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Magic Pie live at
Maiden (Oslo, Norway)
Date: September 28, 2006
 September 28 saw the start of something extraordinary in Norway's rock
scene. The newly established alternative rock venue maiden launched the
first of several concerts with prog bands, in cooperation with the
equally newly founded organization Subtacto. The concerts will take
place monthly, for at least the rest of 2006, and hopefully this will
continue in 2007 as well.
The concert venue at venue is of the more intimate kind. They have a
capacity of 300 people - capacity here indicating that if 300 people
actually come to a concert, the venue will be jammed tighter than a
duck's arse. The same can be said for the stage; any band with more than
4 members can forget about doing any kind of stage antics without
extreme acrobatic skills. And although I didn't get to see it myself,
the same probably applies to the backstage area.
In other words - this is a small venue.
First band out in this new event was Magic Pie, well known and talked
about abroad, but only marginally known in their own homeland. Support
band for the evening was Grand Fetish, a band unknown to me. As far as I
know, they are an unsigned band.
The support band was supposed to kick off the event at a quarter to
nine, but due to events unknown there was an hours delay. But finally at
a quarter to ten Grand Fetish entered the stage, and played a handful of
tunes - all of them self-written, as far as I could tell. The music was
of the more mellow kind, more pop/rock oriented than prog; but worked
very well live. The band sounded tight and well-rehearsed, and did a
good job overall. A promising band is my overall impression.
10.30 in the evening it was time for the band everyone had come to see.
Everyone this evening was approximately 70 people, which meant that the
venue started to get a bit crowded. And the audience quietly cheered
Magic Pie as they entered the stage; Norwegians aren't known for their
emotional explosions when attending concerts.
"Motions of Desire" started the concert, followed by three more tracks
from the album of the same name.
And I was happy to hear that the band aren't of the kind that's only
good in the studio, they played extremely well, adding life and emotion
to their songs to the point of almost total revitalization. For those
who have enjoyed the record, that may be hard to believe; as "Motions of
Desire" was regarded as the best album of the year by heaps of prog fans
all over the world when it was released. But still, the songs are better
when performed live; more emotional, more aggressive - more of every
good quality the tracks contain originally.
At a quarter past eleven the band then introduced the audience to a new
song; and unless I missed a break to another tune somewhere, this song
was of the epic kind, lasting for 20 minutes plus. The song started off
quietly, before transforming into a mostly instrumental rock monster;
with lots of driving guitars being the main focus of the song. After a
quiet piece of the song it was guitar solo time, before ending the track
after 20 minutes or so. The song sounded a bit more modern than the
tunes on their debut; and was the highlight of the concert for me.
Everyone who's looking forward to another piece of Magic Pie are gonna
love this track.
The band then played through the rest of the songs from their debut
album, and was cheered out to an encore as well; and after two hours
Magic Pie was finished for the evening.
All in all this was a most satisfying concert; it's always nice to
attend concerts with bands that actually manage to improve their songs
live; and Magic Pie most certainly belong to that category of bands. The
negative aspects of the evening weren't due to the band - but had more
to do with the venue, and some poor guy having the unfortunate task of
being the sound engineer for the evening.
During the first 30 minutes of the concert, the sound system eminated a
deep growling continously bass sound, which was bothersome almost to the
point of painfully for band and audience alike. It says a lot of the
professionalism Magic Pie has that they actually continued playing
rather than taking a break until the sound engineer had fixed this major
issue. There were also problems with the strength and connections to
both microphones and guitars that had to be solved during the concert.
Kudos for the band for continuing playing, and kudos to the sound
engineer for not totally panicking under the circumstances. I presume he
learnt quite a lot from this concert.
The only other negative aspect had little to do with the concert as
such; but more to do with the possibilites to make a proper concert
review. In short: The available space (as good as non-existing) and the
lights in the venue combined made it extremely difficult to take proper
photographs without having professional equipment. Which is why there
aren't too many shots from the concert from me. The available space was
much sought after; and I chose to let the professionals (one journalist,
one crew member) have that space rather than crowding the area and
ruining the concert experience for the rest of the audience by being a
disturbance in front of the band.
I won't give a rating to this concert, as I personally don't think
rating concerts is a good idea. I'd rather conclude by stating the
following: Magic Pie is a band you really should see live. If you like
their music, you won't regret seeing them in concert. As for the venue
and the prog-concert monthly concept at Maiden: It is interesting, and
I'm looking forward to seeing how this will evolve. Personally; I'll
attend more of these monthly concerts when I am able to, and hope other
prog fans in the area will do likewise.
Concert Review: Olav Björnsen
Links:
Magic Pie:
http://www.magicpie.net/
Grand Fetish (in norwegian):
http://www.grandfetish.com/index.php
Maiden (in norwegian):
http://www.clubmaiden.no/
Subtacto (dual language):
http://www.subtacto.com/news.php
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