Tag Archives: ABBA
BAO plays Skansen
I’d arranged with Tony to meet up at Allsang pa Skansen, the regular summertime television program in Sweden focussed on community singing. Along with some Swedish “favourites” there’s usually a pop star or two with a show or concert to promote. This week it was Benny Andersson’s Orchestra and the cast of Mamma Mia. Benny, [...]
Stockholm Pride – Day One
As soon as I saw his name in the program, I headed straight for Pride Park. I’m talking about Carl Magnus Palm, the author of six books about ABBA, including “Bright Lights Dark Shadows”, the definitive ABBA biography to date. Oddly enough, the book has never been released in Sweden due to a range of [...]
An ABBA Fan in Sweden
Since I arrived in Sweden, this is my first real chance to sit down and write about my trip from an ABBA fan’s perspective. Coming from Australia, it’s a long way to Europe, and it costs a lot of money. But the Australian dollar is reasonably strong at the moment. And it’s summer in Sweden. [...]
Mamma Mia – The Movie
Within seconds of walking in the door tonight and logging on, I received an instant message from my friend Patrick. I’d caught up with him last night for dinner, as he arrived back from a month travelling around Europe and had a few hours to kill between Sydney and Canberra connecting flights. The conversation was [...]
Mamma Mia on Oxford Street
When asked to comment on the whole connection between ABBA, gays and drag shows, Benny Andersson (the bearded one back then) shook his head in disbelief and famously said… I don’t get it… did we look like transvestites or something? Surrounded by rainbow flags, a giant poster for “Mamma Mia” (the movie) appeared this weekend [...]
Chess – The Musical (Again)
Having sat through the first half of “Chess” last night at Sydney’s Theatre Royal, I found myself repeating myself. “Chess”, the musical writen by Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice in the post-ABBA years, has been staged many times since the debut CD in 1984. The London Production had a good lengthy run, and [...]
Somewhere Else
I was sitting at Star City Casino the other night, and for just a brief moment I wondered if I should have been somewhere else. Normally on a Wednesday night I’d join a group of friends at a pub in Lewisham for a mid-week debrief about our lives over a few beers. But on Wednesday [...]
Meeting Bjorn
Thirty years ago, this week, ABBA arrived in Australia for their concert tour, recorded famously in ABBA – The Movie. I desperately wanted to go, but in 1977, $58 for an overnight bus trip to Sydney was very expensive. And there was the fact that I was just 11 years old, so my mum wouldn’t [...]
Norway’s Nazi Secret
The life story of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, the dark-haired singer from the pop group, ABBA is a fascinating one. It’s one of those classic rags to riches stories, with a fair amount of personal tragedy along the way. But it’s also one with an fascinating historical context, and one which provided the compelling narrative for the [...]
The First Ten Years
“How many members of ABBAMAIL does it take to organise a group photograph?” Quite a few it would seem. But when you have a room full of people who work in graphic design and the media, and throw in a few with “control issues”, everyone seemed to have a view about staging the “official” group [...]
ABBA Museum
My friend Graeme Read was interviewed on 702 ABC Sydney tonight talking about various ABBA things, with the hook for the story being the recently announced opening of an ABBA Museum in Stockholm.
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