Year: 2025

Gigs from Abroad Part 24 Copenhagen – Part 2

This week I am detailing the second part of my visit to the fine city of Copenhagen in June 2023 for which we were treated to ‘cracking the flags’ sunshine throughout. On the Friday night we made a visit to the remarkable Copenhagen Tivoli Gardens which is situated directly opposite the central train station.

Tivoli dates back to 1843 when the founder Georg Cartensen received royal permission to open the gardens. One of the earliest visitors was Copenhagen resident Hans Christian Andersen, who garnered inspiration afterwards for his fairytale ‘The Nightingale’.

Tivoli Gardens. Image Credit copenhagentickets.com

The current pantomime theatre which was constructed in 1874 is Tivoli’s oldest building and there were musical performances that took place driven by local composer H.C. Lumbye which including 800 polkas, waltzes and gallops! The overall site is also the second oldest operating amusement park in the world behind Dyrehavsbakken, which is also situated in Denmark.

It has over 4 million visitors per year and is a huge area spaced over fifteen acres and contains four individual roller coasters. When I was younger, I was fascinated by the bright lights, noise and abundance of different rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and I had many trips there, once seeing the comedian Les Dawson and his daughter on the Corkscrew.

That allure has faded a little as I have got older, but I am still a bit of a sucker for funfairs, and Tivola has that in spades. There is respite from the rides with many green spaces and pathways that you can meander your way down.

On the musical front there is the Tivoli Concert Hall which has performances from some of the prime performers in classical music and the Tivoli youth guard also play there. During the summertime they have a live music programme named Fredagsrock (Friday Rock) so naturally we had to attend on that day! Previous acts to play include the Smashing Pumpkins, the Beach Boys, Pets Shop Boys, Kanye West and Raveonettes.

After we grabbed a cold beverage at one of the many kiosks, we settled down on the grass to watch an artist called Emma Sehested Hoeg, who is an actress and writer. She has more recently become a singer and provided some dream pop in the mould of fellow actress Scarlett Johansson. After the gig we pottered into the adjoining large food hall to grab some tea.

Mojo Blues Bar. Image Credit youtube.com

I had already undertaken some prior research and sourced another interesting venue, so we exited from the back of the park and weaved down some back streets to reach Copenhagen Mojo Blues Bar. The venue was created in its current name in 1993 and has a very busy schedule with music taking place seven nights a week.  It is primarily a late night blues site but does encroach into other genres as it stages soul, zydeco and bluegrass evenings and also has Thursday night jam sessions.

We arrived about 10pm but the place was only just booting up, so we had a choice of seats and then the 130-capacity room got busier as the night progressed. It was a fantastic old fashioned place and had the traditional grizzled but highly proficient artists playing. The band we saw was Copenhagen Slim and the EK Pones.

Slim has been playing on the circuit for a couple of decades and has surrounded himself with a fine band and they were on to their second set of blues rock tracks around midnight when we decided to call it a day and shuffled back out into the warm night.  

Our final port of call on Day 3 was a sojourn to the remarkable Freetown Christiania which was formed in 1971 when a posse of young squatters and artists took over an 84 acre old military base. They created what has been described as an ‘anarchic enclave’ or as I viewed it a ‘permanent Glastonbury’. As you enter you pass under a sign saying, ‘You Are Now Leaving the European Union’ and they have their own flag and individual currency.  They have around 900 permanent residents, some of them now third generation.

Christiania. Image Credit WorldAtlas

There was a 1976 protest track penned by Tom Lunden of flower power combo Bifrost which translates in English as ‘You cannot kill us’ which became the site’s unofficial anthem. In 1989 the Danish parliament legalised Christiania, however It has not been plain sailing with several drug and gang deaths over the years. Its main thoroughfare Pusher Street had an open illegal trade of cannabis until it was closed down in 2024.

Within the complex are three music venues, Den Gra Hal (Grey Hall), Christiania Jazz Club and Loppen which are all located near to the city entrance to the site.  It is a humongous area, and we walked the majority of the ‘streets’, before gravitating back to the main areas where there are bars and food vendors.

On the day of our visit the Copenhagen Christiania Jazz Festival was in full flow, and we witnessed a band called Good for Nothing playing on a suitably makeshift stage. That evening we had some drinks and grabbed some tea at a floating boat restaurant in the nearby Nyhavn area of town.

Gigs from Abroad Part 24 Copenhagen – Part 1

The history of Copenhagen in Denmark rolls back all the way to the 11th century with its initial wealth and expansion being built around the harbour and the herring fishing trade. In 1801, the forever pesky British fleet fought a major battle there, the Battle of Copenhagen, against the Danish navy. It was at this particular skirmish that Lord Nelson famously ‘put the telescope to the blind eye’ to ‘definitely maybe’ miss Admiral Parker’s signal to cease fire!

In the summer of 2000, the cities of Copenhagen and Malmo in Sweden were connected up via a toll bridge/tunnel suitable for road and rail traffic. It is named Oresund Bridge and was famously used for the backdrop for ‘The Bridge’ Television series. The opening scene set its stall out in style by having a mysterious body positioned at the exact midpoint of the structure, thereby falling under the joint jurisdiction of both countries police forces.

Oresund Bridge. Image Credit livingnomads.com

I watch a lot of foreign dramas, always with subtitles as I personally believe they need to be viewed in their original format, and this remains my favourite. For the record the remainder of my Top 5 would be Gomorrah, Dark, The Killing and The Bureau.

In 2002 the city’s metro system opened for business and in 2015 they staged the worldwide COP15 climate convention with Barack Obama in attendance. Famous city residents include the actor Mads Mikkelsen, comedienne Sandi Toksvig, fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen, model Helena Christiansen, footballer Kasper Schmeichel and film director Lars Von Trier. On the musical front there is Aqua of ‘Barbie Girl’ fame, Iceage and the fabulous Raveonettes.

Copenhagen was named in 2025 as the happiest city in the world with the criteria based on elements such as economy, environment, education, healthcare and work-life balance, or alternatively as I personally rebadge the slogan for myself under the banner ‘gig-life-work balance’! The highest British entry in that list was London languishing down in 31st place. 

Aqua. Image Credit storage.googleapis.com

We made our debut visit to the city and in fact to Scandinavia as a whole in June 2023 and we were blessed with three days of wall-to-wall sunshine. It has got to be noted it is staggeringly expensive, and we literally could not swing a cat in our ‘compact’ hotel room! Aside from those grouses I found it to be a bonny and intriguing city with an abundance of rivers and waterways. Whilst we were there the locals were hunting any suitable spare spot by the water’s edge to bask in the sun.

On our first night we headed over to Vesterbro’s Kodbyen (known locally as the Meatpacking district). It is still a partially functioning meat packing area, but it has graduated away from its past life of butchers and porn shops into a now fashionable cornucopia of outdoor bars and restaurants.  

On day 2 we grabbed some breakfast at one of the local coffee shops before having a culture hit to follow the caffeine hit. Slotsholmen is a compact island in the city centre, but it is the seat of political power as it is houses the home of the prime minister, supreme court and the monarchy. The Royal Stables were particularly impressive and the Christianborg Palace (known as the ‘Castle’) was the location that was utilised for the excellent political drama Borgen.

To achieve a graduation in Denmark is a huge life event and one of the key traditional ways to celebrate is for the students to hire and then travel round in a decorated truck dressed in white sailor hats, and on the way visit all their parents and take a dip in Storkespringvandet.

As you navigate the city streets, they are a noisy presence with their honking and hollering and the first time Gill and I encountered them we exchanged a ‘WTF’ look. The first two or three sightings had a cultural novelty attached but as the number of occurrences was then ever increasing the viewings soon lost its lustre!

Borgen cast. Image Credit digital.tv

To take full advantage of the balmy weather we headed over the three adjacent green spaces in the Parkmuseerne district which was initially built in 1874. Contained there is the Ostre Anlaeg Park, The Kings Garden and the Botanical Gardens.

The latter contains the largest collection of living plants in the city totalling around 1300 and around 27 glass houses. There are also various museums dotted around the park. Whilst we were lounging there, we watched a local drama group setting up a temporary outdoor stage for a Shakespeare performance taking place the next day.