Hi --

I and the wife went to a concert with Norwegian female singer/songwriter Kari Bremnes last night.

She did her love song "train song" (about two people who meet on a train, and continue their journey together) as the first song of her show, and I just happened to find a copy of her music video on the net today - recorded on a Norwegian museum railroad, and thought some of the rest of you might enjoy the video too :-)

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RkUUdGy_Bs

Engine is a class 24b 2-8-0 steam engine, built by Thune Mechanical Works in Oslo, Norway in 1912, passenger cars are 2nd class local passenger car from the 1920s.

Grin,
Stein

Beautifully filmed, thanks...

Wowwww, that was great. Loved it. Thanks. If any of the rest of her songs at the concert were anything like that one, you must've had a great time!

Nice song and nice video, too, Stein, although for the first few chords, I almost thought that I was going to hear a cover of Whitesnake's "Slow 'n' Easy".

I also liked the mostly-steam exhaust from the loco - I've never been a big fan of the "smoke show" featured on many railfan trips.

Wayne

Nice song and vid!

Great song and video. Thanks.

Loren

doctorwayne Wrote:Nice song and nice video, too, Stein, although for the first few chords, I almost thought that I was going to hear a cover of Whitesnake's "Slow 'n' Easy".

I think she writes most of her songs herself.

I think she only did one cover song (or rather - a Norwegian version of a song by a great male Canadian singer) yesterday - this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F1EnYfSofc

doctorwayne Wrote:I also liked the mostly-steam exhaust from the loco - I've never been a big fan of the "smoke show" featured on many railfan trips.

I agree.

Grin,
Stein

Wow!!! Fantastic music! What a beautiful voice she has!! I could certainly enjoy a lot more of her!! thank you so much for the links!!
ps: she's not very hard to look at, either!!

Nice video, good looking girl and trains!....Who could ask for more?
Except...What's she saying?

eightyeightfan1 Wrote:Nice video, good looking girl and trains!....Who could ask for more?
Except...What's she saying?

Quick and rough translation, done in 15 minutes at 7 am on Tuesday morning (ie - don't expect too much from it):

"De møttes på en reise
på en reise over land og jord
og dette va for lenge lenge sia
De skulle ikkje hjem,de skulle ut
og folge fremmed spor
til ukjent plass og hemmelige stia"

"They met on a journey
On a journey crossing lands and earth
And this was a long long time ago
They weren't heading home, they were heading out
to follow foreign tracks
to unknown places and secret paths"

--
"Så møtte de hverandre,
i en sliten rød kupe`
og reiste enda lenger enn du kan med NSB
tel øst for horisont og vest for tia"

"Then they met each other
in a worn down red compartment
and traveled much farther than you can with NSB (Norwegian State Railroads)
to east of the horizon and west of time"

--
"De møttes på en reise
på en reise møttes ho og han
og reisen gikk igjennom strågul sommer
De reiste i hverandre og de reiste i et gammelt land
der ingen tror på høsten før den kommer"

"They met on a journey
On a journey he and she met
and the journey went through a grain golden summer
They travelled in each other and they travelled in an old land
where nobody believes in fall before it comes"


--
"Det går en sakte skinnesang
ifra en rød kupe`
den nynnes gjennom landskap ingen landmåler skal se
der loven e en sans og livet dommer"

There comes a slow track song
from a red compartment
It hums through landscapes no surveyor will ever see
where the law is a feeling, and life is the judge"

--
"De møttes på en reise
på en reise over land og jord
og ingen av dem trudde noensinne
at reisen skulle ende,skulle ende,ved et banespor
og bare reise videre i minnet"

"They met on a journey
On a journey he and she met
And none of them ever thought
that the journey would end, would end at station track (as in a single ended track)
and just travel on in memory"

--
"Det går en gammel skinnesang
ifra en rød kupe
Den song om det som var engang
den bæres videre
den bæres av et håp og langs ei skinne"

"There comes an old track song
from a red compartment
It sings of what once was
It is carried along
It is carried along by a hope and along a track"

But of course the translation doesn't do justice to the original when it comes to the rhythm and rhyme - I am not an artist like she is.

Kari Bremnes comes up with new word combinations like "skinnesong" (track song - presumably the sound the wheel on the car makes when they hit joints in old rails) and "strågul" (straw yellow - presumably the golden color of grain in late summer - the mental image I get is like in the song "fields of gold"), she uses words from her northern Norwegian dialect, and she uses mental pictures that mean something to Norwegians - like "worn down red compartments" - the Norwegian state railroads used red vinyl on seats in the olden days, and they believe in using old rolling stock for as long as they can get away with it

Grin,
Stein

Stein:
Thanks for the translation! So much always gets "lost" when translating languages. Everything fits better, and means more in the language that it was written, or spoken. I still enjoy the Nordic languages, not that I understand any of them. I guess it's just their musical "lilt" when hearing them.

Stein, Kari is obviously very talented, and she's easy on the eyes to boot. I liked the curious little girl looking under her seat and spying on the two lovers from an unusual vantage point. Nice music. How 'big' is she in Norway/Scandinavia?

-Crandell

Selector Wrote:Stein, Kari is obviously very talented, and she's easy on the eyes to boot.

LOL - I noticed that several people has used the phrase "easy on the eyes" to describe her, based on the video. It is kind of ironic that people pick just that phrase to describe her, since her eyes is one of the things that is special about her looks. Her eyes doesn't focus on the same thing when she is looking at something - it can be a little hard to figure out who or what she is looking at. Guess she must be feeling a little self conscious about that - I just noticed that the video had been shot so you only see her in profile, not head on.

But yes, I'd say she is pretty good looking woman for being a mature mom of 53, with a 17 year career as a recording artist behind her so far, after a ten year or so career in journalism before that. She also has lots of charm and wit, and a great sense of humor - people tend to roar with laughter at some of the humorous comments she make between her songs - about life in general, about men and women and whatever other subjects she comments on.

Selector Wrote:I liked the curious little girl looking under her seat and spying on the two lovers from an unusual vantage point. Nice music. How 'big' is she in Norway/Scandinavia?

Well, in Norway everybody knows who she is, even though not everybody is a fan of her song style.

Her record company releases a new CD from her about once a year or every 18 months or so, and in between she does quite a bit of touring with a small supporting band of four musicians.

Btw - one of her band members, her drummer Helge Norbakken, is a volunteer fireman/stoker on the museum steam train you see in the video. She did made a comment during the concert we attended about him just having gotten certified as a steam engine fireman.

Another funny musical coincidence with just that museum train line (the Kroder RR line) - Duke Ellington's band used a song called "Take the A train" as their signature song from the 1940s. Someone over here in Norway who loved the tune made Norwegian lyrics to the same tune, and called it "Reis med Kroderbanen" (travel on the Kroder RR line). It is the signature song of that museum RR line.

Anyways - I'd say that the core audience for Kari Bremnes is middle aged and elderly people who listen to the lyrics of her songs and appreciate her singing style. Her concerts are reasonably well attended - it looked like they had sold about 350 or so tickets for the concert we attended (in a room that took about 400 people max), which is not too bad for a small town in SE Norway, and one of six concerts she and her band has in September.

But she is not the kind of artist whose fans would fill a sports stadium to capacity - her type of venue is mostly local culture houses and neighborhood churches.

I wouldn't expect her music to be a big hit in Sweden - Swedes are nice people, but they just have trouble understanding Norwegians who speak any kind of dialect except SE Norwegian (and then only people who speaks Norwegian slowly and are prepared to throw in Swedish phrases when the Swedes looks confused :-).

It is a function of geography - most Swedes live in Eastern Sweden, and most Norwegians live in SE Norway. SE Norway is up against the border with Sweden, so most Norwegians has grown up with Swedish TV channels as well as Norwegian TV channels, while eastern Sweden was too far away from Norwegian TV transmitters for them to have grown up with Norwegian TV channels.

No idea how she does in Denmark - probably fairly similar to in Sweden. Finland is in a world of it's own in Scandinavian terms - Finland is linked to Scandinavia/Sweden by shared history, and Swedish is a minority language in Finland, but Finnish is a language related to Hungarian, not a Scandinavian language.

She is also getting bigger some places on the continent - like in Germany, where she has sold about 100 000 copies of her newest albums. Which is a tiny part of the German market, but reasonably big for a Norwegian artist, where the home audience consists of only about 2 million households/5 million people.

Not sure why the Germans like her songs so much, but they seem to have some kind of thing about female Norwegian singers doing sing/songwriter or melodious songs, even though they don't understand the lyrics - Sissel Kyrkjebo also is/was big in Germany.

How is that for a long and complicated answer to a simple question ?

Grin,
Stein

Thorough and highly informative, as you always are. Many thanks, Stein.

-Crandell

53 years old....She didn't look a day over 35!

When I was stationed in Germany back in the early 1980's, there was a popular rock band called "Bap"( I actually have one of their albums), that sang most of thier songs in an old German dialect called "Koslsch"(sp). The Germans didn't really understand the words(Me..being an American even less), but loved the music. So I can understand why they like her music. During that time I was there, ZZ Top had a concert in Wurzburg. My German friends took me too it. They told me that they couldn't understand the words, but the music was great. Me...Both were great!