From Oslo to the Arctic Circle
 
And that Karsloy’s year-round population is... 22?
 
There are cottages, too, on the island, so weekends see more than 22, but 22 it is. The island was once the administrative centre of the region, but with the increased reliance on roads in the second half of the last century, the island proved a bit too out-of-the-way. So the bureaucrats moved away, and, in the 70s, a few people (‘hippies’) decided to start up a new kind of society here. And they did. And then, most of them left. There are three goat farms (farmed for their milk). In fact, the head of the festival, I’m told, has a sizable goat farm. While I don’t want to use this blog to make any grand claims, I think it’s safe to say that this is the only music festival in the world that is run by a goat farmer. But someone else will have to check that fact. Regardless, it’s a beautiful part of the world, with weather patterns that seem to change minute by minute. When the sun breaks and the fog lifts, this place is something else. But, as a hermit I met in Anhui once said (wow. Did that sound as pretentious as I think it did? Sorry), the fog is beautiful too; he’s right: It hides the midsection of the  surrounding mountains, leaving their tips to point up through the mist. It’s cold here, though. Bitter. But it’s a fresh cold.
 
The one word that people used repeatedly to talk about the Festival here was “special”, which, when uttered after a long pause of “umm”s and “er”s and searching for the right word, gave the impression that it might be like that “interesting” people say is a Chinese curse. So far, interesting is a good word for what I’m seeing here, but not in the Chinese curse way. More like in the wild, weird, cool, awesome, warm and more sense. We are being welcomed into peoples’ homes (we are living, with a large number of other musicians/festival folks, in peoples’ homes) and there are smiles, nods and ‘hi’s as we pass people on the road. I’m not going to try and put it all into words, like I’m going to try and not put, here, photographs that can’t possibly capture the scenery (knowing that I will, though, take loads of photos that won’t capture the scenery).
 
There are the characters, two of whom I know something about:
On the Road with Subs
Wed Aug 9-Fri Aug 11, 2006
With Sweden at our backs, we pulled in to our good friends Karen and Thomas’ house (hopefully they remain good friends after we invaded their home for a couple days, though we’re pretty sure they do) to prepare for the upcoming Norwegian leg of the Nordic Adventure. Kang Mao opened the Oslo show by telling the crowd that it was good to be back. “Do you remember us?” she asked. They cheered almost as loud as when Zhu Lei said ‘tusentak’. But before the show at Mono, there was a day of chilling; a short walk from Karen and Thomas’ place is a great little lake, and Leif from Bonk, a band that came to China in 2004 and started the Subs-Norway connection by playing shows in Beijing and Shanghai with Subs, came over and swam with the gang.
 
Mono felt a little like a reunion, what with all the old friends cruising through. It was August 8, an auspicious night, if you go for that kind of thing, what with being ba ba (八八) and all (could I add here that the show signaled that in exactly two years the Beijing Olympics will start? I could, and I did). In attendance were no less than eight people who lived in China for at least a short while, including new Norwegian resident Li Tieqiao (formerly of Glamorous Pharmacy), Christoffer, who translated for the band at last year’s Oya Festival, plus a whole bunch who had been before (like Bonk and Claes, Bonk’s manager and the booking agent for Oya), and including, pictured above, our good friend from Beijing (and big Subs [and rock in general]-booster Ola, at left) and Leif.
 
(I type this, just to give you something else to think about, onboard our flight northward. Way northward. To Tromso, inside the Arctic Circle. Tonight, the band plays KAOS, a Tromso club before heading off to Karlsoy, for the festival named for the island. But now I break for landing.)
In the crowd in the shot at left, and I suppose you’ll have to take my word for it, I see at least 6 people with a China connection not on the stage. At right, it’s hard to know how many backs of heads have China guanxi.
Once again, though, the real show wasn’t on the stage. This dude, who looks straight out of the Benny Hill Show (and you might want to put the theme song on while checking out the pics), literally could not stop the rock. He twisted and turned, bobbed and weaved, and shimmied and shuffled his way through the room before, during and after the show. He was harder to track photographically than you might think.
Hugs goodbye at the end of the reunion, er, gig.
And while we certainly enjoyed the hotel rooms (a rare treat thus far), we didn’t have them for long, since morning came early, and we were off to the airport for our flight for Tromso. Luckily we factored in extra time for not finding the highway, because we made it to check-in within minutes of the cut off. It’s a little chilly up here, in Tromso, but the views are great. Mountains! Lakes! Trees! And we’re only going deeper into the wild when it comes time for Karlsoy Festival.
‘Polar’ is definitely the word of the week; this was our Tromso hotel. We are now on the island of Karl. Karlsoy it’s called. (I know, it’s tricky to follow my geographical wanderings, but do try and keep up) Wed night, Subs played their first Arctic gig, and though the crowd was polite, it was just a quartet of kids that really gave ‘er, bouncing away up front. Kaos is Tromso’s rock headquarters, and the fellas there showed us a great time. Subs reciprocated onstage.
And the big finish....
Tromso, I’m told, shrinks by 10,000 when school’s out and if the wireless network that I’m told we have access to here at Karlsoy were to be working, I could tell you how many people there normally are. What I can tell you is that one of the 10,000 students in Tromso for the upcoming semester was our old friend Kristin, one of the camerapeople that has filmed Subs in Norway and China over the course of the past year. Her move up to Tromso coincided with our arrival there and so she’s come to Karlsoy with us. So here she is, back at work, for the first time since she -- and Karen, of super Oslo house where we crashed fame -- followed Subs on their China tour last May:
I know there’s a word for the kind of shots she’s getting, here, because when you see what she’s filming, you’ll wonder. Is it called ‘stock’ or something else? I dunno. My English has suffered the brunt of one month of conversing either in Chinese or with non-native English speakers. (Forgive me, dear reader.)
Check this out: someone else driving!
It’s Ariel, son of my Karlsoy Festival contact, driving us to the ferry that will take us to Karlsoy.
I couldn’t say we weren’t welcomed with open arms, big smiles and hospitality that made us feel like members of the family (all of this and more is true; look at the feast of fishcakes and potato salad that awaited us at the home in which the band would stay:)
I, on the other hand, was welcomed at the festival HQ house (an old school building [not old-school like Run DMC, but actually an old school building]) with a simple statement: “Oh, you’re the guy that’s going to give the talk on Chinese punk.” Not having heard of this since a casual mention in March via email, I was a bit surprised. “Yeah,” I allowed. “When will that be?” “It’s scheduled for five.” (Look at watch, realize it’s 5.05). I grab Kang Mao and off we go.
What we’re saying here, I think you can see, is “blah, blah, blah.”
Did I mention that it’s beautiful here?
And that blog photography can’t possibly do it justice?
We “decided” to work off of audience questions. Not surprisingly (given the fact that seminars and workshops earlier that day and the two days previous focused on politics and activism -- in addition to something that sent moans, screams, cries and laughter through the building as I was typing in another room and something else that led Kang Mao and Wu Hao to don clown noses [below] and led the latter to need to leave the room: “I’m feeling uncomfortable, he told me, while motioning to his midsection and insinuating a duzi discomfort. “From laughing so much, my hands started to feel weird and I needed to sit outside for a while”), the questions focused on politics, but also were the result of genuine curiosity and the lack of a reference point for understanding the concept of ‘Chinese rock’ or ‘Chinese punk’. All of it simulcast on Radio Karlsoy, a pirate FM station based here at the festival site, broadcasting across the island. So was an interview that we just finished, on this, the music fest’s day one.
Kang Mao with her ‘workshop’ face on.
There’s the fact that each of the festival passes were hand-made out of little blocks of wood and painted by a string of volunteers and that the festival t-shirts are hand-screened.
Showing Kang Mao and Wu Hao a book he had on Chinese imperial relics is a guy they call “Preacher”. His on-air sermon, broadcast on the local pirate radio station, encouraged not only drunken revelry, but also at least three orgasms a day (I’m told that he gave explicit instructions for the latter, but the translator didn’t see the need to pass along the details).
‘Tingaling’ came to the festival last year and never left. She was responsible for “everything with five corners” (teepee tents, garbage/recycling setups, pentagonal benches surrounding the fireplaces, etc), adhering, as she is, to her belief in ‘femism’ (fem being the Norwegian word for five).
Or the fact that on my way out of the festival area, I was stopped by a woman with a big smile. “Excuse me, can you do me a favour?” she asked. I had already helped a couple people try and push an enormous mini-bus uphill a few metres (to no avail), so I figured I’d do another good turn, that that was what the festival was all about. “Can you please write down on this piece of paper your number one dream?”
 
Two words, then. ‘Polar’ and ‘Special’.