Innocent_Joy

December 12th 2005 - Six years ago today... Exactly six years ago, this webpage saw the light for the very first time. Since then, more than 140.000 people have visited, there is an active forum with close to 400 members keeping eachother updated on everything related to the band, and Madrugada are more successful than I (or, probably, anyone else) could ever have imagined all those years ago - just yesterday the band performed "The Kids Are On High Street" and "Lift Me" at the Nobel Peace Prize concert that could be seen on television by up to one billion people! Six years and a month ago, I saw Madrugada for the very first time, in a small room in the basement of a hotel with about one hundred people in attendance. A few weeks ago, I saw Madrugada live again in Berlin, in front of fifteen hundred people who all knew the lyrics to their songs, the second-to-last one of these songs being "The Frontman." After the concert, Frode asked me what I thought of the performance of that song, telling me he remembered that it was my favorite song. What he probably does not know is that "The Frontman" is also the very reason this page exists. Six years ago they performed that song in the small basement, two years before it would be released, and the song and the incredibly cool working-title - "Captain, The Men Are Exploding!" - got stuck in my head. Searching the Internet for information about this song did not yield any results, so I decided that if no one else were going to provide me with information about the band, I might as well have to do it myself. And this page was born. Six years later I am still updating this page, and in two days Madrugada will finally release the live-album that we have been waiting for for so many years - "Live At Tralfamadore" - as one of Norway's biggest and, undoubtedly, best bands. Unfortunately without "The Frontman" on the tracklist, but that probably would have been just too weird. "Let's do it right. Right now." November 27th 2005 - Live At Tralfamadore? Lots of things have happened in the Madrugada world over the past few months, unfortunately I have not been able to stay on top of things and update this news page regularly. Hopefully everyone has checked out the discussion forum, a lot of people make sure to post all the necessary new information there, including reviews and setlists from nearly every show on the current European tour. Undoubtedly the most exciting thing to happen lately is the news about a forthcoming Madrugada live CD. It is expected to be out in record stores by mid-December, and rumours are making the rounds regarding what it will contain. A recent promo single of the Ane Brun and Madrugada collaboration "Lift Me" included the snippet that the track would be performed live at Oslo Spektrum early next month, and would be available on the forthcoming live album. CDON.com recently put up a pre-order for the album, referring to it as being live from Oslo Spektrum, "Live, Oslo Spektrum 02.12.2005" and being released December 14th, but added that this is 'to be confirmed.' But for a full performance to be played and then released on an official album by a major label only twelve days after the fact seems quite unrealistic. Some believe that it could contain a performance with the Bodø Sinfonietta, but not the forthcoming one at Oslo Spektrum, but rather the one in Bodø in August this year. That performance was professionally recorded, and the band were later quoted saying that they considered the material for official release. But at the same time, work on the next studio album "Ivory Town" is also remoured to include a collaboration with the Sinfonietta, how likely is it that they will release two albums with the Sinfonietta within such a short span of time? The Norwegian record chain-store Platekompaniet have now put the album up for pre-order, with the same release date as CDON, December 14th. But they label it with the mysterious title "Live At Tralfamadore" - indicating that it will not contain the Oslo Spektrum performance. Tralafamadore 'is the fictional home planet of aliens from several novels by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. The planet's name is an anagram of "or fatal dream," a reoccuring concept in Vonnegut's novels.' The character Billy Pilgrim from Grit's "Come Back Billy Pilgrim" is also taken from a Kurt Vonnegut book, so it could be a red thread continuing with this live album. The earliest rumours regarding a live album were that it would be a compilation taken from many different sources, and a title such as "Live At Tralfamadore" could lend credit to it being a compilation rather than one performance. Time will tell, what seems definite though is the December 14th release-date, and the fact that we will finally see a long-awaited official Madrugada live album release. (Thanks to The Lodger and SivertFan for the latest info.) August 10th 2005 - Classical Madrugada and news about "Ivory Town" Dagbladet today writes that Madrugada's concert at Nordland Musikkfestuke in Bodø, Norway tonight will see the band featuring 20 extra members on stage. The festival asked Erlend Skomsvoll to arrange some some of Madrugada's most well-known songs for classical instruments, and the concert will see Madrugada perform with 11 members of Bodø Sinfonietta and some other classical musicians. Eight songs have been arranged for orchestra, four old and four new, including "Majesty." But the band says that some of the extra members will stay on stage for the entirety of the concert, and that it will be "Madrugada like you have never seen us before." Madrugada have been in Bodø since Sunday, and Frode says most of the days have been spent rehearsing, as "this is pretty complicated stuff," and that it is not just rock plus orchestra in a traditional for like many have done before them. He calls the project "incredibly challenging and ambisious, and definitely something very special." It is also revealed that this project is an important test for the forthcoming concept-album "Ivory Town," with some interesting news about the album. It is scheduled for release in about a year, and 20 songs are ready to be recorded, out of which seven or eight are definitely going to be on the album. Frode and Sivert call the album a side-project, a "Madrugada 4 1/2," but that it could end up as their best album ever. And that the band's hardcore-fans will love it, that they are making it for them - and for themselves. Sivert says the sound of the music for the new album is typical Madrugada, but dramatic, almost theatrical. Frode explains that with "Ivory Town" they will manage what they always aim for but never manage, to create just one mood. He says the songs are sung crooner-like, that they have a lot of blues, and twangy country-guitars. When it comes to the songs that are being prepared for the album, some old gems can be expected. Some of them have been played live every now and then, and the band have been tempted to put some of them on the previous records already, but they have managed to save them for this album. They say "the fans think they are forgotten classics." The reason for the news about the new album being unveiled at the same time as the project at Nordland Musikkfestuke is that Erlend Skomsvoll might also be asked to arranged the music on the new album. And when the "Ivory Town" project is going on the road after the album release, the band says they dream about doing maybe just 20 concerts in the biggest Norwegian cities, and playing in places like theatres, partly with an orchestra in support. When it comes to the title-track of the album, the brilliant "Ivory Town," they say it is the first song they recorded for the album. They made it at their rehearsal space right before "Industrial Silence" was released, and that the textual concept of the song and the record is life in a typical small Norwegian city. Thanks to Dabladet for the information. Read the entire article here (in Norwegian). August 10th 2005 - Confirmed European tour this Autumn Some dates for the European tour this Autumn have now been confirmed, and posted on the official Madrugada page. The ones confirmed so far are the following: 09/03/05 - Huntenpop, Varsselder, The Netherlands 09/04/05 - Tivoli, Utrecht, The Netherlands 09/06/05 - Nalen, Stockholm, Sweden 11/14/05 - Voxhall, Århus, Denmark 11/15/05 - Loppen, Copenhagen, Denmark 11/19/05 - Effenaar, Eindhoven, The Netherlands 11/20/05 - Patronaat, Haarlem, The Netherlands 11/21/05 - Vera, Groningen, The Netherlands 11/22/05 - Botanique, Brussels, Belgium 11/25/05 - Volkshaus, Zürich, Switzerland 12/16/05 - TBA, Thessalonika, Greece 12/17/05 - TBA, Athens. Greece 12/18/05 - TBA, Athens, Greece A couple of German dates in November were also published, and later removed. Expect these to be added, and possible more, as soon as they are confirmed. June 10th 2005 - First Autumn European Tour date confirmed It seems confirmed that Madrugada will perform at Tivoli in Utrecht, The Netherlands on Sunday September 4th 2005. This confirms the band's comments that there would be another full-blown European Tour coming up later this year, so we should be able to expect more confirmed dates to be released in the near future. Thanks to Mohawk for the information. June 10th 2005 - Tonight's Southside performance streamed online Madrugada's concert tonight at the Southside Festival in Germany will be streamed live online tonight. It seems like it will be streamed as video, and the band is scheduled to perform between 19:00 and 19:45. You can click here to go to the page where you will find a link to the stream and a schedule for the other performances that will also be streamed, including acts such as Beck, Oasis and Dinosaur Jr. If you are having problems getting the stream to work properly, please take a look at this thread at the discussion forum. Thanks to DASDING.de and The Girl In The Red Shirt for the information. June 3rd 2005 - News updates I got to sit down and talk a bit with the band when they were in Berlin two weeks ago, and Sivert could tell that they are very happy with the recent success they have been enjoying. Especially in Norway they notice that a lot of younger people seem to be discovering their music, with all of their back-catalogue having been on the Top 40 list since the release of "The Deep End." This time around, they will use the success to as a platform for touring as much as possible, something he admitted they have not been very good at in the past. The Norwegian tour is over with, and the European tour is getting wrapped up these days. But there will be little time to rest, with about twenty festival appearances confirmed this Summer. If that was not enough, Sivert could also tell that they are working on booking another European tour for the end of the year and another Norwegian tour in the Winter. In the near future, the song "Stories From The Streets" will be released as a single. At least in Europe, it may be that another song is picked as a single to be released only Norway (rumours are pointing at "Hold On To You"). The single version will feature Steve Stevens, who has played with Billy Idol amongst others, on flamenco guitar. The new album is still not out in places like Great Britain and America, but there are plans to do something with that. Sivert says he is very satisfied with how the limited edition bonus track "Life In The City" turned out, and that he likes it better than some of the songs that ended up on the actual album. In the UK, the album might be released in a new version, with "Life In The City" as one of the regular album tracks. A music video for "Stories From The Streets" was recorded in Madrid the week before the European tour started, which turned out to not exactly be an excellent idea. A lot of dry ice was used for the video shoot, which resulted in Sivert getting a bad throat, and the first concert in Sweden getting cancelled and the second one getting cut short. This was not an ideal situation, as this was at the beginning of a big and important tour, but also because the band have not been very popular in Sweden in the past, and this was the first time a lot of interest in the band was being shown in Sweden - the cancelled concert in Stockholm was sold out. They were very sorry to have to let people down, and are hoping to re-schedule the cancelled concert for some time during the Summer. Additionally, with the video shoot in Madrid and two concerts at the weekend before the European tour kicked off, the band found themselves in a position where they had a new drummer for the tour, Bert Nummelin, but they had had far too little time to rehearse together. So the first couple of concerts on the tour had to serve as practice sessions for the new guy, who was also struggling a bit with getting into the Madrugada-style of drumming, especially the older songs that Jon had added his own special touches to. In Berlin, a few weeks into the tour, things were finally starting to work out very well with the integration of Bert as the drummer. Additionally, light technician Neil McNasty said that he thinks the rest of the band are all performing a lot better than ever before, Robert has developed into a proper rockstar-guitarist, and Frode is also adding a lot of fine details to the band's sounds. Some background on Bert Nummelin: He is originally from Sweden, and moved to Norway about ten years ago. He started out playing rock when he was younger, then got a jazz education, and when he moved to Oslo he got to know a lot of people from the hip-hop movement, and has been playing with hip-hop bands for some time. He says he is very aware of the fact that there are a lot of dedicated Madrugada fans, who want to hear the songs played a certain way and can be very picky about it, so when he plays Madrugada songs he plays them his own way, but he tries to maintain the original mood of the songs. With some songs he says he just goes with the flow, an example of that is "Got You" which was jammed on at soundcheck once, and then added to the setlist in a drastically different form than when it was released. Here the whole band wanted to do something different, and Bert says he is aware of the existance of the recorded version of the song, but he does not know what that version sounds like. The Madrugada drummer situation has not been solved, though. For the Summer festival appearances coming up, Erland Dahlen, who played on about half of "The Deep End" and the Norwegian tour, will be back behind the drum kit, and fans and band alike will have to get used to something new, and quickly get up to pace. And towards the end of the Summer festivals, it seems like Bert will have to step in again. The reason Erland could not play on the European tour was because he got a son some time ago, and he has spent time at home. But he is the primary drummer of the band at the moment, something both drummers have an understanding for. But Erland also plays in another band, Exploding Plastics, and will sometimes be occupied with them, which is why Bert will most likely step in at the end of the Summer shows (and also had to do performance at Først & Sist on NRK television as a one-off). To end this update is a funny tidbit about the band's current rider. The rider is presented to every organizer, and is a list of demands for equipment and additional goods like amounts of drinks and food that the band requires to play a concert. This time around, instead of drinking cheap local beer, the band have been overwhelmed by the amounts of expensive wine from all over the world that they have been presented with, so much that they were driving around with a bus loaded full of unopened bottles. The reason for this was that efore the tour started, Frode went to fancy Kampen Bistro in Oslo, sat down with a pen and a piece of paper, and copied their list of expensive wines onto the band's rider. It was supposed to be a joke, but everywhere except for at Melkweg they have gotten bottles from their exclusive list. May 29th 2005 - Concert Updates Setlists and info from five of the six last concerts have been added to The Concert Chronology. Thanks to all the people who pay attention at the concerts and take their time to submit the info. There are lots of concert reviews by enthusiastic fans posted at the discussion forum, so be sure to check them out. May 27th 2005 - Site re-designed This site has finally gotten a long-needed overhaul, and with that a complete re-design. Some stuff might not work perfectly to begin with, as it is still work-in-progress. A short preview of these news updates are now displayed on the front page, which should help people keep an overview of what is happening with the band, and there are also links to the latest threads on the discussion forum. Please note that this does not work ideally now to begin with, it only shows the latest threads created. This will hopefully be fixed soon, in the meantime make sure you visit the forum main page to catch all the newest posts! May 13th 2005 - Massive update to Concert Chronology Dates and information for the entire European tour and Summer festival tour has been added to The Concert Chronology. The tour started in Sweden this week, be sure to go and see them if they make their way anywhere close to you! Also, make sure you visit the Madrugada Discussion Forum to stay up-to-date on everything that is happening with the band. March 9th 2005 - New Madrugada album, "The Deep End" Last Monday, February 28th, Madrugada's fourth album, "The Deep End" was released in Norway. The album was recorded in legendary Sound City studios in California at the end of last year by George Drakoulias, and expectations upon its release were very high. Madrugada have debuted high on the album charts with all previous album releases, but few would have expected the phenomenal first week of sale, where "The Deep End" broke Norway's sales records for fastest selling album, beating major bands like U2. Platinum sales in Norway are for 40.000 shipped copies, which "The Deep End" passed after only two days of sales! The record sales were somewhat unexpected – the band expected good strong sales, but this was beyond what anyone could have predicted. The band also appeared on Norway's most-viewed talkshow - Først & Sist with Fredrik Skavlan - last Friday, performing the radio single "The Kids Are On High Street" and with Sivert doing an interview. This appearance was seen by roughly half the record-buying Norwegian public, so record sales will hopefully stay at a high level in the coming weeks. Last week was indeed a great one for Norwegian music on the whole, as Madrugada debuted on the Number One spot on the Norwegian VG Topp 40, fellow North-Norwegians Jim Stärk debuted at number two and Espen Lind at number three. All three albums were released on February 28th. Espen Lind co-wrote "Venn" with Lene Marlin, the tsunami-relief charity song that Sivert Høyem participated on. For those who want to keep up-to-date on Madrugada, please be aware that the discussion forum is full of life, with more than 120 registered members. Everything you would want to know about the band is posted in the forum, so please be sure to check it out, members from all over the world make sure that you always stay updated! Though this news page has not been very updated lately, the rest of the page has been reflecting the release of "The Deep End" over the last couple of months. Be sure to check out Info About New Album for everything you need to know about "The Deep End," the discography, and the concert chronology for all upcoming Madrugada performances. Also, the band themselves are doing a great job at keeping the official page at madrugada.net up-to-date, be sure to check it out for the latest news, directly from the band.

I still like Coldplaya, probably because that was my idea ;) And no dictators!! Or I'll just declare myself the boss, and everyone will agree :) Rule 1: Listen to me Rule 2: If you don't listen to me, you get a second chance to obey rule 1 Rule 3: If you refuse to listen you will have to live in America, with Bush as your boss! :o That's right... be afraid! Be very afraid!

Yeah I agree... he has a great voice. Probably one of the best, I think. I just heard Don't let the flowers down, that one is beautiful!

Hmm... that's a really ehm.. political way to describe it...

How very original ;) The only problem is how to get the music to go with the lyrics :P

Hmm... then we can have an election... I'll run for president too :P first female president under 18 ;)

We were just thinking. This world is nice and all, but wouldn’t it be a better place with a special Coldplay country? We could have our own national anthem, our own flag, our own king/queen/president, our own constitution, and a country full of people who think alike. That must appeal to you, you know it does, don’t try to deny it. You know we’re right. It would need a name. For instance Coldplaya, then it could be at a beach and it would always be sunny. We need citizens though, and YOU could be one! Yes, you! You could be one of those special people starting a new country! Do you know a better name, a good national anthem?? Tell us please, and we would really live in a beautiful world :P Rad-Cold & Innocent_Joy

Whahahahaha! GE-WEL-DIG.... Je bent een veeel grotere fan als ik en marina bij elkaar :) Welcome :P

1. Warning Sign 2. Green Eyes 3. Swallowed in the sea 4. How you see the world 5. Things I don't understand/I bloom blaum :dizzy2: Oh, I can't choose, I keep changing my top... I should make up my mind!

Nada surf

J - Jaya the cat

Coldplay - Fix You ( Gelredome, 7-7-05)

I only heard their songs two months ago, but I really like what I've heard so far. I should look in to them sometime...

Jah... Ik heb zooon spijt dat ik niet Antwerpen ben gegaan. Was pas geleden :( Maarja... ik blijf niet in het verleden hangen :P Nieuw jaar, nieuwe kansen :)

You know what you're talking about! It seems that all good things come from Northern-Europe :P

Desaparecer... no idea who it's from... so if anyone can tell me ;) http://media.putfile.com/Desaparecer

7/10 Madrugada - Don't let the flowers down http://media.putfile.com/Madrugada---Dont-let-the-flowers-down

You should really get some more, they're great. I think the song you mean is called Shine, but I'm not sure with so little words. :P It's wonderful that Madrugda is getting that many awards in Norway, if only they'd become more popular in Holland. :cry:

Ok, if there is already a thread about Madrugada, I'm very sorry, but I couldn't find it and they deserve one! Or more! They're from Norway, and I guess they're not that well known. Do many other people like Madrugada? What do you think is their best song? At the moment my favourite is A deadend mind.

E - Elbow :)

Oh.. my favourite song is Casimir Pulasky Day, it makes me feel so happy. I wish he would come to holland! :cry:

Marillion - Let it be (beatles cover)

*hooray* meer medelanders :) Welcome here, even though you were here before me :P

Blah to you too, welcome :)

I do, and since you live there I guess you do as well ;) Anouk is a very good singer from Holland, so it's very likely that you heard her on the radio. What's in a name :P