February 3 - Seven Seas

I don't trust my memory. I don't trust everything I think I remember about this night, but I do know one thing: the very first rock concert I ever went to, I went with my friend Geir, and it was TNT playing at Skansen, a venerable venue in Trondheim that is no more. I am fairly certain the concert was on a Sunday, because I seem to remember that I still was ecstatic telling my 7th grade teacher all about it the very next day. I also believe that Geir and I ended up walking home from the concert - but that is a little less certain. It would have been quite a long walk, and it would have been late at night. However, Trondheim was pretty safe, and the evenings were pretty light as it was towards the end of the summer, so I am not ruling it out. But regardless of how we made it home, I was very happy to have encountered a real metal band in concert.

TNT started as a metal band singing in Norwegian in 1983, but they really didn't take off until they dropped Dag Ingebrigtsen as a singer - he had all the passion of a great singer, but metal singers in the 80s needed to sound as if castrated, and Dag had more of a manly growl than the high pitched squeals needed - and found American Tony Harnell. It didn't hurt that they got Morten Skaget - or Morty Black on bass as well, but the core of TNT has always been guitar player extraordinaire Ronni Le (or Rolf, as his birth certificate says) Tekrø and Hells Angel Diesel (really Morten) Dahl on drums. While these two are still keeping the band goin, I have to confess to having lost some interest in them as they started changing their sound in the mid 80s to really sound more and more like a run-of-the-mill 80s hair metal band.

So I saw them back in 1985. Two years later, my sister got me a ticket to another TNT concert as a confirmation present (I should note that this was not the traditional Christian confirmation - I did an alternative secular "confirmation"). That concert was supposed to be in Studentersamfundet, I believe - but as the day approached, I got in, ticket in hand, only to find that the concert had to be cancelled as Tony Harnell had an upper respiratory infection. I could get a replacement ticket, I think, but my interest was in decline after that disappointment (I am still thinking there is something fishy about that cancellation, as last minute as it was), so I cashed it in instead.

However, in 1985, when I saw them, their album Knights of the New Thunder had received a new cover, free from bare chested cartoon women, but including a battle axe and a viking helmet, clearly in keeping with the viking themed lyrics of the album. It is short, but it is still a solid album. Le Tekrø should really be up there with Malmsteen and Van Halen - that's how good he is in his genre - but I will leave that to you to decide. My favorite track from Knights of the New Thunder is a true little viking gem: Seven Seas