09-10-2009, 09:41 PM
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