(That's Robert, on the left. Then Frode, then this other singer Ane Brun, then Sivert.)
I met him in 1997, during one of a handful of amazing summers where I'd go to Norway for a whole month. He and his bandmates had moved from their tiny town way above the Arctic Circle to Oslo, to make it as a band. They were called Abbey's Adoption, one of the worst band names I've ever heard. (Also: imagine it spoken with a Norwegian accent.) Frode explained (sheepishly) that, unable to agree on a name, they had opened up the English dictionary to A and picked out two of the first words they found. Fortunately, they dropped it after like two shows and became Madrugada.
Miraculously, they actually did make it and became one of the biggest bands in Norway.
I originally wrote way more in a huge long post here but it made me feel weird, writing all these things about it. I haven't seen Robert in a few years. But he was a sweet, kind person, and I knew him at a really good time in my life, and his. And I'm terribly, deeply sad that he "left," as they say in Norwegian. His summer was booked with shows and he was in the middle of recording Madrugada's fifth album. He was only 31, two and a half weeks older than me. Isn't in medias res where you're supposed to start, not end?
Hva tenkte du, kjære venn? Du var ikke ferdig her.
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