romanglass Posted January 30, 2010 Share Posted January 30, 2010 Awesome news, a-ha is playing three gigs in America: May 6 & 7, New York City, Nokia Theatre May 15, Los Angeles, Club Nokia Live Tickets go on sale next week! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCfan Posted February 15, 2010 Share Posted February 15, 2010 Anyone from here going to one of the shows in NY or LA? I'm still holding out for a canadian date since they haven't actually said they will not be coming to Canada. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romanglass Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 Hey BCfan, did you wind up getting tickets to the Toronto show? I'm going to the New York and Los Angeles shows. For anyone going to the US concerts, the American fan club is organizing parties in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. For more info: http://www.a-ha.us :dance: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Rose Posted April 2, 2010 Share Posted April 2, 2010 Roll on Bournemouth :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Rose Posted May 9, 2010 Share Posted May 9, 2010 So Scoundrel Days & Hunting High and Low are getting the deluxe treatment Cool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoryABjerre Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 the last video [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOTMPjl16kM]YouTube- a-ha - Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah) Official video (HD)[/ame] H.S personally is dramatic, as end of A-ha... my favorite band of my childhood, I was 8 years old, made me survive in my life, a true comfort in my life. think they are dead in Take On Me for forever... they are so old and so sad in their souls Magne needs to move her ass.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Final Track Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 Might see them next week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Rose Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 It's worth it ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squareonefivesix Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 Gonna see them in November :dance: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Final Track Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 They're on late :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Rose Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 Gonna see them in November :dance: Me 2 :D I'm seeing them at the BIC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squareonefivesix Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 Manchester for me. Should be a good night :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Rose Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 Do you know where your sitting yet? (IIRC I'm in row H) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squareonefivesix Posted August 22, 2010 Share Posted August 22, 2010 errrrmmm yeah.... on the side, lower tier, if I remember right. Not on the floor, I think alot of the floor tix went in the presale. I've just seen a friend's pics of a gig from this weekend and the video wall they had was mahoosive! If they can fit that in the MEN, that'd be bloody brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Final Track Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 Just got back :dance: great concert! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kasaa Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 ^oh lordy it was awesome everybody singing, jumping, clapping, dancing, shouting. can't wait for tomorrow :wacky: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squareonefivesix Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 Cool. Festival dates, right? Do you have a rough idea of the setlist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Final Track Posted September 4, 2010 Share Posted September 4, 2010 I think this is it: 1. The Sun Always Shines on TV 2. Move to Memphis 3. The Blood That Moves The Body 4. Scoundrel Days 5. Stay On These Roads 6. Manhattan Skyline 7. Hunting High and Low 8. The Bandstand 9. We’re Looking For The Whales 10. Minor Earth Major Sky 11. Forever Not Yours 12. Summer Moved On 13. I’ve Been Losing You 14. Foot Of The Mountain 15. Cry Wolf 16. Crying In The Rain 17. Analogue 18. The Living Daylights 19. Take On Me Anelli Drecker (from Bel Canto) joined them on stage for Ananlogue and The Living Daylights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mc_squared Posted September 4, 2010 Share Posted September 4, 2010 I was listening to their latest album again a few days ago. It really is good.:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squareonefivesix Posted September 4, 2010 Share Posted September 4, 2010 ^Yeah, Foot of The Mountain's great ^^Thanks :) There's some stuff from the middle era of their back catalogue that I still need to check out be4 I go see them live that's why I asked about the setlist, to get a feel for what they might play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenjie Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 Taking on A-ha classic By Liam Allen Entertainment reporter, BBC News The flickering, comic book-style animation of 1985 video Take On Me, by Norwegian trio A-ha, was a defining moment in the history of music promos. Twenty-five years after the song entered the UK top 40, the combination of quirky video and insanely catchy song - driven by Magne Furuholmen's killer keyboard hook - remains the perfect pop package. It was written after Furuholmen and guitarist Pal Waaktaar - of Norwegian band Bridges - invited dashing acquaintance Morten Harket to go to London to form a new group. They had yet to hear him sing. "I went off with the other two to Pal's parents' house, we were still kids more or less, and in his room there was a shabby keyboard and a really bad acoustic guitar," remembers Harket, now 51. "And I said, 'play me something, just let's start somewhere'. "That riff of Magne's is the first thing I heard and I knew immediately that this was a big song." That riff, coupled with Harket's falsetto plea to take him on, were to ultimately propel the first song they wrote together to number one in the US Billboard singles chart. With a little help from that video. The trio - who are to split after the release of a greatest hits album and a series of live dates - moved from Norway to London in January 1983, signing with Warner Bros in December. But the release of a formative version of the song, complete with an early low-budget video, failed to chart. They returned to the studio, this time with Barbara Dickson and Cliff Richard producer Alan Tarney, "and did Take On Me the way you know it". The rest is history," says Harket. "It was picked up by the Warners people in the US and they then introduced us to the video director, Steve Barron." "Warners said they had these young good-looking guys from Norway with a good pop song and that they really believed in them," says Barron, whose CV included Ant Music, by Adam and the Ants, and Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. He was given a big budget as well as a rare commodity in promo making - time. "They said, 'we'll give you as long as you want and we'll release it when you've finished it'," says Barron, 54. Fleeting style Warner Bros in Los Angeles hooked him up with US animator Mike Patterson whose five-minute student film Commuter had made a big impression with label executives. It was made using the rotoscope technique - drawing over live action frame by frame - and featured the fleeting, black-and-white living comic book style that was to become Take On Me's calling card. "Rotoscoping uses live action motion but my drawing style anyway was very loose and sketchy - no-one had really drawn anything like that style before," says Patterson, 53, now an animation lecturer at the University of Southern California. "Rotoscope was usually done in a dry kind of way, very static or very sterile looking. "But mine is more about just deriving the motion and creating a feeling of energy." 3,000 drawings A concept was devised by Steve Barron, based on a comic book he read as a young child featuring "guys racing against each other on motorbikes and sidecars". A girl reading a comic book in a greasy spoon cafe - played by Bunty Bailey of dance troupe Hot Gossip - is attracted to a sketched version of Harket before she finds herself sucked into the animated world. The pair are pursued by violent motorcyclists before the singer breaks out of the animation and the pair are finally reunited in the real world. The band and actors were shot on film before the tapes were handed to Mike Patterson who, over 16 weeks, sketched some 3,000 drawings over individual frames. "I knew that it was going to look good but I had no idea it was going to be in heavy rotation on MTV for a year," says Patterson, who worked on the video with wife Candace Reckinger. US hit The most memorable scenes feature Harket and the girl looking in and out of the real and animated worlds through a mirror. Patterson, who was 28 when he worked on Take On Me, says the video was "partly responsible for the revival of experimentation in animation" while Barron says it was one of his proudest achievements. "Often in videos, you didn't really get to work an idea through properly and I knew with this one, because we were given full time, that we would really be able to do it," adds Barron. Harket says the video was "unlike anything else and it gave the song the type of exposure that it needed". "The video bought us time because the song was not an easy, immediate pop hit." As Harket says, the song itself - with its simplistic chorus, synthesized drums and mock slap bass line - "has never been off American radios". "I think it's quirky enough to be lasting because your other types of hit songs, in a way, fit so well," says Harket whose band are playing classic album Hunting High and Low in its entirety at London's Royal Albert Hall on Friday night. "You get too used to them and you don't hear them anymore so they fade away." Despite the success of the video and sales of more than 500,000 copies in the UK, Take On Me sat at number two for three weeks behind The Power Of Love, by Jennifer Rush. That the song only reached number one in the UK when it was covered by long-forgotten boy band A1, in 2000, is sacrilege. So needless to say, it's the original video which remains a regular fixture of music video channels. "What's crazy for me is that I have students who were born after the video and they say it was their favourite video," says Patterson, now 53. "I can go anywhere on the earth, I've been in so many different continents, and wherever I go, everybody goes, 'I love that video'." A-ha's greatest hits album, 25, is out now. The band are playing a series of live dates in Europe throughout the rest of the year. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? A-ha's next video, The Sun Always Shines On TV, begins with a continuation of Take On Me Morten Harket and model Bunty Bailey's love story comes to an end as he turns back into his animated self A-ha won eight MTV VMAs in 1986 - six of them for Take On Me. The haul was matched by Lady Gaga this year The Museum of Modern Art, in New York, has put the Take On Me video into its permanent collection Animators Mike Patterson and Candace Reckinger went on to direct Suzanne Vega's Luka and Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract Number two UK album, Hunting High and Low, featured hits Take On Me, The Sun Always Shines On TV, Train of Thought and the title track Steve Barron, who helmed films including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has directed A-ha's new song, Butterfly Butterfly - his first pop video for 14 years. He made "about 120" in the 80s http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11485702 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mc_squared Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 Did anyone see them on Loose Women?:rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenjie Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 no coz I have to go out a qaurter of the way through it on wed/thurs/fri :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mc_squared Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 What about series record on Sky+?:confused: Anyway, they performed live, and sounded as good as ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aniskywalker Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 I need a ticket for Berlin! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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