News: What is happening in the world of Madrugada and on this page? I try to stay as updated as possible, and I will try to bring you the latest rumours and facts concerning Madrugada. Of course, you will also be able to read all the interesting stuff about what has been updated or changed on this very webpage.

December 28th 2002 - The German radio channel Radio 1 in Berlin will be airing forty minutes from Madrugada's record release party at Silver Wings in Berlin, Germany on October 17th tomorrow night. The full concert will not be aired, but the two unreleased songs "Local Norma Jean" and "I'm Not Afraid This Is What I've Been Trained For" are scheduled to be broadcast.

The broadcast is scheduled to start at 23:10 and should last until 23:50. If you are not in Berlin you can listen to the concert streamed live on the Internet by visiting Radio 1 and clicking the green 'Live Stream' button on the main page at the time when the broadcast is scheduled to start. Read more about the Madrugada broadcast here.

December 24th 2002 - There is a temporary index page up now, if you found this news page then you must surely also have found the two Christmas presents. Merry Christmas, everyone.

December 16th 2002 - I am very proud to present a new section at this page, Neil McNasty Photo Special. The new section features nineteen photographs taken by Madrugada's light engineer Neil McNasty while touring with the band, and most of them are available exclusively on this page and will never be seen anywhere else. If you people like these pictures, chances are that some more will be made available in the future.

December 13th 2002 - Yesterday, this page had been online for exactly three years. I would never have imagined that the band or this page would ever get as popular as they both have when I first started making this page. But it has been a great pleasure to see the band that I care so deeply about become so popular over the years, and for me personally it has been a magnificent experience to have the possibility to follow a band so losely for such a long time, and to have been able to try to take care of a large number of truly devoted fans in the best way possible through maintaining this web resource.

Thanks to everyone who keeps visiting this page, and to everyone to bothers submitting news, pictures and everything else, it is greatly appreciated even though there is not always space for all of it on this little page that I make.

On to the updates: The Concert Chronology has been updated with two setlists from the recent re-scheduled concerts in Germany, thanks to André, Sven-Eric Hornig and Jee-Sun Stephan for the information.

The Norwegian music channel ZTV aired an interview with Frode and Simen on Wednesday night. The interview was done at Rockefeller in Oslo, Norway on November 31st. Thanks to Are Skeie Hermansen for the information. Last Saturday the Norwegian radio channel P4 aired an interview with Sivert done at a bar at the top of Grand Café in Oslo on December 3rd, in additition to acoustic live performances of "Majesty" and "Vocal" done by Robert and Sivert. Thanks to Bård Olsen for the info.

According to Leo Postma in The Netherlands, a colleague of his saw the "Majesty" video on MTV. It has also received airplay on the Norwegian television channels NRK1 and NRK2 recently. On the official Norwegian radio playlist charts, the song has been in the Top Ten for several weeks, including an A-listing and heavy rotation on the radio channel NRK P3. There have been reports that "Majesty" will be the second single from "Grit" for a long time now, but it is still unknown whether the song will actually be released as a single on an EP or whether it is just being used for radio and television promotion.

Are Skeie Hermansen submitted a link to a review of the "Total Lee! The Songs Of Lee Hazlewood" tribute album at the credible American indie music page Pitchfork, which can be found here. The reviewer finds space for some very flattering words about Madrugada, writing "The strongest contribution to Total Lee! comes from a group called Madrugada, whose cover of 'Come on Home to Me' completely alters the song's attributes-- in the hands of these Norwegian rockers, this somber ballad becomes a charging doomsday crooner."

Also worth reading is this Norwegian article from BA last Monday where Sivert is criticizing what he calls 'the ecstacy generation,' saying "Our generation is a waste of people, what the fuck have we accomplished?" Thanks to Tom Erik Oxholf for the link to that article.

December 9th 2002 - I went to see Madrugada at Folken in Stavanger, Norway on Friday, and was very positively surprised by how fabulous they sound and by how much they seem to enjoy being on the road and playing for the fans. After the concert the band stayed at the venue and took their time to talk to anyone from the audience who wanted to congratulate them with the performance or just chat for a minute or two, which was a very nice gesture.

The setlist consisted mostly of songs from "Grit," plus the two new songs "I'm Not Afraid This Is What I've Been Trained For" and "Local Norma Jean," which both sound great. The evening ended with a beautiful rendition of "This Old House," which was also played the night before in Kristiansand, for the first time since May last year. The hightlight of the concert was a truly memorable performance of "Madrugada" with Robert on bass and Frode on guitar, the energy in the song and the fabulous light show to go with it could have lasted for eternity.

I took lots of pictures during the concert, these should be available on this page within a couple of days. I also took some pictures with a digital camera before and after the concert, some of these look good and will be put up here. Lots of them were taken with Robert and friends and family members of his after the concert, if those present when those pictures were taken would like to have a copy then please feel free to send me an e-mail as I did not get the names of everyone and have no idea who some of you people are...

Time for an apology, as in the Grit section I have written this about "Got You": "Only drawback to this song is that those who have heard the cover the band did of the Spacemen 3 song 'Rollercoaster' will notice that the bass line in 'Got You' and the build-up towards the loud part in the end is identical to this cover." Frode pointed out to me that this is incorrect, as the parts in "Got You" that are identical to "Rollercoaster" is actually stuff that the band were working on for a new song, but Sivert started singing the words to "Rollercoaster" to it.

Light engineer Neil Solheim, also known as Neil McNasty, said that "Got You" was written when the band was working on demos for "Grit" in Halden, Norway in February this year. He went down there for a week to work with them, and Robert was very enthusiastic about some of the stuff they came up with, but for some reason "Got You" was forgotten about. When the band was in Berlin for the actual recordings, Neil stumbled upon the tape with the loop for "Got You," which is an upbeat recording slowed down to the inrecognizable on a ten-year old crappy tape. He met up with the band, and they quickly worked out the final version of 'that old song,' as Robert referred to it as, that ended up on the album.

December 2nd 2002 - The Concert Chronology has been updated with information from the concerts in Bodø and in Oslo, thanks to Roger Rønning and Bård Olsen for the information.

The Discussion Forum is up and running again. It is a completely new forum, and unfortunately all the old posts are gone and all old members have to re-register. In two days, sixteen people have signed up at the forum already, so it should be a safe to assume that there will always be someone there to discuss anything related to Madrugada with.

In chart updates, "Grit" fell from a seventh to a fifteenth place on the official Norwegian album chart list, VG Topp 40, in its fifth week on the charts. In VG news, the band was supposed to sit down and answer questions that had been sent in to the newspaper for them before the concert in Oslo on Saturday, but for unknown reasons this net meeting never took place.

Older News: Most of the older news pages are also being stored and are available from this page. These news pages are no longer updated, so some of the links might be outdated.