Tina, Helgi and Alice

The first Christmas that I moved to Brighton I treated my mum and sister to tickets to see the 80's legends A-ha in concert at the Brighton Center. We'd all been fans of theirs for a long time and never been fortunate or flushed enough to see them live before. I remember being close to bankruptcy that year due to the expense of the move and spending the first month in Brighton without a job, essentially meaning it was 2 months before I actually earned anything. I honestly don't know what I'd have done without my then housemate and still best friend to help me through that time. When I say 'help me through' I mean financially and emotionally. 

I'd been dumped by my boyfriend the year before (in fact he was instrumental in my decision to move to Brighton), and continued to work at the same place as him for the year that followed. I was being tortured every minute of the day that I spent there. I maintain even now that I loved him, although he didn't believe this. He went on a boys holiday a few months into our relationship and cheated on me while he was away. I knew this from the way he acted around me from the moment he got back. Any guys reading this might think that's dumb, "how can you know he'd cheated on you?" etc, I can't really explain it. I just knew. To add to my crazy thoughts of infidelity I should point out that he never confirmed this to me. Instead of telling me why he'd suddenly gone weird and working through this, he dumped me, by work email. Citing many other reasons for his lack of wanting a relationship with me. He eventually confessed all to my aforementioned best friend by email to clear his guilty conscience.  

I won't dwell on the loser who didn't have the decency to end our relationship face to face (or even in private which would have been nice). For anyone who hasn't been dumped over work email I'll just say that it's degrading and humiliating and not something you ever forget. So even if I could forgive the infidelity, I would never forgive him for being a complete coward that day.

But as I said, I won't dwell, this is not a story about him. It's just a story that's veered off the path somewhat. Not unlike my other stories. My mind wanders you see, it's an admitted flaw of mine. 

Back to A-ha at the Brighton Center, Christmas 2005. 

We took our seats and awaited the dreadful support. I didn't know who it was. It's not that I'd not heard of them, I literally didn't know because I hadn't checked who the support was. I wasn't a very frequent concert goer at this point in my life, but I'd been to enough concerts to know that the support acts were usually awful. 

Then out of nowhere this tiny blonde girl appeared on stage and started singing. And I found myself listening. And liking what I was hearing. She said her name but I was so far away I couldn't really hear it, Tina something, Deekow? Dikou? Then she told the most charming story about how she wrote her next song in the back of Willy Nelson's tour bus. Right, I thought, my best friend will LOVE her. So I started frantically typing the words I could make out from the song into my phone. "Take what you want from me, take what you can. And then hide it somewhere I can't see, out of my hands. Do what it takes to make you feel better, yeah, never forget that you are nobody's man." I loved that song. Still do. It's only now I see how well those words matched my break up. By the end of her set I was screaming and clapping as loudly for her as I did for Morten and co. 

I looked up the lyrics when I got home and found out the tiny blonde girl was a Danish singer/songwriter called Tina Dico (Dickow in her native land). The album featuring most of the songs she'd performed wasn't out yet but I pre-ordered it for BF knowing she'd love it. And if she didn't I'd just suggest that she let me keep the album for myself. I set about ordering everything Tina had released so far and by the time In The Red came out I owned every album and EP released. As it turned out my BF wasn't all that keen, but by the time Tina toured Brighton again for her In The Red tour I'd gotten a whole bunch of my friends to come and see her. 

Although I've now heard almost every song in her repertoires, she always finds new ways to impress me or make me feel something I've never felt for a particular song before. For example, I was never that keen on the title track from In The Red, but there's something about the way she plays it live that I just adore. I was never that keen on One (from the same album) but then it gets played on my favourite TV show Grey's Anatomy, during one of the saddest episode's in the show's history and all of a sudden it's beautiful and emotional and I love that one too. 

I recently moved house again and again it's pretty much left me bankrupt. Luckily for me, one of the friends I introduced to Tina during the aforementioned In The Red tour, was good enough to get me tickets to Tina's most recent Brighton based gig on Saturday night. And boy was she on form. But this time it was Tina's turn to introduce the new kids on the block (no, not the 90's boy band!) in the form of her backing singer/keyboard and trombone player Helgi Jonsson and support act Alice Shaw. 

Even with my previous misgivings about support acts being blown out of the water by Tina I tend to be skeptical at best when it comes to anticipating support acts. Happily Alice (and her backing vocalist Amy Tinsley) again made me re-think my prejudices. Another singer/songwriter but a keyboard is her instrument of choice (Tina favours a guitar) and this time hailing from Bristol. She was the perfect prelude to Tina's main show, not even letting a dodgy microphone get her down. My friends and I were already following her on Twitter and Facebook before the evening was over and we'd purchased her album before the second support act had even arrived on stage. 

The second support act was Helgi, who as I mentioned is also a member of Tina's band. I loved his sense of humour and the way he played with the audiences perception of him. His singing wasn't bad either and his CD was "only £5" as the salesman in him pointed out.

This brings me neatly to the end of the evening. I've already mentioned that Tina was on form and I'm afraid this is all you're getting out of me on the subject of Tina as this was more a post about support acts (in case you didn't get that?). And the moral of this story? If there has to be one, I suppose it would be to not let past experiences cloud your judgement. Or some shit like that.

Tina's Blog can be found here and is an excellent read: http://tinadico.tumblr.com/

Tina's Website: http://tinadico.com/

Tina's Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/tinadico

Tina's Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/tinadico

Tina's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tinadico?sk=wall&filter=2

Alice's Website: http://aliceshaw.co.uk/

Alice's Myspace: http://tinyurl.com/6chmqna

Alice's Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/aliceshaw

Alice's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aliceshawmusic

Helgi's Website: http://www.helgijonsson.com/

Helgi's Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/helgijonsson