You want to try something new, but never really get around to it? You just got home and the concert you’re considering just might end up being interminable?

Then the after-work concerts with musicians from the Conservatory at Musikbiblioteket are going to be just your thing. 43 minutes of intense musical hors d'oeuvres, right after quitting time at 17:17.

This week, a Czech three man band – accordion in tote, and all – will play everything from minimalistic techno, to Balkan, to Argentine tango. The three met one another at the Conservatory, but have played at competitions in USA, Russia, and all over Europe.

Here you can see them with children, seniors, a Mondrian wall, and balloons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZulfPib7adY&feature=youtu.be

I mean, what more could you want?

Odense/Copenhagen crossover group First Flush sound like unripe blackberries taste, if you’re eating them in a dark Funen forest, a late summer evening, to the sound of a melancholy desert-bleached guitar, auto-tune, and well-written Danish poetry. So well-written in fact, that they were nominated in the lyrical category of this year’s Steppeulv Awards.

Even though the auto-tune blurs the vocals with mechanical distortion, the textual universe still stands at the foreground of the songs. In contrast to certain other bands, the words aren’t slurred to disguise their lacking, but to create a soundscape from which the poetry emerges as small shapely idiosyncrasies as the melodies shift tempo or change their forms.

At the concert, First Flush will also play new songs, which will be released in the coming year through another Odense/Copenhagen crossover, Konkylie Recordings.

Jenny, who you will hear a lot more about in the coming years, warms up the event and after the concert, Konkylie will hold an after-party with an Afskum, Jenny, and First Flush DJ set at Den Smagløse, where Albani offers up 100 free Odense Pilsners to the quickest to find their way there from Posten.

A half-mad biologist runs a warehouse-microbrewery, distillery, and street food joint in a hidden corner of Odense Harbor – quite a journey from the city center, in Odense terms.

Together with another half-madman – the chef Brian Matzen, who owns Alfred and Kamilla, next door – they bring vibrancy to Olav de Linde’s warehouse neighborhood, which otherwise has primarily been occupied by companies who have renovated the old storehouses juuust a bit too prettily.

Everyone who begs for more life around the harbor, and for more daring entrepreneurs who take the content of the area more seriously than paperwork and risk management, ought to visit Claus down at the harbor for their next Friday-beer, Friday-cocktail, or whatever the desire might be.

The beers are Munkebo’s well-known – and very often prize-winning – small batches, brewed with locally sourced ingredients, traditional brewing techniques, and fully-mad innovations, like deriving the yeast culture from the back of a bee from northern Funen. But they also create other beverages for the people.

The food varies, but these days is in the genre of a pork sandwich – by all accounts a good representative of the kind.

True, not every one of their events is a knockout and the warehouse is at best eclectically designed with its dilapidated furniture. But what does that matter, when you’re at the water’s edge, in the remains of a 120-year-old harbor mill with a good beer in hand?

Tuesday the 6th of December, 1994. It’s just after dinnertime. One of the biggest upsets in the history of modern soccer is about to take place – and nobody knows it.

My 10-year-old boy brain is more occupied with exploring the strange corners of the ferry across Storebælt than soccer. Maybe it’s the cafeteria’s promises of sinfully processed and preserved food that captures my imagination. I don’t remember.

But I do remember seeing a little group of people chewing their fingernails with fixed stares in that semi-circle formation that promises something important is happening. On the ferry’s skid-free rubber flooring. A few sitting, the rest standing. Gathered around the 20-inch tube television over the stairs leading to the parking deck.

 Maybe they were just there because we were approaching Knudshoved, but I remember later thinking about how mismatched that place was to the events being played out. A perfect final image in a montage of moments from Danish December 94’s, which must appear in the inevitable future film version of OB’s night in Madrid.  

On the screen, the irresistible force in white dances in rhythmic pulses – clean and unsoiled from the mud that suits a working class sport in December. The king’s chosen – Laudrup, Enrique, Redondo, Amavisca. Names as elegant as their talents. The world’s best soccer team and 50.000 expectant Spaniards set the stage at Santiago Bernabeu.

It’s basically a walkover. Against a team without polish, from the North, who has to win 2-0, after having lost their first home-game. It’s never happened before or (with the notable exception of last year) since. The team is OB, wearing strange black and yellow Puma uniforms bought off the rack, chests emblazoned with an advertisement for a photocopy machine company. They’re trained by Kim Brink, who has a tendency towards hard physical training and maybe a touch of megalomania. They’re primarily comprised of workhorses. Dethlefsen, Schjönberg, Hemmingsen, Thorup. Even the announcer confuses the names throughout the match.

Four years earlier, the two clubs met in Europe with a 10-1 victory to Real Madrid. The contrast couldn’t be greater.

As a child of parents from out of town, growing up in the working class neighborhood of Skibhuskvarteret, I didn’t have a natural connection to OB in ´94. That came a few years later. Which is probably why I can’t remember exactly at which point in the game I joined the semicircle. But what happens afterwards is as follows:

OB is on their way out of the tournament, despite a 1-0 lead. It was a surprise in the Lineup that got them this far – 20-year-old Ulrik Pedersen scored on an elegant lob after 72 minutes. Lars Høgh, the veteran and Odense native, has been under fire from all angles throughout the match, but for just this night the one-time carpenter with the smart mouth and good natured attitude is an expert craftsman. His saves, made with the prescience and accuracy of a true artist, still stand as the most beautiful creations on that evening, in my mind’s eye.

The loyal Madrilenians are on the hunt for one – perhaps even two – goals, to shake off a loss that would besmirch their honor, however inconsequential it might be in reality. The even younger Bisgaard, who was the expected starter in Ulrik Pedersens spot, has just entered the pitch.

91 minutes have gone. The towering, thickset country boy, Schönberg, with his clumsy movements and unwavering determination, is about to lose the ball over the sideline after a bad trap, but suddenly ditches the man marking him to the left. The defender overcommits, thinking forward, instead of backward. Schjönberg lays the ball flat across the middle of the box. Another fresh substitute, Jesper Hjort, is clear in front of the goal but kicks right past the ball, a confused Spanish player just watches it roll by – and the world stops for a second. Bisgaard confidently boots the ball past Canizares, who lacks Høghens prescience, right into the far corner of the goal.

Madrid is in shock. OB tears around like headless chickens. The substitutes storm the pitch. OB’s doctor, Christen Villberg, and masseuse Allan Poulsen, sit on their knees across from one another in their blue track suits with their hands balled into fists above their heads. 30 seconds later, the whistle blows.

The next day, Niels Abildtrup calls it “The Miracle in Madrid” on the front page of Fyens Stifstidende. The match still bears that title to this day when, 25 years later, on Friday the 6^th of December, OB will celebrate the anniversary with an event at Kick Off, where there will be a stream of TV2’s re-broadcast of the game, a miracle-quizz, and visits from the legends themselves. The match will also be shown at Arcaden on the same night.

Monday the 9^th of December, OB will play a home game against AaB in a certain black and yellow uniform. The same outfit will figure again the next week in a tough away game at Parken. But, then again, those colors have carried the team to victory against tougher odds, before now.

They say the Miracle could never be repeated today. With the titanic monetary inequalities between clubs, the differences in quality between teams have become insurmountable. I buy the explanation, but not the conclusion. Maybe I have a little touch of Brink’s megalomania.