The Los Angeles HHAL shows have now been rescheduled from May 2021 to April 2022. Not a surprise, but a long time to wait.
Still I'm on Your Side Mary Is Coming Rain Hey Luchie Man in the Park Tongue Tied Reasons to Stay Indoors Half of the Time Whalebone Night Watch
Wow! That’s a good list. Not too far from what mine will be. Cool to see Half Of The Time there. Such a nice winter beatle-ish ballad.
You can really see where the inspiration for Is My Confidence Reeling came from when putting together a list like this. Imagine writing a song as good as Half of the Time, only for it to go unnoticed outside of Norway. Even within Norway, it made a limited impact.
Is it worth it getting the original pressings of their albums or the more recent 180g pressings are better?
That crept up on me - wasn't expecting it until next year (although I was probably thinking that last year, so...). Should be an interesting watch. Write your own f*cking chorus!
Always my favourite but I can't stand that click track all the way through. Maybe my ears accentuate that frequency now, I never remember it being that prominent until the last 10 years.
What song is this? Video is unavailable to me. (That's why it's so important to type out the name of the song in your post in case the video is geo-blocked for others - happens all the time on here.)
For their first 3 at least I'd try going for the oldies. I wasn't impressed with the Rhino Scoundrel so I stopped
That line should have been on the movie poster. It is going to be a both exciting and frustrating watch I think.
Hi all. Have recently gone back into a bit of an a-ha phase after picking up a copy of the Record Store Day version of Hunting High and Low and came across this thread while googling some stuff. Haven't managed to even get halfway through it but some great insight and memories so thought I'd chip in! I was a big a-ha fan in my teens growing up in Dublin which was a little out of step with other bands I was into like New Order, Human League, ABC, Depeche Mode etc although my record collecting had started with Adam and the Ants, another band with a lot more depth than the teen idol reputation they ended up getting! When Take on Me hit the charts the video obviously blew me away but the song, not so much. I mean it's a great pop song and all but was just too lightweight for my tastes in 1985 and never gave me any indication of what was to come. I had thought they may prove to be a bit of a one-hit wonder. In terms of music video tv in Ireland, it was limited enough back in those days but there was a weekly two-hour music video show on RTE2, one of the national channels every Sunday called MT USA that used to be repeated on a Friday night. It was a lot of the videos that would have been on rotation on MTV and was presented from New York by an Irish DJ, the late Vincent Hanley or Fab Vinnie as he was known. He sadly passed away from AIDS a few years later but played a huge part in bringing music video to TV over here. Anyway, I'd obviously missed it the previous Sunday and distinctly remember having gone shopping with my Mam one Friday evening a few weeks before Christmas and sitting up late on my own that night, I think everyone had gone to bed and my Da was at his work Christmas party so I had the telly to myself. I stuck on the MY USA repeat and was watching away when suddenly the new single from a-ha came on. "Hang on," I thought, "they're finishing the Take on Me video, this could be interesting.". About five minutes later I was sat with my jaw on the floor having just been exposed to The Sun Always Shines for the first time. I mean properly blown away. The Take on Me video coda was one thing but the song??!! I couldn't believe it was the same band. This was before we had a video recorder or the likes so I then had to wait and try and catch the song on the radio somewhere but I was obsessed with getting it recorded somewhere which I eventually did. Back then, I used to save my pocket money and get an album a month, that was better use of it than buying singles, although I would get 12"s if the extended mix was any good. So as soon as I had the few quid needed, it was straight out to get HHAL and hear what else they had to offer. I think the album I'd got the previous month was The Unforgettable Fire by local heroes U2 which had left me cold to be honest, the title track and Pride were great tracks but I felt the band were getting too pompous (which went off the scale on The Joshua Tree imo) but I was far from disappointed with HHAL. I still love it to this day. While I still find Take on Me a bit twee and generally used to skip it when putting the album on, the rest of side 1 is excellent. Train of Thought seemed an odd choice for a single to me but it's a decent track. The title track is a magnificent ballad although I thought the orchestration on the single release was a touch overblown. That said, I loved the 12” mix despite that. The Blue Sky is a great pop song but it was when I got to Living a Boy’s Adventure Tale that I thought there’s really something to these guys. An ethereal cry to begin and instrumentation that brought to mind the best synth-pop of the early 80s before it disappeared up its own **** a bit with your Kajagoogoo etc. Proper grown up music. And is that an oboe in there? Whatever they are, these guys aren’t teeny-boppers. Turn the album over and there’s the track that brought me to them, still one of the best pop records ever in my view. The wall of sound production sounds epic to this day and it’s such a well crafted song. The finale when the violins come in and build until everything just comes crashing down on the final ‘To meeee’ never fails to raise the hair on the back of my neck. And You Tell Me is a nice little tune that reminded me of some of McCartney’s silly love songs, I was reared in a musical house and The Beatles were a huge band for my Da and his family which was handed down to me. Love is Reason is, like Take on Me, a bit meh but as poppy synth tunes go it’s grand, Dream Myself Alive reminded me a little of Vince Clarke era Depeche Mode which isn’t a bad thing. Then an epic finale and another of the songs on the album that I felt I could point to if anyone tried to dismiss them as a teen act. Georgian chanting? Check. Nice acoustic guitar and early 80s style synth stabs? Check. Big intro and then vocals launch until this forbidding chorus kicks in. Repeat verse and chorus, great but then an outro that goes on for nearly two minutes?? This was proper pop music with depth and meaning. I played that album to death and luckily, didn’t have to wait long for a follow-up but, with apologies for the length of this opening post, more on that later.
Ah, MT USA - I remember it well! I had some similar reactions to you - Take On Me is all well and good but was never really one of my favorite tracks of theirs (and still isn't), but The Sun Always Shines On TV was the one that got me hooked. That's the one I bought on 45 at Golden Discs. Maybe it's an Irish thing - if I recall correctly, TSASOT was the one that got to number one, not Take On Me.
ironic that you mention U2, since A-Ha kind of resembled them on their 90's songs like Dark Is the Night For All. I like the song but seems it was not a big commercial success
Dark Is The Night was a definite US minor hit for a-ha after years in the chart desert here. It was the one song I would hear on the tv or radio and it would always surprise me. The show "Baywatch" actually played songs from "Memorial Beach" which might have helped sales. That album was that close to being a big US comeback if they could have found the right single.
It says on Wikipedia that it was the last A-ha single to be released in the United States! Didn´t know that?
And it did well on the "Adult" chart as well, even making it into England's snooty Q magazine's Best Albums of the Year. Like I said, with better marketing, this could have been a nice US comeback for a-ha.
a-ha: The Movie director Thomas Robsahm interview - Classic Pop Magazine and inside I found this nice album by album article. I agree with a lot of it, except calling «Forest Fire» a tasty mélange Album by Album: A-ha - Classic Pop Magazine
