Frost - "Love! Revolution!"
We could never have imagined the impact this album would eventually have at the time of writing and producing it.
I had already lost much of my faith in pop music as a "carrier of grand ideas", and even though I admired the more politically charged chart music like Heaven 17's album "Penthouse and pavement" in my younger days, I'd stopped hoping for the perfect mix between Billy Bragg and Madonna to come along.
So, at the turn of the new millennium, I didn't have any expectations left that pop music could function as a vehicle for spreading "The Message" - whatever the message was.
Music was the message, my conclusion read at this point.
Simple as that.
But that was before the Istanbul incident:
I'd been to Istanbul a couple of times before, both DJing and with bands.
This time, I would only play one DJ gig, and then have a few days off in this lovely city with my wife and a couple of friends.
We'd just received the finished promo copies of our new Frost album "Love! Revolution!" before we left, so we brought a few copies with us to give to friends and people we met on the journey.
I've always been carrying both vinyl and CD promos with me in the most ridiculous of situations over the years. It's like giving away music brings me such joy that I always want to be prepared for it at any time.
We'd been hanging out for a couple of days after my gig, eating fantastic food and drinking delicious wine, when we decided to go shopping at the Kapali Carsi AKA The Grand Bazaar.
I love this place. It's all about commerce, but in the "right" way - if there ever was one. The stallkeepers simply want to sell you stuff, and it's not disguised as something else. It's an honest thing that they want to part you of as much of your cash as possible.
I had been looking at some colourful carpets outside one of the stalls after taking some photos of a beautiful display of lamps across the isle, when the carpet-seller approached me to hit me with his pitch.
I calmly declined his special offer, explaining that I didn't need a carpet, and as I was travelling with 20 kilos of vinyl with me on the plane, and so I wouldn't be able to bring a carpet back with me - unless I could fly home on it.
He nearly convinced me that this would be no problem, and I understood that this guy was good.
I decided to try and hit him back with something, and reached for my bag, swiftly picked up a promo CD of "Love! Revolution!" and handed it to him.
He stopped talking, looked at the CD in his hand and then back up at me, visibly surprised.
I said "You're welcome. It's free." and then left him in a genie-like manner.
This is where we leave Istanbul.
We returned to Oslo and back to working on the release of our new album, and a few other projects that needed following up.
A few months later, a message turned up in the inbox of Frost's MySpace page (remember MySpace? "The world's largest backstage area"...)
"Dear Frost. We thank you so much for the support you provide with your music.It makes us strong, and we know we will prevail!"
The message was signed "Cara".
Now, we got quite a few messages on our MySpace page at the time, but somehow I felt that this one was special.
I would eventually be proven right.
Another few weeks passed, and then we got the following email from the promoter who had booked my DJ gig in Istanbul:
"Dear Per. Hope you're well. Just wanted to tell you you seem to be doing really well on the bootleg market here with you and Aggie's new Frost album. I see it everywhere I go. Hope you are making some real sales in addition :-)"
Over the next few weeks we had more messages sent to us - sometimes with short quotes from the lyrics from the songs on the album, like:
"THINGS ARE BOUND TO CHANGE."
"IT'S TIME TO OPEN UP YOUR EYES"
"BLINDFOLDED IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT"
As we didn't really get the time to follow up "Love! Revolution!" with a proper press campaign and tour (the release was digital-only on our own little label with sparse fundings), the album became a very underground release indeed, but well received amongst fans and on various online channels.
Over time, the little messages kept ticking in, and we somehow got used to them and didn't read much more into them than little reminders that someone out there appreciated what we did.
In 2009 we relocated from Oslo to the North, and took a break from working with Frost for a couple of years.
The surprise was therefore breathtaking when in January of 2011 we got the following email:
"Dear Frost. Thank you so much for your music. I am a student in Tunisia and we are now carrying out demonstrations to bring change to our corrupted country. Today we were marching in the streets while singing our Arabic translation of your song "Free your heart". We feel very strong and know in our hearts that we will make change happen, as this is the right time."
The email was signed:
"Love! Revolution! Kareem"
As you might understand, this felt totally unreal to us, sitting far into the Arctic Circle, immersed in projects totally different from our four-year old release of a pop record.
And it went on.
And on.
Since the first message in January, we've had constant reports of the further spreading of our music in the region, and have been told that quotes from the lyrics and even people actually singing translated versions of the songs in the streets of Cairo, Gaza, Tripoli and Damascus.
The most bizarre higlight up until now was when we watched the news the other night, and spotted a guy carrying an old eighties ghetto-blaster on his shoulder on the street behind the reporter.
The guy had a Frost teeshirt on, and barely audible, behind the voice of the news anchor we could hear the muted sound of the chorus of our song "Free your heart".
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