Anti-pedagogics

Tomorrow (thursday), HGH & Kaizers Orchestra will play the first show of an almost sold out three-night stand (Dec. 07-09) at Copenhagen's Vega that will wrap up Kaizers Orchestra's "Grand finale"-tour. As previously reported by MotorpsychoNews the two bands have toured continental Europe together during the past three weeks, a highly prestigious support slot for HGH who were introduced to large audiences during the 16 shows.

"Me & my buddy" on a mission: HGH -- Håkon Gebhardt & Martin Hagfors.

However, the brief foray to large concert stages with Kaizers Orchestra is just one facet of the two Trash Grass musicians' mission to spread their message of "love, tolerance & movement" to the world. In addition to relentless touring in support of their four long play albums on Stickman Records between 2000 & 2004 the duo has undertaken an interesting experiment prior to the tour with Kaizers Orchestra: they played to young children in elementary schools in the Trøndelag area (around Trondheim) of Norway. An article in this magazine has more information:

-HGH is doing a tour on elementary schools, performing a show called "Me & my buddy". Very playful and funny. Even 12 year old boys with "stone face" and girls who roll their eyes eventually start smiling, Martin Hagfors says. He adds: "After one show, a father told me that his son had gone straight home and made himself a guitar out of one plank and a string".

-Some of HGH's philosophy when performing for kids is that you don't have to be "good" to succeed. They call it anti-pedagogics. Both Martin Hagfors & Håkon Gebhardt got thrown out of a choir when they were kids because they sang too loud.

"We call it trash music, because it's not good unless it's bad. Having a hard time can make you strong, and dissonance can be beautiful. That's why we also play on instruments we don't really know how to play, to show that it's possible anyway. For example, I can't play the bass or piano, but i do it anyway," says Martin.

-In the show Martin & Geb are two buddies who live on a small farm in the mountains. Here they experience among other things that their cat is abducted by a UFO. This creates lots of noise and loud sorrow. Children can relate to that sorrow, many have experienced losing a pet.

"To us, the important thing was to create a show where we touch upon subjects like 'right', 'wrong', 'fair', 'unfair', etc. And also, in the show there is some jealousy kids can relate to. My character has a girlfriend on the moon, but my buddy never sees her and doesn't believe me. But he has a real girlfriend and that makes for jealousy", says Martin. They also talk about kissing, in the song "Wet your lips".

-They've used their normal songs, but created stories to wrap around them and make them fit in a show for children.

-The response has been very good, yes, and they now started using many of the stories in their regular shows.

HGH will return to Norwegian school stages after the completion of the Kaizers Orchestra tour the arcticle states. If you want to expose yourself to some anti-pedagogics you should not miss the afternoon HGH show on Friday, December 8th (3:30 pm), at Copenhagen's Studenterhuset where the band will play a special headlining free-entry promotion show in addition to the their three performances with Kaizers Orchestra at Vega. The afternoon concert -- check out the flyer next to this paragraph -- has been arranged by Adandenco, better known to the Motorpsycho community as The Other Anders. MotorpsychoNews will travel to Copenhagen tomorrow -- we are looking forward to many smile-provoking moments with the soulful music & witty humour of Martin & Geb in Copenhagen!

Thousand thanks to Holger Mannes for his engagment for HGH! Holger provided the article. Also thanks to Trondheim's Rolf Klausen for the translation!

Sideproject activities assembled in the In the family section!