What with the wedding and entertaining foreigners (and that pesky PhD), coupled with no money (because of said wedding and PhD), I have not had as much time for the Jazz Festival this year. I haven't been to any concerts, and I have only passed through Storgata twice. We glanced at the program, however, and when we saw the name "Bård Watn" under the heading "NRK direktesending" on the free programme, there was really no doubt we would have to hit the town today.



We tried to catch a bus, but because it was on time for the first time in my life, we missed it by two minutes. And so we walked to town just in time for the final bit of the street parade, and a quick bun and some tea before heading to the park.

The street parade, which it turned out Tor had "never seen", and which we had tried to catch two times earlier in the week, was a bit disappointing. I suspect Thursday at the roundabout is exactly the wrong chronotopia (which may or may not be a word denoting a particular time and place) for the street parade. Everyone looked a little tired. Including the old man from New Orleans, who is still alive.



For the tea and bun we went to Fole Godt, which at some point I will furnish with the official Camilla Stamp of Approval. But on to the matter at hand.

The park was cold and wet, as it often is. After a bit of dithering, we decided to seek shelter under the canopy (although that brings with it the added danger of deafness if the band is not soft spoken enough), in part because we wanted to see what was going on on stage. At this point I register my yearly complaint about Alexandraparken as a concert venue. But back to the matter at hand.

I knew it was going to be good. I only know Bård as someone I went to school with and played theatre with, and didn't even know he could sing. We stumbled in at the sound test stage, however, and it quickly became apparent that we were staying put.

Even our two Foreign Friends insisted we stay to the end of the show (which mainly consists of Knut Borge talking to people about jazz in Norwegian) to see if Bård would be back on stage. I therefore know it is not some sort of weird bias on my part when I say I am looking forward to that album he said he was going to make. I think we particularly enjoyed the Collarbone song.



In order to retain my status as Calcuttagutta's intrepid, I have of course gathered some comments:

Rebekah: Pfff. *giggle* I'm going to sell you to someone. ... I was mostly just distracted by the girls' clothes. And the orange-topped girl's hairstyle, which was like Kimber from Barbie. I am obviously very deep. You cannot just write down everything I say. That is bad journalism. You are supposed to quote stuff that adds to the story, not just random verbiage. Also, it had a great rhyme: "I have yet to see a sky that can take me, for I am a tree with a large canopy".

Tim: It was lots of fun. It sounded like Paolo Nuttini singing folk.

Tor: Det var dritmorsomt. (trans: It was hi-larious)