Oslo’s massive outdoor summer music festival is called Øya, but the first night of the festival takes place indoors in all the clubs in town, and is called Klubbøya. This year my band Dacianos played Klubbøya.
The band currently consists of me, Håkon the drummer, Marius the metallophone player and Ilmar the cellist. I sing and play harmonium, piano or guitar depending on the song. For this show, we didn’t want to just get up and sing a bunch of songs, so we picked our weirdest pieces, and made it more of a ‘performance’. But as it turned out, the other bands playing with us that night were quite straight. Throughout the show I didn’t feel we were communicating with the audience at all. Out of the 100 strangers there I think we only converted about 2 of them.
Afterwards I learned that the piano was too quiet, and that there was no low cut on the vocals. So everything would have sounded 10 times weirder than planned! There’s always a different sound on stage than the sound the audience gets to hear, so you usually have to trust the soundman. Next time we’ll have to bring our own. Being forced to be professional…
At least I got a free pass to the festival, and saw Grinderman, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine for nothin’.
Free mp3s on www.dacianos.com
Update: HÃ¥kon remembers this as a gig he particularly enjoyed, because of our strangeness, our intransigent use of repetition, and the fact that we challenged the audience.
