The Copenhagen Report is a great place to start any artistic exploration of the Danish capital. Tim Anderson is one of Denmark's most prolific bloggers, with an archive well worth flicking through - The Guardian
Upon discovering that Transglobal Underground, one of the (many, many) favourite bands of The Copenhagen Report, was coming to Copenhagen for a show on Nov. 13, we got in touch with Tim Whelan, the band's leader, keyboard and guitar player, to find out in advance of the show about what they've been up to lately. But if you've never heard Transglobal Underground, it's a chance to check out their full-throttle live performance, which never disappoints...
It's great to see the band showing up in Denmark (and Sweden) for a few shows. You could say the shows from the current tour have been pretty scattered around - how does the band decide where to tour these days?
Most of the time we've been playing where the album has been released.....and it hasn't been released in Scandinavia so we haven't played there for 2 years up till the current invitation to play with Valravn.
TGU has been persistent over the years - a good things for fans of the band. How has the focus of the bank changed over the years, and how would you describe it at present?
We've tended to move between the more dance side of what we do....DJing, soundsytems etc, studio production work, and the live band. At the moment we're concentrating on the live band, up till the end of this year at least. There's been a big revival of small festivals in the UK, which has been important for us. We also have a DVD out with interviews and a lot of live footage, which is something people have been asking for for a while. It's hard to explain what we're all about without seeing it happen live in front of your eyes.
The line-up of TGU is always evolving, giving each album it's own personality, with different influences. Tell us about the current line-up and its influence on the sound of the band - both on-stage and on the current album?
The line-up coming to Denmark is Tuup on vocals and percussion......singer, MC, poet, storyteller and around TGU since the early days; Krupa on vocals, who's worked with One Giant Leap, Sista India and made her recorded debut with TGU on 'Moonshout'; Sheema Mukherjee on sitar and bass.....the best British born sitarist going and well known in her own right in the UK; Hamid ManTu on drums who also does much of the programming work; Rav on dhol and tabla who we kidnap from his normal weekend work on the club and bhangra scene from time to time; and myself on machines and guitar.
There's 3 or 4 others involved in the current touring group from time to time, but in general we try to stick to a six piece band
Personally one of my favourite tracks from 'Moonshout' is 'Spice Garden' just because it has so much emotion and it's so different from pretty much anything else I can think of from the back catalogue (of course, finding 2 similar TGU songs isn't exactly easy...). How did that song come to be?
A few years back we worked with the legendary vocalist Yanka Rupkina and the Trio Bulgarka in Sofia. 2 songs we recorded with them came out on our previous album 'Impossible Broadcasting' but Yanka also sang a solo piece over a very sparse backing we'd recorded. It took us a couple of years to find the right atmosphere for it; after that the instrumentation was recorded very quickly.
Can you pick a couple of favourites songs from the current album? And how about all-time favourites?
Well everyone in the groups got their own favourites and they change at different times! Right now mine would be 'Mera Jhumka' and 'Mag ak Ndaw'
How did the Alex Kasiek/Tim Whelan alter ego (among others, I suppose) come to exist?
Since in the early days of TGU there was no line-up, a number of names were invented and different people used different names at different times. Alex Kasiek turned up so often in these days that he turned into a real person and now lives in retirement in the Bohemian countryside, with several years supply of beer and sausage and a large unfriendly dog.
Any future plans beyond the current album and gigs?
We have some great remixes of 'Dancehall Operator' coming out in January on vinyl and mp3.
To close the interview: I was recently asked a question about Copenhagen as a city that I'll rephrase and re-direct to you in a different form: If TGU was a person, how would you describe them?
A big friendly giant.
Thanks to Tim Whelan for taking the time to answer our questions. Transglobal Underground play Kulturhus in Islands Brygge on Sunday, Nov. 13. Tickets 140 kr+service charges at www.billetnet.dk.
The exhibition u-turn is notable for its scope, and for the fact that its simply not the kind of exhibition that makes it's way to Copenhagen often enough. It's really more of a typically London or Berlin kind of exhibition. It's by no means mind-blowingly original or anything like that, but it's amusing - and it would be great to see more exhibitions closer to this scale in Copenhagen. Personally, I haven't had a chance to fully explore many of the associated events, of which there are many throughout the month, but I did get out to one of the main parts of it, that being the one out at Carlsberg in Vesterbro/Valby, which was quite amusing and perfectly located in an big old (and now unused) warehouse/manufacturing room. A great way to spend an hour or two on a Sunday.
And of course the ever-reliable Louisiana has done it again with a fantastic retrospective of Danish artist Per Kirkeby's work. Watch the video in which the curator of the exhibitions talks to Per Kirkeby about some of the paintings to gain a pleasantly insightful peek into the mind of this well-known Danish artist, one who has put a lot more thought and feeling into his scratchy, abstract and colourful works then first meets the eye.
...and if nothing else, enjoy the inevitably peaceful setting of the almost always compelling museum, overlooking the Øresund Sea. And it's so much easier to get out there for a visit now that Louisiania is now open until late every weekday evening.
I know this blog is desperately in need of more loving, and I will work on it. In the meantime, a possibly helpful note: if you need someone to clean your toilets, consider poaching one of the staff from the cleaning service of Copenhagen airport. Apparently, they do scrub harder (or so their sign claimed...), which I suppose is what you would want. Enough said.
Out came the announcement a short while ago that one of Copenhagen's 4 free daily newspapers, Nyhedsavisen, had (at last) run aground, apparently after bleeding some 1 million kroner per day (!!). It officially closed its doors for good yesterday.
Here's a couple of comments I can offer:
Firstly, this is hardly a surprise. In the last apartment we lived, Nyhedsavisen used to get delivered to the door most mornings, for some reason or other. We certainly never ordered it. Interestingly, it was generally there on the doorstep in the late evening, the day before. That is to say, the news was about as fresh as a loaf of stale bread - and an extremely low quality one, with not much taste to begin with, at that.
Secondly, bike anywhere around the center of Copenhagen and one cannot avoid the free newspapers. MetroXpress and Urban are arguably at the absolute bare minimum level of acceptability of the lot - lest you misunderstand what I'm mean, let me define 'minimum level of acceptability' as not unlike choking back an abnormally bitter and horrid morning coffee that is just a tiny bit above room temperature, when no other alternative is available (and your fighting off a mean hangover). So it's not saying much.
To put it another way, while basically it was barely even worth bothering to flip through Nyhedsavisen, MetroXpress and Urban can provide a bare level of distraction during a 5 or 10 minute metro ride. But not much more. And the fact that I'm even suggesting this is the definition of a 'minimum level of acceptability' suggest the depths to which daily journalism standards and expectations have fallen, at least in the area of free newspapers.
Imagine if somebody actually managed to put out a free daily morning newspaper that managed to provide some original insight, even if it wasn't comprehensive in it's coverage. That could actually be something worthwhile, and a much better way to kill time during a metro ride.
So good riddance Nyhedsavisen, we really won't be missing ya'.
*Ed. note: Upon second thought some hours later, I believe it was actually '24 timer' that arrived at our door each day, not Nyhedsavisen. Nonetheless, this doesn't really change the bottom line, since the free newspapers are virtually interchangeable anyway...and I should acknowledge that they do, every once in a while, pull out some half-baked piece of journalism that is mildly original. It just doesn't happen all that often, and it takes them rather a lot of forest in between...
I am not typically a reader of the Danish (tabloid-style) newspaper BT. But yesterday, I felt obligated to purchase a copy for the first (and probably only) time.
You see, my girlfriend's parents happen to be BT subscribers, which proved lucky for me, as it was they who discovered what I otherwise I would never have known - which was that in yesterday's BT issue I had been quoted extensively, though rather cryptically, in an article in BT's travel section.
Yes, it seems the good folks at BT (or at least one of their journalists, Kåre Welinder) was trolling around CNN's website and came across the interview I recently contributed about life in Copenhagen. Kåre was kind enough to write a very positive article based on a few of quotes and comments from that interview, translated into Danish - attributing them to 'den canadiske journalist Tim' ('the Canadian journalist Tim'). Nice.
A shame Kåre didn't bother to actually give my full name, or directly mention The Copenhagen Report, or drop me a line to mention he was writing the article (I promise I don't bite...even tabloid journalists) but no matter - Kåre was kind enough to suggest that the whole interview could be found on CNN's Travel webpage. I'm not entirely sure why he didn't instead quote from Connie Nielsen's slightly more high-profile and interesting interview from the same CNN page, on the same 'life in Copenhagen' theme - not that I'm complaining!
I also must admit that yesterday, for the first time in my life, I felt like a bit of a media whore, since only a few hours earlier I had finished ghost-writing an interview-article for an upcoming issue of World Finance magazine (an article about banking, that had nothing to do with life in Copenhagen...). From BT to World Finance, all in a day - talk about covering the media spectrum...
And one last personally amusing side-note. Each Monday, during one of the twice weekly 3 1/2 hour sessions of Danish lessons I subject myself to, each class member has to bring in an article from a Danish newspaper or magazine to talk about...I already know what article I'll be bringing to class this coming week...
Ending up on the Danish island of Bornhorm during the summer months, and a mere 3 hours from Copenhagen - assuming no bad weather has caused the catamarans to be cancelled (more on that later) - is never a bad option, in spite of the unreliable Danish weather. So, a few simple pictures...
Rønne from the sea...
Deep blue waters straight off the rocks waters makes for a great place for a quick jump into the water at Allinge (just in front of the røgeri)
the view from Hasle...
fishermen in the Rønne harbour...
wood...and water
a visit just woudn't be complete without a bit of smoked herring...in this case from Svaneke
yep, smoked herring...
smoked fish!
Now this is a moment in Danish time. A classic and tasty Bornholm tourist dish from the Svaneke Røgeri - smoked herring, rugbrød, and some butter (and in this case a mussel on the side...)
Homemade at Svaneke: The Flødebolle (a distinctly Danish, well, Scandinavian, chocolate treat...)
Hammershus...taking you all the way back to the 13th century. Kind of.
the view from Hammershus...
The ferry ride home on a rather, ahem, blustery day is another story...one involving cancelled catamarans, a slow ferry, small paper bags and many gagging-like noises. Thankfully, none of them were coming from us, the day of this photo.
can't bode well for a smooth ride home...
3 hours of wavey action, little paper bags and way too many unpleasant sounds...
Every now and then, some little and seemingly meaningless event or incident reminds you that things are always developing, and in the case of Copenhagen, generally for the better, I would say.
A recent addition at the exit gates at Copenhagen Airport is a case in point. The orange facade and clean lines of the relatively new 'Nørrebro Bryghus' bar is the first thing passengers see as they exit the airport. And this really is something notable - notable for what it isn't.
See, in years past, dear old Carlsberg would never have let such an opportunity to blast their green logo in front of a few million people, many stepping onto Danish soil for the first time, get by them. But somehow the little Nørrebro Bryhus-microbrewery outfoxed the giant, grabbing onto this prime spot. And it's more than a symbolic victory, since this really is the first 'visual of Denmark' as passengers exit customs and effectively enter Denmark.
It's also a nice allegory to the state of the beer market in Denmark, which has been thoroughly rejuvenated with the addition of piles of small breweries and tasty beers. I like it.
One of the best deals out there for a night of entertainment happens on a Friday night at Tivoli Gardens - the amusement park in the center of Copenhagen. Well, not just any Friday, but some of them. In case you live in Copenhagen, but under a rock, every week Tivoli hosts a Friday concert ("Fridagsrock") series, where for the price of admission you get a 'free' open air concert. And every now and then a major international act turns up - such as this past week - along with plenty of worthwhile Scandinavian names the rest of the weeks. Admittedly, not every one of them is exactly worth the price of admission, and there are times when Tivoli's lousy sound system can be problematic. But if you get yourself into the right position, and the band has decent sound guys, it can be pretty damn good.
This past Friday The Flaming Lips rolled into town and played a Friday concert at Tivoli. It was an impressive performance, to say the least, as The Flaming Lips take their stage show pretty seriously...well, sort of. Maybe seriously is the wrong word for a band that plays a nearly 2 hour show with a bunch of Teletubbies dancing along beside them. Yes, Yoshimi Battled the Pink Robots. Do you realize? Enough said.
"Så crooner vi igen" ('So we crooner again') announced the sign above the bar as we sauntered into Kassen on Nørrebrogade one Wednesday night not all that long ago. As the band set up the Rhodes kyeboard, double base and drum set, we had a hunch we just might have stumbled on to something. Casting our eyes over the classic bar menu, and the classically decked out bartenders, we decided we had to pull up a bar stool and find out.
Indeed we had.
There's almost nothing better than discovering a new mid-week diversion, even if it's actually not all that new and has (presumably) been there right in front of your blissfully ignorant eyes for some time. Precisely this was what happened Wednesday night about 3 weeks ago when, rambling around Nørrebro looking for just the right place to fit our mood that evening, 'Kassen' came up as a suggestion. It was a place we had been ignoring for some years.
And what do you know, turns out Wednesday at Kassen is 'Crooner Night'.
This means a special classic menu of cocktails (you know the ones, Manhatten, Martini, Cosmopolitan, etc., etc), and, best of all, a nice little lounge band playing in the corner.
Any band that can coolly finish off their evening set of crooner classics with a casually lounge-like jazzy version of a classic-in-its-own-kind-of-way 'Eye of the Tiger', just chilled-out enough to make you want to tap your feet as you throw back one last martini, is absolutely good enough to fill a few hours on an otherwise non-descript Wednesday night in Copenhagen. You gotta love it.
'Crooner night' every Wednesday at Kassen 20.00-01.00
Not that long ago, anyone going for a little bicycle ride along the lakes ('Søerne') in Copenhagen, which stretch from Vesterbro, past Nørrebro and all the way over to Osterbro, was greeted by very unfriendly gates and 'no cycling' signs. It looked exactly like this:
...obviously, not everyone agreed with the message
It was one of the most nonsensical cycling restriction in Copenhagen. Not only is are the lakes a great place to cycle, but with two enormously wide paths, one running right alongside the water, the other set about a meter higher set in from the water, there is more than ample enough space for both bicycles and pedestrians. But at long last, the restrictions are being lifted and finally the path along the lakes looks as it should. There are still a couple of fences up towards Osterbro, which I assume will disappear soon (or are being left to 'slow' bicycle traffic).
no more barriers or bicycle restrictions!
An amusing thing about this (above) picture is it is precisely the sight of a campaign an adamant local has been running every morning for the past few months, putting up a banner over the (former) barrier proclaiming the path along the lakes for pedestrians, then sitting herself at a chair on a table and thereby partially blocking the small entrance in the barrier where bikes and people could go through. Apparently a protest of the coming changes to along bicycles. I used to cycle by her on my way to work every morning.
Actually, I was even once (annoyingly) stopped by a tricky police officer positioned to catch the many, many people (like me) who chose to be, ahem, civilly disobedient when going along the lakes with a bicycle...the fine never did arrive in the post.
Incidentally, a fair way to judge of how the summer is going in Copenhagen, that is, if there has really been a summer at all, is to take a stroll along the lakes ('Søerne'). A hot summer not only means algae-coated green-tinged lakes, but also results in the lakes emitting a lovely stench. And judging things by this measure, it hasn't been such a bad summer around here. Fortunately the ducks seem to like it no matter what.
It's a bit frustrating that I just haven't had time these last few weeks for this blog, but as I promised, that will change soon.
In the meantime, perhaps this interview I did with CNN International about life in Copenhagen in connection with one of their shows, My City_My life could be of interest.
It's not often that you get to share the stage with Connie Neilsen, somewhat metaphorically in this case, and I certainly couldn't ask for anymore publicity for this blog than this!
Any reports of the death of The Copenhagen Report you may have heard (or more likely imagined) are greatly exaggerated, I can personally assure you. The Copenhagen Report will return in full force later in August...well, maybe partial force if the weather is good.
There has been good reason for a lack of articles. A vacation to Canada for two weeks for the first part of July, followed by a little assignment that has seen your correspondent working as Event Journalist covering a sailing race around the Baltic Sea (www.balticsprintcup.com, if you're curious to read all about it...) have meant my time in Copenhagen in July has been a grand total of 3 days.
Okay, this post comes a bit late but who cares (as I mentioned recently, too much sun these days to be posting very regularly). So the annual Eurovision Song Contest (or 'Melodi Grand Pris' in Danish) has come and gone. No 'Fly on the Wings of Love' this year for Denmark, the song that won it a few years back for this country.
But I did really enjoy the French entry this year, which a friend pointed me to (it also didn't win). This is actually a very non-Eurovision song, by a very cool non-Eurovision artist, who made a great non-Eurovision style video for the song.
Sebestien Tellier's Divine - enjoy! (I still am...)
Like there was a choice whether to join or not. When your flat lies just around the corner from the heart of the action, as does the flat of yours truly, you may as well embace the action and join in. So last night the Distortion Festival was as loud and rowdy and amusing as was to be expected.
From the 'Obama' Party bus to Christiania Cycle (with build in sound system) that kept the music playing even after it had 'officially' stopped, to the guys with a draft beer tap set up in their ground floor apartment serving beer directly through their window onto the street (now that's entrepreneurial spirit - especially given the outrageous queues at the local kiosks selling beer!) it was an entertaining evening.
As the Distortion Festival proves, when the sun shines so does Copenhagen...and when the sun sets, the fun really begins (even on a Thursday night). Thank goodness for the weekend...and the Distortion Festival in Vesterbro.
On Thursday, the annual Copenhagen Distortion Festival hits Nørrebro. Last year it was a great evening, with the police even cooperating and closing down some streets to traffic until extremely late in the evening (as the music played on...). Tomorrow threatens to be even better - the weather looks to be just perfect, and the Festival gets more and more word of mouth and media attention every year. And it's good. Always. If you're into this sort of thing, at least occasionally.
On Friday the festival hits Vesterbro, and then on Saturday is the Final party. But there's something about a mid-week party that can be a welcome relief, even if only once in a while. And the area around Sankt Hans Torv is just the right size to have an intimately massive little happening.
23,000 kroner x 0,0075% pay increase this year x 60,0% after tax = 100 kroner per month (approximately)
or
23,000 kroner/160 hours x 0.0075% pay increase this year x 60,0% after tax = 0.675 kr/hour (approximately)
Yes, a little bit of math to start this blog entry - please forgive my occasionally rational thought process. The outcome of these little calculations is essentially the reason why nurses in Copenhagen went on strike, and remain on strike several futile weeks later.
It's all about 100 kroner per month in salary (after tax) or .675 kroner an hour.
To put this another way: if you were offered 149.33 kroner per hour for a job, but demanded 150 kroner, would you turn the job down!!??? I'm not trying to be clever here, just a bit sensible!
Of course, the nurses union possesses, how shall we phrase this delicately, a questionable level of competence. This opinion, admittedly, stems from the fact that the author's girlfriend was once a nurse, though she gave up that profession some years back in frustration and has never looked back since (a decision which the author fully supported) thanks to chronic understaffing, questionable pay, and barely capable management. Thankfully, she was never a member of the union.
The same nurses union that nonetheless did manage to recently build themselves a rather swanky new headquarters right in the heart of Copenhagen on the waterfront.
Some background on the strike, which continues with no sign of a breakthrough in sight: the nurses union in Copenhagen came up with the idea that nurses should receive a 15% pay increase over the next 3 years. Now, to be clear, I am FULLY in support of this. In fact, I would suggest they should have demanded more.
Here's why:
Most importantly, I genuinely believe they deserve such a raise, which leads to the second issue, which is that the union's demand for 15% and negotiating tactics surrounding this demand were doomed from the start. If they had demanded 20% or 25% then there would have been something more meaningful to negotiate over. You see, the Copenhagen Kommune had already offered the nurses a 12.8% raise over 3 years. That meant the 2 sides were a mere 2.2% OVER THREE YEARS (meaning a mere .75% per year) apart - or 100 knoner a month each year, or 300 knoner a month after 3 years. Please refer back to the math at the beginning of this post to understand the math behind this calculation. The Copenhagen Kommune has chosen to be tough, and its the nurses who are getting screwed. They are the ones losing pay - because there is no way their strike pay (which is soon running out) is covering anywhere close to their full salary. And it will take them years to make up this lost salary even if their union succeeds with their demands.
Sadly, the nurses at this point have little to gain whatever the outcome, since there is barely anything on the table to win. Let's hope they come to their senses soon. And this is without even mentioning the affect all of this nonsensical posturing has had on the patients.
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