Denmark Final Day

Began the day early at DOKK1 , the gigantic fantastic library in Aarhus, above. Hey, they even have whitelined parking slots for baby carriages and strollers, inside, like at a supermarket lot! The library itself was packed, as much a social center as a reading room. Easy, as a trolley comes right to the front door. Our symposium was to address the future of libraries, to let the Danes know what we’re up to and learn more about their work addressing audio.

A good beginning as we arrived early to test the AV setup, 10am, all working, and well, we’re in Denmark, Lars is playing really loud music by the Fall — time for a beer. We were honored to be joined by Tonny Skovgård Jensen, the Deputy Director of the Det Kongelige Bibliotek, the Royal Library of Denmark, the library that houses all of the country’s music. We came up with a lots of good ideas of how we might work together, plus an offer of their metadata on Danish releases for our Scandinavian Music Week in 2019.

Then lunch, a beer and a quick trip to visit an excellent, orderly, chock-full record store, Route 66. The store offers a fantastic selection of rock LPs and punk 45s at great (meaning expensive, but fair, and cheaper than NYC) prices. Thanks to owners Mette and Martin.

Next were Jutland bound, and the crew packs sandwiches and, uh, beer. Our last visit is to the Center for Dansk Jazzhistorie in Aalborg and a late-night tour by Tore Mortensen. To my surprise it is a large serious collection, hard to believe such an important group of American jazz in so distant a location. The Center played Coltrane, offered beer and donated some books to ARC.

We ended the night in a bar. Now we’re in Aalborg, famous for Aquavit. But could we find any? Three bars later. No. So guess what we drank?

Needed it — 11–1/2 hr. plane trip home!

Originally published at The ARChive of Contemporary Music.