Firefox Ak and Hello Saferide - Lund March 11

I hand over my ticket and the staff at the entrance puts a paper bracelet around my right wrist. I realise that the concert is open for all ages. It is not ideal, but you can not have everything you want.
Andrea Kellerman looks so cool with her electric guitar when she opens her live set with City to City. Andrea is more known under her artist name Firefox Ak. Andrea has got the charisma, the songs and the voice to make the audience fall for her, but she does not really succeed this time. Tonight the audience is waiting for the next live act.

Introducing... Hello Saferide:

Have you ever had the feeling no one really knows what you're all about
And when you try to show them
They all have things to do tonight
Tonight
(I Thought That You Said Summer Is Going to Take the Pain Away)

Annika Norlin's debut album was the second one on my year list of 2005, but numbers can not desribe what Hello Saferide meant to me last fall. In a period in life when I felt that everything went wrong, Hello Saferide came from nowhere and wrote sad songs that touched my heart. I Thought That You Said Summer Is Going to Take the Pain Away was a comfort when no one else was there. I got a record with painfully honest lyrics in which I actually could believe. Hello Saferide reached me from the first listening.
There were some nervousness and unpredictability when Hello Saferide played on the small stage at Mejeriet last fall. The atmosphere and uncertainty of what to expect made me shudder when I heard the first chords of Long Lost Penpal.

A lot has changed since then. I still play If I Don't Write This Song, Someone I Love Will Die when I want to get happy, but I have left the first stage of love behind me. Annika Norlin has had a real breakthrough with Hello Saferide. Mejeriet is full of people tonight but Annika shows no signs of uncertainty when she enters the stage. In the middle of the show she says that this is a special night since a friend of hers is here. Firefox Ak comes back on stage and it is impossible not to get moved when Annika and Andrea perform Long Lost Penpal together.
If my memory serves me right, there was no encore the last time Hello Saferide played at Mejeriet. Tonight it is a given. When Hello Saferide is clapped back to the stage and closes the evening with I Don't Sleep Well I get so happy that I give her a rose which I take from the boquet of flowers at the edge of the stage. She accepts it and I walk home with a smile on my face.

(Originally posted on my lastfm on March 12, 2006)