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IN PICTURES: Vanguard Festival 2014

Copenhagen area music fans didn't need to go far to get the festival experience this weekend. For the second year in a row, the Vanguard Festival brought some of music's biggest names right into the heart of the city. Our photographer was there to catch the action during the two-day festival.

Published: 3 August 2014 17:15 CEST

IN PICTURES: Vanguard Festival 2014

Headliners The Roots got a bit of help from their friend Mos Def. Photo: Bobby Anwar

Copenhagen’s Søndermarken park was transformed into a music lover’s paradise this weekend, particularly for fans of hip-hop.

For the second year in a row, the Vanguard Festival brought the festival spirit right into the heart of the city, with a diverse line-up of music split across two days and two stages.

Following the model established last year, Friday offered an eclectic line-up, featuring a mix ranging from funk legends George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic to Danish rock band Mew, while Saturday was strictly for the hip-hop heads. Some of the biggest names in the genre's past and present – including Large Professor, Mos Def, Method Man & Redman, and The Roots – had hands swaying and bodies rocking.

Our photographer was on hand to catch the action both on and off the stage.

Gallery: Vanguard Festival | Rocking the mic

Gallery: Vanguard Festival | Checking the mood

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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