(Original auf kaizers.no, Backup des Textes hier)
Sorry - nur auf Englisch...This weekend, Kaizers head across the border to spread Kaizer music in the brother country!
(Photo: Marcus Rudström. Swedish-Norwegian fraternization in Aarhus last Friday. Kaizers play in Håkan Hellström's Gothenburg on Saturday)
This time, two Swedish cities get a visit by the traveling Norwegian Ompa squad, who enjoy their great success in their home country at the moment, with sold-out concerts and a second place in the sales charts for the fourth week, with their new album "Violeta, Violeta Vol. I"!
On Friday, March 18, Kaizers play at Debaser Medis in Stockholm, a place about which they have fond sold-out memories and wonderful live experiences from previous concerts. There are still some tickets left for this concert, so please hurry if you want to see the most vigorous that Norway has to offer at the moment! (with the exception perhaps of Petter Northug)
On Saturday, the band heads west towards Gothenburg. You can buy tickets for the concert at Brewhouse here! And just to remind you, it does not take more than a bit over three hours to drive to Gothenburg from Oslo, for those Norwegians who want to see Kaizers on the Volume I tour at a slightly smaller stage than the Oslo Spektrum...
In connection with the concert in Stockholm, the early birds Janove and Øyvind will do an interview and acoustic gig on morgentv on Swedish TV4, very early this Friday morning. Any early birds out there should turn on their TV then!
Kaizernews calls guitarist Geir Zahl to check the situation a couple of days before the Sweden trip.
- You're Håkan fan, you are buddies now, right?
- Hehe, no, I wouldn't put it like this, but they played in Aarhus the same day as we did last week, so I pushed our Swedish tour leader Marcus to take me along and say hello. Håkan's a hell of a guy, so I could take a fan picture together with him just before their gig. Cool to be on that side once in a while, as we don't really understand why people get shaky and stressed and take pictures and giggle when we do signings ourselves, I mean, it's only us! But you understand it a little better when you meet people that you're a fan of yourself. A little better at least, hehe.
- Now, that's professional research! But back to the topic: You're going to Sweden, and Sweden is a bit of a special country for Kaizers, right?
- Yes, it seems to be a bit of an either-or land for us, in the public at least. There's the story we told when we were on Skavlan recently, this "campaign" that Aftonbladet did against us a few years ago. They gave our album, "Maestro", 1 star and printed a WARNING not to see us live at Hultsfred festival because we, according to them, were "Världens sämsta band" (the worst band of the world) on their otherwise very positive festival pages. So that's quite funny. At the same time, we have also experienced the opposite in Sweden, one journalist wrote, for example, that he for the second time in his life felt that he just wanted to stop everything he was doing and rather just start playing in a band after he had seen us live. He had experienced that once before, during a Bob Hund concert in 1996. So there are strong emotions swinging in all directions there.
- But with the live experience, the response is more stable?
- Yes, we have a great and faithful live audience in Sweden, and we hope that as many as possible of them will come to the concerts this weekend. It might actually be that these two concerts are the only chance to see Kaizers on their Volume I tour in Sweden, so grab the chance!