Wednesday, 8 January 2014


That's Entertainment : A-Ha


Well, here we are...2014!!!  After a couple of weeks off for a quick trip to Melbourne for Xmas and NYE and Ashes cricket, I'm back.

One of the highlights of being in the culture capital of Australia (other than catching up with good friends and spank the Poms) was to hit the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) at Federation Square to take in Spectacle : The Music Video Exhibition.  Basically, the history of the video clip.  It was amazing just to sit and watch some all time classic vids and listen to some great tracks by a multitude of artists.

However, for me, the highlight had to be A-Ha with their 1985 #1 smash Take On Me.  I will go to my grave believing that both the song and video to Take On Me is the best (if John Peel could have moist eyed devotion to The Undertones' Teenage Kicks, then this is mine).  

And it's hard to believe it was THIRTY years ago (well, at the end of 1984) that the song first came out.  I was 9 in 1985 and this song/video just wowed every single person who saw/heard it and it truly is my fave song of the Eighties.  It still retains a freshness today that Channel 10's So You Think You Can Dance (Australia) has been using the riff for its ads all summer.  In fact, there doesn't ever seem to have been a time when I did not posses and listen to this song in some form.  

Norway's most successful act, A-Ha spent the best part of 25 years creating melodramatic, sumptuous synth pop that won them fans all over the world.  Considered a one hit wonder act in the USA, most of the rest of the world rightfully reveres them as masters of their craft.  Their first three albums - Hunting High And Low [1985] (one of the 1001 albums you should listen to before you die), Scoundrel Days [1986] and Stay On These Roads [1988] are classics.  Littered with pop gems, A-Ha took the easy, breezy lyrical charm of ABBA and meshed it with a touch of melancholia and adroit synthesised pop music to deliver a string of wonderful hits.  A-Ha were so popular in Britain, that they were hired to co-wrote and record the 1987 James Bond theme The Living Daylights.  Once the 'boy band' gloss wore off, A-Ha grew in to maturer pop writers with the next couple of albums - East of the Sun, West of the Moon [1990] and Memorial Beach [1993].  After a hiatus which began in 1994, A-Ha reunited in 1998 for a Nobel Peace Prize Concert and with the dawn of the internet, their stocks rose once more.  Delivering Minor Earth Major Sky [2000], Lifelines [2002] and Analogue [2005], A-Ha found a new lease of life, being able to successfully reconcile their poppier golden days with contemporary adult-orientated pop/rock.  Utilising internet multimedia and with an army of devoted fans, A-Ha became media darlings again, especially in the UK where we missed out on tickets to their triumphant 2002 Wembley Show.  After a number of best ofs, A-Ha released the amazing Foot of the Mountain [2009] and after the tour announced that 2010 would be their swan song, and after 25 years they would be calling it a day.  For weeks I tried to justify and coerce taking Lee and Alex to Oslo for A-Ha's last ever concert, but alas finances and timing would not allow it.   

However, actually sharing the Take On Me video clip with Alex and Zach at ACMI and being able to lovingly look at the animation stills (on the wall; background) and to stand with an original prop from my beloved film clip was amazing in itself.  

For anyone who wants to spend $20, JB Hi Fi sell their first 5 albums in a boxset  [  http://www.jbhifionline.com.au/music/pop-rock/original-album-series/651972  ]  or you can buy the remastered, super dooper 2 disc version of Hunting High And Low and Scoundrel Days.  

So there you have it.  I can't begin to reconcile where (almost) thirty years have gone, but in my musical collection, A-Ha is going no where.

Enjoy!



The Sun Always Shines On TV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ir9HC9vYg










For those who get to Melbourne before the end of February ...





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