Bukta - Tromsø Open Air Festival 2008 in Review
It was a decent crowd for Patti Smith who headlined the first day!
As I mentioned that I would in the previous post, I spent my weekend on rock and beer and other, similar elements essential to a good time at the Bukta Festival in my hometown Tromsø here in Norway. Originally I was hoping that I would be able to really kick-start this blog with day-to-day updates from the festival, but as I discovered an hour into the first concert, that is something I’ll be saving for the day I earn my living from writing about music. For now there is far too much fun and too few hours in a three day festival to squeeze in any time in front of a screen!
But now that the fun is over, the guests and bands have gone home, and the rain is once again pouring down over our little town, I finally have a moment to write up a short report on how the festival went.
When I arrived in Telegrafbukta on the first night just as Patti Smith had taken the main stage, there was already a very decent crowd in place. The lines were long, but thankfully I had been clever enough to exchange my ticket for a wristband a day in advance, so I could just laugh at those who stood in line. My grin however quickly vanished when I spotted the equally long line outside the toilet-area and remembered the beers I had consumed in preparation of the concerts.
This is how the concert sky can look like at 10 PM!
Great weather, great mood
On beforehand the weather men and women had looked into their crystal balls and predicted doom, gloom and thunderstorms, but the man who counts (the one upstairs) obviously decided to make fun of their predictions and showed off the best sides of life north of the arctic circle with gentle clouds and midnight sun for all three evenings.
With great weather and surroundings in place, everything was then set for three amazing days of live music, and the artists didn’t disappoint. Robert Dyrnes, who is one of the men behind the festival and the man in charge of bookings, had put together a verstile program with a range of different artists who appealed to all the different segments of music enthusiasts.
New and old bands shake the scenes
Ken Stringfellow of The Disciplines spent most of the concert among the crowd!
The highlight for me personally on the first day was without a doubt The Disciplines, which played on the secondary and much smaller stage, appropriately named Paradisbukta (Paradise Bay). The relatively freshly composed band gave us a cracker of a concert, and the lead singer (Ken Stringfellow) spent more time out with the crowd than on the actual stage. A fantastic experience from a band which, with their catchy rock seems bound for bigger stages in the future.
The second day had two equally fantastic highlights, both of which have played at the festival before, and the first was Canadian testosteron bomb Danko Jones and the rest of his band. To be honest I didn’t expect all that much from the concert, because after a quick listen through some of their studio material they didn’t sound like anything more than the average run-of-the-mill rockers.
They proved me wrong, and I couldn’t be more happy about it! The show they put on was simply fantastic, and Danko had a fantastic connection with the crowd as he between the songs complained about the good weather and how it wasn’t suitable for rock ‘n roll, and then went on to talk about sausage parties and oral sex, presumably without any connection between the two from what I could catch. Cheesy and stereotypical? Definitely, but that’s part of why you just couldn’t help loving every second of it!
After the concert Madrugada lined up and thanked the fans for a great night
The second highlight of the night came when national heroes Madrugada, who actually originate from an area in Northern Norway not too far from where the festival takes place, entered the stage. With just over a year since their acclaimed guitarist Robert Burås died in tragic circumstances, and the announcement that this would be their last record and tour with the Madrugada name, everything was set for a very special concert, and the band duly delievered.
The setlist was a fine mix of new and old, and they managed to create a fantastic tension in the crowd with their at times very dark and depressive sound, with the peak being reached during their biggest hits such as Majesty and The Kids Are On High Street. Personally I found that they had omitted some of my favourite songs from the setlist however, as I would have loved to hear the old classic Electric and the latest single from their new album What’s On Your Mind?.
I hela mitt liv har jag väntat
That headline for this paragraph is from a song titled Elefanter by Swedish rock / pop heroes Kent, and it translates to ” All my life I’ve been waiting “, which is the perfect description of how that concert felt like for me. I have been a fan of the band for what seems like forever, and now that I finally got a chance to see them live it seemed inevitable that it would be a disappointment compared to how hyped I actually was about this concert.
Joakim "Jocke" Berg on stage at the Bukta Festival
At the end of the day however it was obvious that Jocke Berg and the rest of the band were never going to let me down, and the last concert of the festival became an hour and a half of goosebumps and sing-along, because it seemed like the the rest of the crowd, just like myself, had been preparing for the concert by reviewing the setlist and rehearsing the lyrics.
Even though they left out some of their biggest hits such as Music Non Stop and FF they pleased the fans by going back to the very start of their careers by playing Stenbrott from their self-titled debut album, as well as Utan Dine Andetag from their 2000 B-sides release. Of course they spiced up this with songs from their newer albums and a brand new, unreleased song called Håll Ditt Huvud Högt. The definitive highlight of the concert however had to be the last song of the night, Mannen I Den Vita Hatten, which in my opinion is one of the most beautiful songs ever made.
All in all it was a fantastic finish to an amazing weekend of live music, and I even met one Swedish Kent fan who had attended most of the concerts this tour (this was his 5th), and he said it was the best so far without a doubt! If you haven’t checked out Kent, I reccomend that you do so immediately. Although they primarily sing in Swedish, they have actually released two of their albums, Hagnesta Hill and Isola in English, and they should both be good starting points for those who don’t understand Swedish but want to hear what the band is all about. Just follow the links and click where it says iTunes to purchase the albums.
In closing …
Bukta 2008 was a commercial success
Although it is hard to summarize a large event as a music festival in a short paragraph, I think one word will suffice for this years Bukta Festival: Success! They sold more tickets than ever before, the weather was great, people drank a lot of beer, there were hardly any problems at all, and most importantly, the music was fantastic! Although I have only mentioned my absolute favourites, there were many other musical highlights such as Legendary Shack Shakers, The Mojomatics and Two Gallants and many others.
After last years festival Neil Parry of The Guardian praised every aspect of the festival save the cuisine and the weather, and said that you should definitely go if you have the chance, and “ It’s like a whole town is on chrystal meth … and entirely populated by models. ” (read the article). I’m not sure if he went this year as well, but if he did he would at least have one less thing to complain about, and I am pretty sure he would tell you the same thing as I am about to: If you have the chance, take it and go to the Bukta Festival next year!
