Happy Birthday

The sun is shining, it’s Morten’s 53rd birthday today and it would be wrong of me not to put something a-ha related here.

Amazingly, a quick (and enjoyable) search through the back issues of 6000 miles… has revealed that I’ve never hosted this song and video on here. Let’s remedy that right now.

Of equal astonishment to those fans of the Norwegian threesome (careful now) and this blog will probably be the revelation that this was a-ha’s only UK number one single. Take On Me, arguably their best known (and certainly their best selling) song never reached the top spot, peaking at number two just slightly behind Jennifer Rush’s The Power Of Love in October 1985.

The video for this song took two days to film and was made in a church in Teddington, London, which was filled with an audience and orchestra made up from over 650 mannequins.

Leningrad

Every time I hear Soviet Russia mentioned, I think of this song. Probably the most under-rated Billy Joel track, I think, as many from his 1989 Storm Front album were – We Didn’t Start The Fire being the obvious exception.

Extensive piano work, sweeping strings, some slightly dodgy lyrics, but most of all a wonderful triumph of humanity over politics. 23 years on, and I guess we can expect much the same when Danny K brings out his song over the recent Woolworths saga.

Test drive

What with one thing and another, but mainly just one thing, I never got around to uploading those photos from yesterday and so, no, you can’t see them.

I did test my new RunMix 02 today. It was a weird run.
Usually, when I’m getting tired, I tell my legs that I want them to keep going and then they keep going. This morning, they were being totally ungovernable. I was unimpressed.

I also discovered that running while listening to music can be quite dangerous. Not the whole “you might not hear a car coming” thing – I mean, how’s that going to help you anyway? I’d rather not know I’m going to die. Horribly. Under the wheels of an ageing Toyota Corolla.

No, the danger comes when you’re heading downhill (steep downhill) and Muse’s Map of the Problematique comes on. I couldn’t slow down. Does the 60kph speed limit only apply to vehicles? I could have stuck that song on repeat and run forever.

So here’s my question for you – what other songs will give me that feeling?

I sense a sub-10 minute Two Oceans coming up in 2013…

RunMix 02

Pretty knackered (to say the least) after a late night winning a pub quiz, a 5:15am wake up call from an excited Alex, followed by some mad fun in the mud at pretentious restaurant The Bungalow, watching a friend jump off the mountain (with a qualified paraglider and a qualified parachute attached), I have been charged with sorting out some music for Mrs 6000’s phone (GPS/music player) to encourage her to run faster, higher, stronger.

At the same time, I’m renewing my RunMix playlist. I can’t do both from the same list because I want some fast paced house, a touch of dubstep and a healthy smattering of nu-metal to pump me up the hills of Cape Town. Mrs 6000 just wants the happy house stuff.

Goodbye Josh from Joburg band The Black Hotels falls comfortably into neither of those camps, but it appears to have made it into both playlists for its sheer get up and go beat.

Regular readers will probably recall that they have previous form in this regard.

More tomorrow, probably including some photos and stuff from today. Assuming I actually get some sleep this evening.

Band to play in South Africa

A local events company yesterday announced that they had booked a band to come and play some concerts in South Africa early next year. The announcement, which was widely expected and had already been leaked last week, prompted a mixed reaction from twitter users across the country.

Some people immediately rubbished the announcement, saying that the band had not released anything worth listening to for many years. They informed their followers in no uncertain terms that they would not be attending the concerts, although they omitted to tell us what they would be doing instead on each of the evenings in question.

Others were obviously excited by the news, stating that they would certainly be trying to get tickets for the concerts and that they couldn’t wait for the date of the concert to arrive. While only a small percentage of these individuals rated the band’s latest offerings particularly highly, they expressed the hope that some of the band’s bigger hits from earlier on in their career would also be featured on the concert playlist. Additionally, some of this group managed to get tickets through the pre-sale function on the band’s website, which annoyed those who didn’t manage to do so.

Finally, there was a third group who expressed relatively little emotion over the announcement. From this, it could be deduced that they were probably not huge fans of the band in question, but also that they understood that other people probably have different musical tastes to them and that they respected this fact, not feeling the need to mock or belittle those individuals who do actually enjoy the music of the band in question.

All the groups did, however, agree that the ticketing process would probably not go particularly smoothly.

Facebook is expected to hear about the concert later today or early tomorrow morning.