. 1,500 audience members can watch the anniversary show in Oslo’s main hall, set up up to a Mini-Sketrum. But it was filmed, and so many more people can see and hear. It is worth all the 95 minutes it took a 60-year-old who is far from finished as an artist – and he certainly has “Head above the water”. Yes, the song of his “carefully chosen” acting debut song has also arrived – in the film of the same name. No reason for skepticism (to go back to the beginning).
