Current mood:	exhilarated - amazing
Current music:	sondre lerche - love you

kings of convenience - mosaic music festival '06, singapore
Hey guys,

My name is Kellynn. I've been lurking around this community for a while and I just came home from a Kings of Convenience concert - I'm from Singapore and they held one a couple of hours ago on the 16th of March 2006. It's about two AM in the morning and I still can't quite believe that it's over or that it happened in the first place. Who else went for the concert? ♥

So I just came back from the Kings of Convenience concert in Singapore for the Mosaic Music Festival and it completely blew me away. In case anyone here turned up for the concert, I was in Seat V13... the girl in the pink dress. I spoke to most of the people around me so I don't know if I actually talked to one of you guys or not.

The concert was stunning. It was breathtaking. I went in ten minutes early and twiddled my thumbs until 7.45 pm (it was slated to start at 7.30 pm) and breathed and waited desperately. Then the lights went down and Kings came on - Erlend is strikingly tall, his hair was a veritable mop and he was wearing a green t-shirt three sizes too small for him - he looked adorable. Eirik is almost dwarfed by Erlend, but he looked lovely in a white shirt and his hair, my god, his hair. They sat and tuned their guitars for several minutes and everyone sort of just stared intensely at them (this concert sold out weeks beforehand) and finally Erlend said into the microphone something like "yes, watch us tune our guitars" and we all laughed. I think we laughed and clapped at everything they said. The energy was electrifying, everyone was waiting, you couldn't hear a sound, and we were ready and willing to do anything to please these fellows.

Finally they struck the first chords of "Until you Understand" and we all screamed and stamped our feet and settled down pretty quick to listen. They sounded absolutely beautiful; Erlend sounds much better live than he does on the albums, and Eirik's voice was lush as ever and there is nothing like hearing those guitars and those voices live - you're sitting in a concert hall with 1600 people and you barely dare to breathe in case you disturb the music. I sat there trying not to cry for the first few songs they played - I can't even remember what they were; they just melded together into seamless music - they were the quieter songs, "Cayman Islands" and "Winning a Battle, Losing the War" and their guitars and the music - we were breathless with it. I think the most striking thing I remember is that every single one of us barely dared to clap until the final chord died completely - you could nearly see that last chord fading into the air before we began clapping. And then they moved on to more uptempo songs - "I Don't Know What I Can Save You From", "Love Is No Big Truth" etc. They could do nothing wrong. Eirik said (in a dry, cute way) "if someone from Bergen, Norway had told us that we'd be here in Singapore playing to 1600 people - they would have had to be very optimistic."

Erlend's shirt was ridiculously small and extremely endearing. He said, at some point, that he'd hadn't changed because it hadn't seemed to important at the time... and then he realised that he had to lean down to pick up the water bottle. He picked it up, flashing his back I think (I missed it - I turned away to tell my sister something), and some guy in the audience wolf-whistled and we broke into laughter.

Then they played "Know-How" and they got us to whistle the viola bits - we all gamely rose to the challenge, and this is amazing for me because Singaporean audiences are notoriously hard to please and extremely reserved and generally we don't do this sort of thing. After "Know-How", or somewhere thereabouts, someone on the balcony screamed, "Eirik, you're the best!" Eirik laughed, and Erlend smiled and said - slightly sardonically - into the mike: "Eirik, you're the best... mm." We all laughed. And soon after that Eirik got us to hum along to "Misread", the viola bits again, and after "Misread" - I think; I'm not good with chronology - someone else from the balcony yelled "Erlend, you're the best!" Erlend gave a very gratified smile, sort of like, "that's better" - we all laughed - it was so endearing.

They let us listen to a bit of a new song they'd composed and it sounded excellent, it's a bit of a mix of "Failure" and "Misread" - very catchy and downright golden. And then they came to "Homesick" and Erlend said - "I want you to pretend you're in Norway. You haven't seen the sun in three months. It's Christmas. Can we have the lights off, please?" They dimmed the lights, leaving us in complete darkness, and then we heard a tumult of chords and it was hilarious, it sounded like utter cacophony as Erlend and Eirik found their finger placings. And then they played and sang "Homesick" - in the dark. Pitch black, no way to see the fingering or the chords and they played and sang and coordinated it as if it was no big deal. We screamed the house down. When the lights came back on we saw Eirik clap Erlend on the shoulder and vice-versa - then he leaned into the microphone and said, "that's the first time we've ever done that".

They sang a birthday song for someone in the audience in Norwegian, and they played and finally Eirik said, "this is the last song for tonight". I was like what! But you've only just begun! Someone screamed (from the balconies again - I think it's the same girl who yelled "Eirik, you're the best!) "Eirik, you liar!"

At this point Erlend put down his guitar and said, sliding off into the shadows, "well, since Eirik's the best" - in a gently humorous way - "he can do this song by himself, no problem - come on guys, give it up for Eirik!" We screamed and clapped in confusion as Erlend left the stage - and at the same moment Eirik struck the chords for "I'd Rather Dance With You"! So of course we started demanding Erlend get back on stage! Eirik was halfway through the first chords when Erlend slid out of the shadows again doing his dance and he said into the microphone: "aren't you guys tired of sitting down?" The entire hall rose to their feet and began to dance, and then Erlend continued, gesturing at the stage: "there's lots of space here if you want to dance!"

So I turned and grabbed this girl by the hand - I didn't know her, but she was the only one around me who was really getting into it, and had been into the entire show so much - mouthing the lyrics and dancing and tapping her feet to the music - the two men next to me were quite reserved, my sister whom I'd dragged along isn't a huge fan, so I just turned and grabbed her by the hand and said, "do you want to go up?" She said "yes, yes, let's go" and we clattered up to the stage. I screamed my name at her ("Kellynn") and she screamed hers back ("Lisa") and we got to the stage steps. Five girls had already ducked past the security guards and were on stage dancing and Lisa and I made for the steps to get unceremoniously thrown off by the security guard. Erlend came over and tried to talk to the security guard but he was adamant, so Erlend crept 'round to the side of the stage and began helping girls up! The guard told him to stop it but he pulled two or three girls up on stage before resuming the song. Throughout all this Eirik is playing the guitar and singing, keeping the song going. Lisa and I were clustered at the side of the stage with a bunch of other people and we were clapping and dancing. Eirik looked absolutely amazing close up. He is lovely. (His hair!)

The girls who managed to get up on stage were dancing, they hugged Erlend and after some hesitation - since Eirik was playing the guitar - managed to hug Eirik as well. It was mad, the energy was amazing, we were just screaming and singing along. The song ended far too quickly - Erlend came to sit on the edge of the stage at some point - and we were all pulling out cameras and taking photographs (despite the ushers coming over to slap our hands away from our cameras). The song ended and they went backstage and we refused to go, standing and clapping and downright forcing them out into an encore. So out they came and played "Little Kids" and a song I didn't recognize, I think they sang it partly (mostly? all of it?) in Norwegian (ETA: it's "Manhattan Skyline" by A-Ha) - at that point I was too busy trying to get a decent shot of them. It was fantastic. Erlend pulled out a camera out of nowhere and Eirik turned to face him, giving the back to the audience and smiling into the camera - then Eirik took the camera from Erlend and Erlend fell into the crowd and grinned and everyone was stamping their feet. Eventually, reluctantly, we let them go. I could not stop smiling. I did not stop smiling throughout. I wish I could have crawled into their guitars and stayed there forever.

Absolutely fucking fantastic. ♥



Click on the photos for larger versions. They're not particularly clear, but it was the best I could do!













I can't believe it's over. Over. I believe I will have to pack my things and stalk them for the rest of my natural life.

Kellynn