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So, there we were in Hyde Park with 35,000 other pleasant punters on maybe the last lovely Sunday summer’s evening for quite a while.
The whole BBC Radio 2 spectacle was good fun (even with the Benny Andersson Band’s 20 minute Swedish folk implosion midway).
There was plenty of cheese (Mamma Mia Ensemble shoehorned into their jumpsuits, Lulu whose face gives a two-fingers to nature, Jason Donovan looking hugely uncomfortable).
The first bite of oddness was when Tim Rice was wheeled out to introduce the Benny/Bjorn musicals bit. We got Elaine Paige (I Know Him So Well) and Marti Pellow doing One Night in Bangkok (“weird”) and so on.
Then the Swedish folk bit, or ‘the toilet break’ as it was dubbed on our patch. No one was listening to the Benny/Bjorn composition Rowing on the Serpentine, but I thought it quite lovely. Alas my bloody Flip packed up half way though, so one does not have vids yet. BUT we were there with a nice man whose wife was doing the Frida bit onstage as part of the Capital Voices! He got some footage so we are going to swap later (otherwise his wife will kill him for not recording her).
And then the whole thing totally went into a frenzy with Dan from The Feeling’s belly button, Chaka Khan’s freestyle take on The Winner Takes It All (I don’t care what kind of flak she’s getting; I prefer her new lyrics), Kylie doing Super Trouper. Kylie and Benny saying the word ’sex’, the whole utterly utterly bonkers Abba Medley with fireworks and karaoke! I was beside myself and straight married lady friend and I continued to belt out the one verse of Thank You For The Music that we could remember as we left the park.
Here be some mp3s I did grab from the whole mad event as broadcast on the radio. Still on iPlayer, but I don’t know for how long. Enjoy!
The Winner Takes It All: Chaka Khan feat. ABBA Rhythm Section, BBC Concert Orchestra & Capital Voices
Rowing On The Serpentine: Benny Andersson & The Orsa Fiddlers feat. BBC Concert Orchestra & Capital Voices
Super Trouper: Kylie Minogue feat. ABBA Rhythm Section, BBC Concert Orchestra & Capital Voices
When All Is Said And Done: Kylie Minogue feat. Benny Andersson, ABBA Rhythm Section, BBC Concert Orchestra & Capital Voices
Catchy as fuck. Even if it does sound like ‘Jennifer Rush was jammin’ with Def Leppard and Mister Mister [sic] in an eighties rock nightmare.’
And here’s the other ‘new Abba song’ as sung by the staff of B&B’s hotel (yes, really).
- If any of our students are reading – and we love you very much and all that – please don’t come near me for the next week and a half unless it’s mind-crushingly urgent (e.g. Sarah Palin has mistaken you for a moose and has started shooting at you from her helicopter). ktnxbai
Speaking of work, our experimental little groovy website is up for Best Third Level Site Award this weekend in the Irish Web Awards. One is rather chuffed as we are up against the entire sites of TCD, UCD, QUB, Limerick IT and IT Blanchardstown. We are the first ones in the Uni to go down the youtube, twitter, flickr, delicious, blog route (and we kinda did it under the radar cos we’ve mavricks. “Oh hai, Communications Officer! Didn’t see you there! Oh, that interactive thing? I’ve no idea where that came from…”) 
The Empire Of The Sun album is in iTunes. And it’s iTunes Plus. I had to have it, even though I will stump up for the CD at some stage. It also appears to be magnificent. (Apart from a track called ‘Breakdown’, which is a bit crap)- Abba’s The Visitors is also magnificent.
Conor, even you would enjoy the melodic misery. - I’m being utterly useless at packing for my move to London. So far, I’ve managed to rip some old CDs and then put them into a box. This is not very helpful.
- Speaking of London, I’ve been wasting time working on my playlist for the Nov 1st DJ engagement. Is it overly ambitious to try remixing Ebony & Ivory? In a bhangra style?
- I can’t do well when I think you’re gonna leave, but you know I try. Are you gonna leave me now? Can’t you be believin’ now?
… or, at least the first one I remember, was an ABBA one. It was from 1978 (thank you ebay) which would have made me five. Yikes. It is still around somewhere in the parents’ house, covered in scrawls and with a broken zipper.
Next ABBA memory is of having pneumonia and my aunt Agnes (who I always thought looked like Agnetha) taking me an ABBA magazine in hospital. Late seventies, I guess.
Next memory involves watching Top Of The Pops in order to see ABBA and being eventually rewarded with their performanace of Super Trouper. That was 1980- I was 7 and not quite ready to immerse myself in pop (that happened two years later and kinda hasn’t stopped).
So, what have we learned? Abba was my first musical love? This fag was way ahead of her time, ladies.
The whole Abba revival business rather left me cold and I didn’t think much of them between 1981 and whenever the silly Erasure business happened.
However, as one looks back over the music that has gone through these ears since I were a tot (you can really tell I have no more study obligations, can’t you?), some Abba stuff is just pretty amazing. I lean towards the later, divorce-laden miserable HappySad stuff, so I really need to get my Ultimate Abba playlist up here (like my Emmylou Harris one).
As for the Mamma Mia movie? I think the final paragraph of the review in the Guardian puts it best:
Some songs are easier to incorporate than others. Waterloo is saved for the closing credits, perhaps because screenwriter Catherine Johnson didn’t grasp its metaphorical quality, and that she would not in fact need a vast Napoleonic army to troop across the island. But there is one very famous Abba number which is entirely omitted. That is a crying shame. I have an idea for the way in which it could yet be included, should an extra scene be needed for the DVD. There’s a six-year-old boy on the island called Fernando, and caring Meryl Streep suspects that poor little Fernando could be hearing-impaired. She sits the little lad down, takes out a set of drums and bangs them close to his ears; with tears pouring down her cheeks, she sings to him a single, heart-rending question …
Miaow!
May 1982 on the evidence of this lost classic. I remember being fascinated with lead ’singer’ Steve for some reason. Having not heard this track for 26 years until this morning, I am confident that the devastating combination of attractive yet non-threatening young man, shuffling ladies in silver tops and pseudo-Abba arrangements launched an attack on the 9-year-old Enda at a molecular level.
Nature 0 Nurture 1
