Description
KNUT NÆRUM // FRONT PAGE - QUALIFIED
Front Page debuted on disc with one of Norway's first punk singles, came out with their first album - Qualified - in 1981 and his last in 1982. It was a short and brilliant career for the band which, together with Saturday Cowboys, made Haldenrock actually a wave. Front Page doesn't smile in the pictures, but the music expresses their inner jubilation: the joy of being five guys in leather jackets and making music that's faster and rawer than anything their older brothers listened to. On the other hand, they did not rise above pop melodic flair or to cover Paul Anka and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The band even flirted with reggae and had a veritable radio hit. Front Page was big, but they should have been bigger. Few Norwegian bands have, like them, put words and especially tones on what it means to be pissed off, happy and to wish far away the devilish violence, in short: to be young.
Knut Nærum - writer, cartoonist and former TV celebrity - lived in Halden until 1976, when he was 14 and the Halden rock started to stir. He then watched with interest, from a distance, wondering what might have happened if he had stayed. Forty years later, he instead writes a book about Qualified , about what actually happened and what it possibly meant, all of it.