Last Saturday luck smiled at me and I was very fortunate to get into the completely sold-out concert with Connan Mockasin, at Bremen in Copenhagen. I had only recently heard about him and his spectalcular performances and took instant liking to the music – so it was a show not to be missed. And boy am I glad I didn’t! Their performance was what in Danish is called ‚Total theater‘, where nothing is completely rehearsed, so a lot is improvised as the evening unfolds. For instance at one point a band member of Japanese descent enters the stage in a kimono with a big, white duvet and sits down in it. As if drifting on a cloud, she waves at the audience, while saying ‚Zaaank yyoooou Connan Mockasinnn‘ with a heavy Japanese accent. And him sitting down next to her, their suddenly was a strong reference to the Yoko One and John Lennon ‚Bed Peace‘ performance in Amsterdam, 1969. Several times Connan dissapeared into the audience with his guitar and played from there, looking up at the stage like the rest of us. The blurred lines he works within are very fascninating.
Connan Mockasin, age 30 (born Connan Tant Hosford), is thought of as a psychedelic-pop musician and is originally from Te Awanga, New Zealand. His Europe tour is about to come to an end, with only a few shows left in France and Switzerland. But with 40.000+ likes on Facebook and 670.000 plays on youtube of the song ‚Forever Dolphin Love‘, from his latest record Caramel (released Nov 2013) – I am confident we have not heard the last of him.