The Crunchy X-Mas show in Copenhagen was a huge succes – 1500 people came to celebrate and experience the full roster of crunchy bands playing. Thanks to everybody who attended and to our wonderful staff both from Vega (the venue) and CF HQ. Everybody did a fantastic job. For the back stage and afterparty action check out another news item on this site called “Behind the music: The underbelly of the frog”
The show started with a brief welcome by one of our founding fathers of CF: Mr. Jesper Rofelt. He presented the humongous electrically lit Crunchy Frog logo which hovered above the stage all night and spred love, peace and sweet sweet crispness. Rofelt then presneted the REAL presenter of the evening Mr. Karsten Irving “Show” Schiøler, who also happens to be the lead singer of Tothe Int’l. And thus the party begun….
TOTHE INTERNATIONAL hasn’t played live for quite some time, but MAN are they back in great form! They played a few of the classics and spellbound the audience with their mix of great music, weird instrumentation (with Yebo NOT playing drums on most songs but instead organ, theremin and megaphone) and whacky stage show (whith their manager Rud standing in the back with a white cowboy hat, looking mean as f***). One of the best highlights was when they played their contribution to the Xclusive Crunchy Xmas Covers-sampler. They did a wonderful country rendering of Junior Seniors “White Trash”, and also a powerful “Momma, I’m a Communist”, which in turn happens to be the song that was covered for the sampler by…..
THE RAVEONETTES who gave a loud (the loudest of the evening!), energetic and truely electrifying show. Looking cool as always the band was clad in black, only exceptions (as a reviewer pointed out) was Sunes red scarf and Sharins white cleavage – uh baby.
THAU was next band on stage after one of the 3 half hour breaks of the night. Introduced as the band without whom (…etc.) they entered the stage together with the “5th member” Soma Allpass Hammarlund on cello, organ and percussion. The band kicked off presnteing a retrospective of songs from the first, second and third album. At this point the room had filled to the maximum capacity and it was nice to see that the Crunchy Frog fans actually had the attention span to listen to difficult music and not get bored or go to the bar in hords. It is in fact a great tribute to the music lovers out there, that although many came for Superheroes or Junior Senior, they actuelly gave the more underground and weird sounding bands a chance, and generally dug them as well. This certainly proved to be true during the Thau show as well as some of the later ones. The concert climaxed as Thau played “This Is OK” which transformed itself into “I Touched Her Legs” by Superheroes, and at the last song “Na Ni” when Per Sunding of TBG and Tanja of Superheroes joined them on stage.
JUNIOR SENIOR was the band that made sure that EVERYBODY got their ass in gear and got the party started right. As always Senior was the master of ceremonies and Junior did a fantastic piece of guitarwork. The Rhythm Prophets (as they call themselves) Yebo and Filip were tight like hell and the girls Anna and Lullu (with 3 l’s!) had never looked or sounded better. That band just is a treat to watch and hear.
Even though they don’t like being labeled a “party band” it is pretty damned hard to stop a party from erupting when they play. On stage they were joined by the always great Lars I Lommen and Thomas T (Superheroes), and for the last song Senior asked the audience to join the band for a orgasmic overpopulated version of “White Trash”. Again it is a tribute to the fans that the stage wasn’t trashed and everybody just had a great chaotic time.
LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS was next band up, and this was the awaited first time they presented a lot of the material from their forthcoming album, which is being recorded at the moment – it will be out before summer ’03. They also had a few of the old classics on the program this night and it was a pleasure to revisit songs such as “10.000 Songs” and “DataBankMemoHaiku”. With new member Jesper Sand (from Thau) as a strong pressence on guitar and backing vocals the set up we almost didn’t miss the newly departed member Per, who used to play the keys in the band (but we still miss you… come back!). Thomas T from Superheroes who is producing the new album helped out with some keyboard parts on stage. It was so nice to hear the lads play live again. Stay tuned for the album people. It is gonna be great!
THE TREMOLO BEER GUT – now there’s another band that hasn’t played live for some time. Apart from 10 minutes at a street party during summer, the band has been spread out doing their own stuff in other bands and as producers etc. This was truely a home coming. Per just finished the Cardigans record as producer. Sune has been travelling the world with The Raveonettes, Yebo has kept busy with Crunchy Frog and Junior Senior and Jengo is still the Fruit King of Denmark. It was such a thrill for the guys to be together and that wasn’t even all: on organ and theremin we witnessed the genius of Mr. Bas Morgansen (aka P. Bartosch of Eggstone), and on backing vocals 4/5 of the B-team from Roskilde Festival 2000: Show (Tothe Int’l), Satan Beck (Pleasure Machine), Magnus S (Cardigans) and Simon Beck (Sun Lounge). All in all a pretty happening bunch of cool cats.
Despite the lack of rehearsal the band played a wonderful show and topped it off with the entry of Senior who did the vocals for “Cool Cig’s” which in his version on the XCXC-sampler became “Cool Dicks”. A gay anthem with witty rhymes such as “mono” rhyming with “homo” (?) etc.
As a surprice Tanja from Superheroes showed up with a huge dildo and tried to ram it down Yebos throat… some happy camper from the audience went home with a trophy this night…
THE MOPEDSunfortunately couldn’t make the sound check during the day, so they had a bit of technical troubles and was suffering with some bad sound. BUT it was a treat to see and hear the band again – back on Danish soil.
They brought Patrik B and Sven on Sax as guests, and did an entertaining show playing all their hit songs and speaking their funny brand of Danish in-between the songs.
SUPERHEROES was the most delicious treat, saved for last. Everybody knows they are the best live band in the State of Denmark, and they certeinly had no difficulties living up to that (no offense to the other great CF bands).
Even though the audience by now had listened to 7 shows and had been drinking for 5 hours, it was no sweat for Thomas T and his troops catching the eyes, ears and hearts of every single person in the audience. The band simply grooved and played like there was no tomorrow.
Thomas T was a lean mean crowdsurfing, stagediving, waterthrowing, stripping machine. We are talking ACTIONPACKED!
Joined onstage by most of the other bands and a lot of the CF staff for the last song “In Control of the Beat” the superheroes finished the night in great style.
Oh what a night to remember (if you weren’t too drunk). We hope everybody had a great time and enjoys the record we did for each other and all of YOU!
Watch out for more pics, behind the scene revelations and after party scandals… Check out “The underbelly of the Frog”
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