Thursday, November 20, 2008

Bootleg + embarrassing anecdote

Not embarrassing for me, though, so that's OK. ;-)

I remembered I have another Katzenjammer-related video to post – a probably pretty unique bootleg, I can't imagine there are that many other videos from this concert floating around the intarwebs. This is a short video I filmed during a concert that Katzenjammer's Marianne Sveen held with her then band (the name of which I can't remember) in September 2005 at Musikkflekken in Sandvika outside of Oslo. Obviously filmed with my old camera, so it's only one minute long … but it does show off her beautiful voice. She always was a wonderful singer, even as a tiny little girl. Everyone in 'our circle' back then still remembers her belting out the ESC winner and massive hit La det swinge – a perfect rendition from a very small girl. :-) So nobody who knew her as a child is at all surprised that she is a professional musician now. Enjoy the song … but first, an embarrassing story.

When Marianne was a little girl she had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce the letter r. Norwegians: she said j instead. English speakers: imagine that she pronounced it w. As in, cawwots when she meant to say carrots. There was a little boy in the gang, Enok, he's one year older than her, he also had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce his rs either, but he said l instead. Ie, callots. That’s the setup, here’s the story.

One day my mother, let's call her K., looked out our kitchen window and saw Marianne and Enok standing in the road outside our gate arguing violently. She couldn't hear what they were saying but they were obviously pretty upset with each other. They were, I don't know, probably 4 and 5 years old. Eventually they opened our gate and marched down the path to our front door … the doorbell rang and my mother, rather nervously, went to open. They stood angrily on the doorstep and when they saw her Marianne said the following: K., Enok says that it's called a ladio, but it's called a wadio, isn't it??! :-D

What the hell do you say to that?? My mother worked with children (she is a librarian) and she figured she would handle this pedagogically and try to teach them something. So she said, Actually, sweetie, you’re both wrong! It's called a radio! Rrrrrradio!! Can you say that? Come on! Rrrrrradio!!

With a big friendly smile, of course. But no luck. Apparently they both looked at her like … omfg she has GONE INSANE!!1! Then they edged away and ran off. :-D

Now you can enjoy the pretty music.



Don't forget the giveaway!

7 comments:

Paz said...

Had the ESC song the lyrics 'swinging on the rock and roll' in English that sounded like svinging on da rock and roll'?
There is a radio DJ on a galway station that pronounces his R's like W as in cawwots, he is overwhelmed with requests for, rogers,etc as in Monty Python the life of Brian. >:O
Disclaimer, this comment is not sent under the duress of winning a freebie. :)

Leisha Camden said...

I added a link to the song on youtube, so now you can be the judge. It's, ahem, pretty corny (<-- trying to be diplomatic) but it was the first time we'd won the ESC so we were collectively over the moon about this song in 1985.

You can check out the lyrics here:
http://www.diggiloo.net/?1985no
English translation and everything.

Quality ... >:-)

Paz said...

I remember that song, cause in school people were sining 'Sving let it rock and roll', look at all the Irish songs that won, real cheese fest, a smell of Brie about the lot of them :D
Disclaimer, this comment is not sent under the duress of winning a freebie. :)

Leisha Camden said...

Aww, you remember La det svinge ... ! We terrorized the whole of Europe, it was a grand time to be Norwegian. >:-)

Have you read back in the blog to the May entries where I dissed (among others) this year's Irish ESC entry ... ? I posted the same thing on the BookCrossing forum and got slammed by some Irish people who apparently thought that because it's Irish it must be quality. They thought the turkey could win. LOL! Of course I was a terrible person for saying such nasty things. But considering that these were people who when arguing about the quality of songs in the ESC with a Norwegian couldn't come up with any better argument than, basically, 'you are an idiot' ... I didn't lose a lot of sleep over it. ;-)

Oh, the ESC ... !! I can't wait for the circus to start up again!! :-D

Paz said...

The newspapers reported that Dustin won because Irish people were disalusioned with the Eurovision, IMO I believe that people who normally have no interest in the ESC voted just to get Dustin in for a laugh, It was the same when the BBC wanted to select 100 best sports men, a bunch of Irish highjacked the vote and got a non entity irish amateur soccer player in the top 10.

Paz said...

forgot to add this in last post
Disclaimer, this comment is not sent under the duress of winning a freebie. :)

Anonymous said...

What a fantastic story, thanks so much for sharing it! Hearing her sing today, I would never have imagined she ever had trouble pronouncing anything. She is an amazingly gifted artist and I've become a huge fan of both Katzenjammer and solo project, dandylion. I'm also very grateful to you for posting what seems to be the one and only dandylion. video out there. It's great!!