Indie Nights

Two weeks ago I had a lovely stay in Stockholm with my colleagues. There was, however, a fly in the ointment, as the trip coincided with a planned visit to my brother. (Social gatherings often seem to come "en bloc".

Fortunately, I managed to kill two birds with one stone. As soon as the plane from Stockholm had arrived at Oslo Airport on Saturday afternoon, I jumped aboard the first available bus to Fredrikstad, and thus got the chance to see my brother for the remainder of the weekend after all.

After my brother moved back to Eastern Norway, it has become somewhat easier to get together. This weekend he was a grass widower with little Bo, but it all worked out just fine.  

On Saturday evening we made our famous Koren pizza™, and on Sunday we had a nice excursion to the neighbouring (and our childhood) town of Sarpsborg. We strolled in the city park, which now had got a nice playground which Bo seemed to enjoy. 

What I enjoy the most with our brotherly get-togethers, however, is just chilling and talking about this and that. Mostly music. In the evenings we often end up like two Beavis and Buttheads, commenting music videos. Great fun. But maybe a bit passive. 

This Saturday night, however, we chose a slightly different variety. My brother's (and my) cable company offers various radio channels playing non stop music in several different genres. This evening we ended up listening to the channel "Indie Classics", playing music we both can relate to ("independent" music from the punks' "Year Zero" until the millennium shift). Quite a lot of it we knew from before - or were at least able to identify (The Smiths, The Cure, XTC, Siouxsie, Pistols, Jam, Beck, Costello etc.). But lots of it was also new to us.

Eventually we ended up trying to identify the artists. The fact that there were no intros or outros to the songs made it a bit of a challenge. The solution was noting down fragments of the lyrics of the songs we didn't know, and then google them. It turned out we've actually got a rather good intuition about indie music we've never heard before. In the small hours we concluded that this had to be a great radio concept: Two brothers discussing songs they don't know what is...

At any rate, it was a great weekend. And little Bo seemed to appreciate a visit from "unca" Torgny. When I had to leave on Sunday evening, he seemed almost a little dishearted. I guess that's a good sign. :-)