Tivoli, Copenhagen, 9th of May 2014
"There will be NO bass arm!"

 Well, whatta ya know,the cutest DJ in Denmark suddenly decided to team up with our absolute favourite percussion duo and go on tour! "Kato vs. Safri Duo" or as we like to call it: "Safri Duo and friends" 😀.

First up on The Summer Tour: Tivoli in the heart of Copenhagen, and off we went! It was raining heavely when we arrived in the capitol, but when we entered Tivoli, of course it cleared right up!
Winnie and Sonja was already present at the front row and we found a spot right next to them.
The concert being about three hours away, we had some rounds of "Guess the celebrity", while passing the time.
The four of us had bought Uffe a late birthday present, which Winnie had some difficulties getting into the park, since you can´t bring alcohol, and the present consisting of all the ingredients to make a Mohito!! But winnie used her cunning female charm to win over a security guard 😙.

Finally the stage lights came on and Kato appeared. He is a VERY popular guy, also with the ladies, so Tivoli was packed, but there wasn´t a lot of pushing around. 

Uffe was wearing black t-shirt and black jeans and Morten had on dark jeans and a black t-shirt.
Safri played a lot of their own songs, with Kato doing some.....ehm, doing what he does, and in the middle section there were guest appearences, like Top Gunn and Djâmes Braun, making us old Safri fans feel even more old, because we had NO freaking idea, who any of them were 😀, but we had one hell of a good time in the front row seeing them perform!
Uffe and Morten also played along to some of the songs from the guest performers, making them sound even better.
Andy is not along on this tour - he is very busy doing his own stuff so the Safri songs are being sung by a very happy young man, whose name is yet to be confirmed.

The absolute COOLEST detail of the show was when Kato, Uffe and Morten came down to the front row and places 3 large drums on top of the hands of the audience, and doing a fantastic solo, the three of them. That´s just BRILLIANT!

At the end of the show it was time to play "Let Go", and luckily they had Peter Bjørnskov with them on tour, because he has an AMAZING voice! We hoped that perhaps he would also play some of his own songs accompanied by Safris drums, but he just performed "Let Go". Maybe next time?? 👍

After the party we went around to the backstage area, where Uffe and Morten came out to greet the fans. We had a small chat and said congratz with the tour premiere.
We said "see ya soon" and left the park to drive home. Or so we thought. because the car did not agree with that plan. When we started the car one of the alarmbuttons flashed and when Bente went for a peak under the hood, it was unable to close back down! Sigh. that´s just great at 1 am...
So we called for roadside assistance and THEN had to wait two hours! We decided to cancel the assitance and try to sneak home, but the telephone service-dude recommended that we waited. So we did. But only after the service-guy had ensured us that we would meet and effective and good-looking road-assistant.
And we weren´t disappointed - HOT-DIGGI-DY-DAMN!🤪.......a little young though... Oh the perks of being on the road💋.

FABL.

Tivoli Friheden, Aarhus, 30th of May, 2014
"........and speaking of freedom...!!"

And we are back in Tivoli Friheden in Aarhus, a lovely amusemant park in the town which always gives us a hard time. But not this day. Not this day.
We had a lovely, warm trip to Jutland, and enjoyed the slow queue in front of the park. We wanted to head straight to the stage, but got held up by a very insisting poking guy, who wanted to chat! Lucky for him, his name was Uffe Savery, and he is one of two guys, who are allowed to prevent us from heading to the front row. After a short chat about some autograph signing, we met up with Winnie, who was alone, sadly because Sonja had injured her back 😥.

Camino Grande was the warm-up act last year, which was....fun...and called for the first beer ever on tour, and we were sure no-one could top that performance. Yee of little faith, because enter: FABL.
Say freaking wut??? Granted they were very passionate about their music.

The show was kicked off and Kato was hip and happening being in his hometown. The crowd was very pleased with having him home, and we had a devoted fan very close screaming very, very loud almost during the entire show.
The line-up hadn´t changed, but some of the artists from Copenhagen weren´t present since they had shows of their own to attend, so Kato did some singing himself, which his fans seemed to enjoy.
When it was time for the trio to do the solo, Nickie had the honour of being one of the fans holding Uffe´s drum for him to play on. And we have it from a reliable source, that he is p-a-s-s-i-o-n-a-t-e about his drumming. Not that we doubtet that for a second.

After the solo we cashed in a high-five and the trio returned to the stage.

Kato feeling the love from his hometown, wanted to score some cheap extra points and told the audience, that is was clear, that the best musicians are from Aarhus. 3 fans in the front row totally disagreed alongside Uffe, who shook his head and looked at us in agreement. Pfft!
Kato is cute, but what is he on about? 😉

To our luck Bjørnskov had also arrived in Aaarhus, and came on stage for "Let Go"

He simply has an amazing voice, and we would looooove to hear him give "Sweet Freedom" a try, because, let´s be honest, it´s a difficult song and so far only one Safri vocalist has mastered it to perfection. And we have an inkling that Peter Bjørnskov possibly could nail it...and we do miss those "Freedoms......"

After the concert we went to the stage-entrance, for the guys to sign a greeting for at German Silver wedding couple, who are huge Safri fans. And we realized that Uffe also celebrates HIS Silver wedding with his lovely wife Tanja this June ❤.
We talked a bit and then it was time to return to our side of the country. -Where you can find the best musicians 🙃.

Vi Rocker, Odense, Denmark, Sunday June 8, 2014
“Family re-union. -Gone wrong”

If we had ever needed some good trekking shoes it was in Odense, because after parking our car we realized, that we then had to walk for ages, to get to the arena, and it was humid like He..! Also all of Funen seemed to be present and they all seemed to walk in the opposite direction as us, so we quickly reached a state of “hysterical teenager”.
We decided to hurry to the stage to avoid going “dingo ate my baby”-crazy. The front row had already been invaded by Rasmus Seebach fans waiting for hours for their idol, but luckily most of them are only the height of two apples (even in Bente-standards) so we had no problems settling with the second row.

Before Kato and Safri we had the pleasure of seeing Duné perform, which was great!
Winnie and Sonja were also in the second row (the Seebach fans had arrived very early to beat those two to the front row), but on the left of the stage; us being to the right. So we texted back and forth until Winnie told us, that poor Sonja had fainted due to the heat and a reaction to medicine due to an earlier back-injury!! But still she was present! Now that´s the right Safri spirit. The paramedics did not allow her to stay and brought her to the hospital. Clearly not Safri Duo fans.
To our huge luck, we had placed us right in front of an annoying, drunk, young Kato fan, who claimed to be Kato´s long lost brother, and he wanted to go on stage, so he started pushing and shoving. Clearly he did not know that NO-ONE moves a Safri fan, not even if you are big, strong and intimidating. He gave it a few tries but had to take his business elsewhere. So he tried his luck with some small children, which resulted in the security guards stepping in and removing him.
Besides getting credit for removing Mr. “Fun-to-be-around” the security guards get an extra shout-out for supplying the audience with water, which was sorely needed on this very hot day.
Safri had on the usual black clothes, and delivered an amazing show. We have to mention Ilang Lumholdt (now we have his name!), one of the singers in the Safri show. He sings most of the Safri tracks and he is a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!! He just keeps getting more and more intense with every show and he gives it one Hell of a power boost. He is also the king of stage jumping; not that he jumps off stage at any time, but it is very difficult to get a picture of him, because he seldom walks on stage….nay…he JUMPS around on stage.

After the show, we took on the long passage to the car, and had a fit of laughter, which almost lasted the entire way home. We blame it all on the extreme heat.

Slagelse Festuge, Denmark, Saturday the 28th of June, 2014
“Op een zonnige dag in juli maakten twee lieveheersbeestjes een wandelingetje op de dike buik van de koning”

The Safri Zone arrived early in Slagelse due to the fact that we had to collect our tickets at the tourist agency which closed at 3 pm. The tickets were reserved for us because we live far away and did not feel the urge to drive for 3 hours to buy the tickets, which the locals had done. And we call ourselves fans??
We arrived seven hours early only to be told that the tickets had been delivered to the stage-employees, so we could simply collect the tickets whenever we wanted! Why I oughtta…..

Then we started our “find the person who has our tickets” endeavor, and in comparison to other adventures like this one, it turned out to be quite simple.
Being in Slagelse seven hours early we decided to do some shopping to pass the time….
Then all the shops closed. Why I oughtta……

What to do in this ghost town? Eat. So we did, and we lunched in a nice café located in the town square, and after that: Time for drinks! Or at least a Mango Chai and a Cuba Caramel Coffee. We also had some fun calling up Winnie and Sonja and making them believe that the Safri show had been pushed forward to 6 pm instead of 10 pm, and they almost fell for it!!

At 6 pm the arena opened and we took up the front row. We were to be accompanied by a Dutch Safri fan flying all the way from Holland just to see Safri Duo, and we had bought a ticket for him, so we had to run out and greet him outside the arena. He called us up and got the wrist band, so he could join us, Winnie and Sonja at the front row. Fair to say our new friend Randy was excited to see the show and also meet up with Uffe and Morten after the concert. Because sweet as Safri Duo are they had of course agreed on saying hallo to their huge fan travelling all the way from Holland.

Before the Safri show, we saw L.I.G.A and Toesedrengene. We also took part in an amazing watershow…also known as: RAIN! Being completely prepared we, of course, had not checked the weather forecast and had not brought raincoats. Luckily, Sonja came prepared, with raincoats for all of us. Even Randy! Uffe also came to the rescue and threw imaginary lifebelts from the stage. He is totally our knight in shining armor. As always, the rain stopped before Safri came on stage, and we could climb out of the raincoats and party!

The men in black gave an amazing show, and Bente had the pleasure of being one of Uffe´s little drummer girls, having to hold his drum during the Safri/Kato drum solo. Poor Uffe, he had to bend over to reach….
Again Ilang was on fire, jumping around on stage, singing his heart out. We like. A lot. We hereby give him permission to give “Sweet Freedom” all he´s got. We just have to disconnect some of Kato´s electricity so he can´t interrupt with one of his remixes.
During “Let Go” all the artist comes on stage to jump around and have some fun and, again, singer Sylvester takes the opportunity to flash his naked chest. Uffe being in the near vicinity, pointed to his chest and made a thumbs up to us. Uffe….Uffe you should know us by now. That´s not the skin we tour to see……

After the show, we headed backstage for the Meet and Greet and also to hand Uffe flowers and chocolates for his 25th wedding anniversary. Congratulations, Tanja, for putting up a good fight ;-).
We wonder if the chocolates ever made it home, since Morten claimed they should be split with him.
After a short wrestle with the cleaning crew in the lavatories, who wanted to go home, and therefore wouldn´t let anyone use them, we walked towards the car accompanied by Randy who had a train to catch back to Copenhagen where he was staying. He was a very happy Safri Duo fan.

Vordingborg Festuge, Monday the 7th of July 2014

“Grande Finalos”

Safri Duo back in our back yard. We like.
Still we drove quite early, and brought Nickie´s colleague and friend Linda. After some shopping we had a bite to eat before taking up positions in the front row.
Once again we had the pleasure of watching Kato´s stage technician (we think it´s called) jumping around all over getting things ready for the show. We are pretty sure he does some parkour in his spare time, because he came flying off the stage without even thinking about slowing down, and jumping unto high boxes without breaking a sweat. Impressive!
We had a good spot right beside the box where Uffe jumps to play his solo on the hands of the crowd, which meant that we also got extremely close to Kato and Pilfinger from Djames Braun, who both jumped unto the box during the show. We admit to, perhaps, putting a wee hand on Kato´s leg, but keeping our distance to Pilfinger. You simply can´t be too careful with a man whose artist name means “busy or nosy finger”.
The Vordingborg crowd was really in a good mood and responded very well to Kato and Safri Duo, which, to our experience can be quite a challenge for the artists playing in Vordingborg Festuge unless your name is Lars Lilholt. (No offence).
To our extreme pleasure the Party Bazookas have had an upgrade and are back in the show blasting off huge amounts of confetti. When you are still able to find confetti in your house after 3 days…you know it´s been a great Safri/Kato show. It´s also nostalgic, and brings sweet memories back from earlier concerts years ago.
It was a really great show and people were partying and having a blast. On stage everything was cooking, so the energy was amazing.
It´s great hearing “Let Go” because that brings Bjørnskov on stage and also all the other performers. Again it was a hot day and Sylvester, having worked very hard on stage during the show, simply HAD to show off his sixpack once more. Morten took the opportunity to pound on it a few times…once a percussionist, always a percussionist. We are a bit concerned that the cold evening wind will have a negative impact on Sylvester´s health and singing voice though…..one can never be too careful, so keep your shirt on, pal.

We said goodbye to Linda and headed home, which only took us 25 minutes!!

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