“Did the Sex Pistols know how to play? You don't need to know how to play. Who are you, Steely Dan?”
- Brendan/Sing Street
Kendra and I don't really fit the profile of people who go on cruises, but we've done a couple. I'm not a bit sorry we did. They both took us places we likely wouldn't see otherwise. Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Turkey. One stop was in Oslo, Norway. There are always excursions offered wherever you dock. Go see this or that thing, learn to cook some local food, take a dog sled ride, visit a concentration camp, all sorts of things.
In Oslo we had no idea what any of the excursions were so we just picked one at random, the Vigland Sculpture Park. I mean, whatever. Our expectations were modest. How great could it be? Pretty great as it turned out. Stunning would be the word. It's the world's largest sculpture park (110 acres) created by a single artist, Gustav Vigland (1869-1943). Over two hundred sculptures ranging from human sized to gigantic, intricate, detailed monuments made of bronze, granite and wrought iron. Who knew? Even if you weren't into it at all, you still had to be blown away by the sheer magnitude of the place. Vigland had some theme in mind, but I wasn't savvy enough to figure out what he was getting at. All I knew was the dude could flat out sculpt.
One of my favorite things from it, though, was something one of the guides told us. Gustav Vigland and Edvard Munch, the artist who did the famous “Scream” painting, were Norwegian contemporaries. They were allmost the same age. It seems there was quite a rivalry between them. In fact, they detested each other. I don't know if it's totally true. I assume it is, and I sure want it to be. It makes it far more interesting, two famous artists with a seething hatred for one another. It's the human intrigue stuff that spices things up.
Why am I talking about Norway? Because on this day in 1985, the band A-Ha became the first band from Norway to score a #1 hit in the U.S. with their song Take On Me. It, along with its groundbreaking video using pencil sketch animation, cleaned up at the 1986 Video music Awards.
Why do I mention this? Because it gives me another opportunity to plug my favorite music movie, Sing Street by Irish director, John Carney. As you see in the scene below, Take on Me shows up early on. I keep harping on this movie, because if you lived through the 80s, and care a thing about the music or culture of that decade, you have to see it. It is charming, funny, gritty and dead-on in its depiction of that period. Give it a go. As Brendan tells his little brother, Connor, in the movie, “Rock and roll is a risk.” So go ahead, risk it.