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Post by wombat on Feb 28, 2017 17:18:54 GMT
^^^^
There was a funny moment in the USA TV show "welcome to Sweden" where Bjorn looks an investor right in the eye and says, "Why would I want any more money?"
I can sort of see Bjorn doing little things like this, TV appearances, etc... to keep the Abba interest up, for whatever reasons.. he doesnt need the money but perhaps he likes the attention or something like that. I dont have any idea what he thinks of course.
Benny often sounds like he is saying, "Abba is dead. I've been doing my own music for 30 years now. Dont ask me about Abba anymore. Go ask Bjorn". LOL
Then he turns around and does things like getting his son to mix the Wembley concert. Weird. Does he say one thing and then do another?
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Post by wombat on Feb 28, 2017 15:03:10 GMT
I have to wonder if finally, one day, B&B will crack the vault open and say, "what the hell, it was 50 years ago; if they want it so bad, let them have it".
Most of the other bands I can think of, from the same era, have been bootlegged to death and dont seem to mind. I mean, there are really good sounding copies available of almost everything recorded by the Beatles, Led Zep, the Grateful Dead, Deep Purple, all those guys. None of them seem to care, at least publicly. Not just concert recordings, studio stuff as well, that was not intended to be released (at the time).
That being said, I'm not sure if the demand for those bands' outtakes and rarities was a lot louder and more in number, than the demand for Abba stuff. It might well be that the demand for Abba rarities isnt that great... perhaps there is only a small group of die-hard super fan collectors that want it all, and perhaps there just arent enough people demanding it.
I dont know, perhaps its a HUGE number of people. If it is a huge number, then I wonder, why dont B&B relent?
Or was it a group decision long ago, to NEVER let this stuff out of the vault?
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Post by wombat on Feb 27, 2017 19:05:21 GMT
I was never a collector. I dont care to have every single thing they ever recorded. Just Like That means nothing to me, in my opinion, it isnt that great, the verse is awkward... I cant understand the furor over it.
That's only my opinion, I cant understand why people get so overwrought and melodramatic about having to have this sort of demo-vault stuff... but then its not my problem, and I cant help them anyway.
Bjorn and Benny could however. I wonder what they think. Is it, "We worked our butts off for ten years non-stop and gave them blood sweat and tears and the albums and all the videos is more than enough, we gave them a museum too; they should enjoy it, and we dont owe them anything else." I agree with that.
OR maybe they are aware of how badly some of these die-hard super fans are longing for these odd bits of left-over material, and for whatever reason, dont care. "We'll give them another restaurant instead!"
I dont know.
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Post by wombat on Feb 27, 2017 18:13:04 GMT
I'm in the camp that believes ABBA don't owe us anything. This would be fine if they just shut up about it or led us to believe - as Benny once did - that there is "nothing left". But they've not only let one person hear to write and tell us, but now they're letting it be performed. For goodness sake, this is torture for some fans. I'll add that I chose not to buy the book - a decision I'm very happy with - and am away when this performance takes place so couldn't have gone anyway. I didn't know a thing about it until an ABBA friend sent me that screen grab. Incidentally, he isn't going either. He lives in London and knew about it in time but like me, wasn't impressed. I think I just want to hear the ABBA versions, and if that never happens then fine. I don't want to read about it from someone who has and I don't want to hear anyone else perform them. I just wish they either released it or kept quiet, not subject hardcore fans (I don't include myself in that) to this level of teasing. I wish Tony (Hometime) was still around. I'd love to hear his take on this. I agree, the book is pointless. Paying somebody to listen to a bunch of unfinished stuff and then writing about it. I bought his first one for way too much money and was really disappointed. for some reason I thought he was going to give real details from B&B about technical stuff about the recording and mixing sessions. Instead it was basically a list of tunes and what they sort of sounded like or what they eventually became. No way was I going to buy the next edition. OR the extended Bright Lights edition. The first one was fine. I know he has to make a living but come on. Beating a dead horse.
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Post by wombat on Feb 27, 2017 18:07:48 GMT
It's ugly things like this, that make me glad that I dont care about the demos and all the unreleased stuff.
I sort of feel sorry for the people who seriously hunger for all that sort of thing and then have it dangled like this in front of them.
I have the albums and a few bootlegs, and that is enough for me.
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Post by wombat on Feb 16, 2017 19:20:56 GMT
Yep, Mike - I'm afraid so. I particularly like the 'Superstition'-esque keyboard, as well as the funky guitar at the start that always reminds me of the 'stake-out' music that used to feature in 'Starsky & Hutch'! I know I'm slightly out of step wth many people, but I quite like a lot of the songs where Bjorn takes the lead vocal and the girls do 'classic'-style '70s backing vocals. (E.g. 'Rock 'n' Roll Band', 'I Saw It in the Mirror' etc.) Not forgetting, of course, 'Two for the Price of One', which is in my personal ABBA top 10 and where the backing vocals are as good as anything I've ever heard anywhere, anytime. That's my confession for the day! no confessional needed from me - Two for the Price of One is easily in my top 10 too. I believe it was in the Abba album era where some interviewer claimed they were all head over heels in love with Stevie Wonder, and it really shows, especially with Benny's use of the clavinet all over it. GET FUNKY!
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Post by wombat on Feb 14, 2017 21:16:51 GMT
thanks for the links. Some of the printing or colors on some of the 1982 era original Frida covers are strange. The inside sleeve to the SGO album, for example. I dont know what happened there.... was that a decision to print it like that or was there a problem with the printer? Its almost like theres no blue or black in it. Its a horrible image of a beautiful lady... just weird. And then some of the images from that time period are way too hot on the red side. I tried leveling out or curving the same image you used on To Turn the Stone and its awful to work with. Another one that I wonder why they did that.... Perhaps that was a tie in to I See Red ... maybe. Theres one pic where she has a headband on and there's a small slip of her red hair hanging over it. In some reproductions it looks like blood and when I first saw I thought, Soldier? Car accident? Anyway, good ideas and nice work! Nothings ever going to top that original Ensam cover ;-) hottest thing any of them ever made....
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Post by wombat on Feb 10, 2017 14:20:30 GMT
Beautiful
would have fit perfectly onto the Visitors.
Just kidding.
Lovely track!
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Post by wombat on Feb 8, 2017 16:13:45 GMT
My favourite on that album too. It certainly would have been a great statement of intent to kick off with it. The only drawback would be that feeling you get when you realise it's all (slightly) downhill from there. Like Led Zeppelin's 'In through the Out Door' once you get past 'In the Evening', which is a classic case. I'm not keen on albums that start with a real bang and then fail to live up to it. I mentioned on the other thread that the VV album has a couple of tracks that need hiding. Opening up with the title track might have exposed them even more. Mind you, most ABBA fans don't seem that keen on the song, so probably think THAT's the one that should have been hidden away near the back end of Side Two! I'm not like most Abba fans... I think VV and Chiquititta are the best tracks on that album, I also like I Have a Dream and The Way Old Friends Do and Angel Eyes, even tho to me it seems somewhat out of place, what with the nod to the USA 60s girl group sound. At least thats how it sounds to me, I might be wrong. Does Your Mother Know has some moments I like. the rest, no, not really. too much disco that sounds horribly dated by now. The King Has Lost his Crown, I like the first 30 seconds or so, a great easy groove is established and then ... I dont know what happened to that song. The entire album is beautifully recorded and mixed, I'll give them that. They really knew what they were doing by then. If I could go back in time and combine the tracks I like from VV and The Album into one, that would be in the running for best album of the 1970s.
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Post by wombat on Feb 8, 2017 14:38:52 GMT
I thought about Super Trouper, it is a great opening track. I couldnt decide between that and Waterloo.
If they had opened their Voulez Vous album with Voulez Vous, I would have easily voted for that. I dont understand why they did not, as its a great uptempo album kick-starter. Oh well.
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Post by wombat on Feb 6, 2017 21:29:29 GMT
Have to agree with Josef.
I spent yesterday listening to Bjork and Bollywood music. I dont really care where music came from. If I like it, I like it. The Bollywood stuff is so interesting because at times, they dont use western scales, all kinds of semitones, and it definitely does NOT sound like anything euro or USA, not even close.
But to each his or her own, I guess. We all have our reasons to not like music.
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Post by wombat on Feb 3, 2017 21:55:01 GMT
maybe I'm wrong, I thought I read that somewhere, maybe a Magnus Palm book
but I might be mistaken
anyway to me, As Good as New sounds about as American as one can get. It sounds like pure mid to late 70s USA disco.
Then there was another one from that album, If It Wasnt for the Nights, for years I thought that was Gloria Gaynor or somebody like that. I had no idea it was Abba. That too sounds completely "american disco" to me.
I guess I dont understand your definition of what "american-sounding" is, and so for that, my apologies.
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Post by wombat on Feb 3, 2017 21:12:35 GMT
Wasnt As Good As New recorded in part in America, using an American backing band, the members of Chic?
Or am I mistaken? I know they did the backing tracks to a couple or three songs in Miami.
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Post by wombat on Feb 3, 2017 14:50:39 GMT
Really? You prefer I Have A Dream over Voulez Vous?! Only just. They're the worst two tracks on an otherwise wonderful album. Voulez-Vous is far too long, not very melodic and too American-sounding. (The last of these is not a problem in a non-ABBA context.) too american sounding? uh, OK then. and the anti-american sentiment continues with the abba crowd.... nice....
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Post by wombat on Feb 2, 2017 21:36:32 GMT
thats nothing, I prefer I Have a Dream over As Good as New
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Post by wombat on Feb 1, 2017 21:22:05 GMT
'Cassandra' certainly had zero A-side potential, in my view, especially in terms of its potential ability to stand shoulder to shoulder with ABBA's previous body of work. But then again, to be honest, I'd say the same about 'Under Attack'. And 'One of Us', come to think of it. Their everything-we-touch-turns-to-singles-chart-gold moment had truly passed - even though they saved their finest album to the very last. But that kind of thing has happened with many, many bands who evolved from 'hit machines' to 'makers of serious music'. Even Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, for instance, started (to a significant extent) as singles-focused bands before ditching all that in favour of a purely album-centric approach. Mott the Hoople, to take one example, went in the opposite direction, churning our classic underground albums (including the peerless 'Brain Capers') before heading for the mainstream, with brilliant hits like 'All the Young Dudes' and 'Honaloochie Boogie'. Will have to think about this one, but are there many examples of bands who flooded the singles charts yet SIMULTANEOUSLY made serious, well-crafted albums with genuine depth? Did ABBA themselves come closest, with 'The Album' ? Not sure. Mott the Hoople! Never thought I'd see them get a nod on here. Mott only "went mainstream" when their luck truly ran out. Or so says Hunter. They desperately needed airplay, a big hit, and Bowie gave them one. And once you have a big hit.... not only do bands tend to want more of what that brings them... but more importantly, their record co and management do as well.
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Post by wombat on Feb 1, 2017 21:17:27 GMT
I dont think so, not where I lived in America anyway. I admit my slice of America is tiny and I cannot speak for the entire gigantic and fragmented market. As I've said before, even When All Is Said and Done got zero airplay where I lived (Tampa) but apparently in other markets it did well. Cassandra is a good, if not great track - but its not very catchy or hummable. The most successful Abba singles, in America anyway, are the very definition of catchy - they are notorious ear-worms. As someone else mentioned, by then, Abba was yesterdays news and a lot of people had turned their back on the group... they were no longer interested. Under Attack was catchy, and it didnt sell either. Thats a good indication that possibly, nothing Abba released, regardless of how good it was, would have turned the tide in their favor. Its funny how the far left in Sweden always reviled Abba as a money-making machine.... and then apparently when the records stopped selling, the group packed it in. Coincidence or
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Post by wombat on Feb 1, 2017 18:17:01 GMT
I actually have to go with LAAPTMR, as it's a fitting finale in more ways than one, might even have it at my funeral !!! I'm having So Long at mine! LOL! thats funny, in a very dark humor sort of way... I'm having Somewhere Over the Rainbow at mine. Probably an instrumental version. But thats another thread, I guess..
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Post by wombat on Feb 1, 2017 16:55:25 GMT
I always wondered why Voulez-Vous wasnt the lead off track on that album... in my opinion, its the best song on the album.
As Good As New is pure disco and I wasnt, and still am not, a big fan
Just my opinion
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Post by wombat on Feb 1, 2017 15:06:27 GMT
I voted for Waterloo.
At the time, probably a good idea to lead off the new album with the big hit.
I always loved the song anyway.
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Post by wombat on Feb 1, 2017 15:03:48 GMT
Name of the Game, one of my all time favorites from them
Take a Chance on Me, the obvious single choice
Hole in Your Soul, a nice uptempo rocking number, but, the chipmunk vocals are weird - I'm not sure this would have scored
Thank You for the Music - this might have scored well in the USA AM pop radio, but would have never been played on FM, so, I dont know
Eagle and Move On never would have hit in the USA, in my opinion. Too slow, they both seem to drag at times... Eagle, even if it was heavily edited for time, has too many dramatic FX poured onto it. A nice album track but not an American single.
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Post by wombat on Jan 30, 2017 18:06:28 GMT
^^^^^
In our country, yeah, you might begin to wonder... altho that gets political and I wont go there
A more interesting situation for final song would have been The Way Old Friends Do at the end of the Visitors.. and then maybe the last song on the Late Breakfast Show TV thing (their last public performance)... they sing about how wonderful of friends they all are, then the cameras stop, the fake smiles drop, and they all drive off into the dark to not ever do anything together ever again... and in the girls' case, rarely see each other ever again.
The irony of that...
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Post by wombat on Jan 27, 2017 14:24:58 GMT
Another great set of songs which have all got their merits, with the exception of 'The Way Old Friends Do' which has got 'skip' written all over it. Even 'Rock'n'Roll Band' is a semi-guilty pleasure of mine. Absolutely love it. But I've gone for 'So Long'. It's joyous, seems to say "We're ABBA - and we're not going away!" and provides the perfect end-point for the first 'proper' ABBA album. Simple. Obvious. Brilliant. Those last 20 seconds in particular - quite magnificent. Did ABBA ever get much 'glammer' than 'So Long'? It's the track that out-Tiger Feets 'Tiger Feet'. LOL I love The Way Old Friends Do, and I voted for it. Hahaha. I almost voted for So Long, which is probably in my top ten or twenty songs from them, but, to me, its an album opener ;-) that fabulous guitar riff, the obvious glam rock stylings, huge spector wall of sound, great stuff all around. However I do see the charm of the ending as well. Like An Angel Passing Thru My Room is my first or second least favorite thing they ever recorded. That one and the Day Before You Came. I'll probably never listen to either again. Never is a long time so maybe not... Just my opinions....
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Post by wombat on Jan 3, 2017 14:06:55 GMT
I've listened to Frida's album a zillion times but today, for the first time, I just noticed that Phil Collins sticks the "somethings going on" drum pattern in, at the end of "to turn the stone".
Funny what headphones will do for you, sometimes...
I wonder if this was accidental or intentional or maybe even a sly joke
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Post by wombat on Nov 28, 2016 14:14:41 GMT
I dont know. It was interesting, but, somehow it seemed to me like "why bother" when the arrangement is so far away from the original, and possibly the entire song structure... altho I cant be sure because SOS was the only Abba song I ever learned.
anyway, when I hear something like that, I wonder, why not just write your own lyrics? Then it becomes your own song... you've already done all the other work!
the other thing is, the jazz club trio and vocalist is pretty limiting in sonic scope. So to a point, unless you really really dig that Diana Krall sound, it gets old pretty quickly.
but overall a good recording and mix, vocal was a bit overpowering, I would have turned up the piano... but a good effort and interesting project.
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Post by wombat on Nov 10, 2016 16:31:11 GMT
So many bass lines in Abba songs are memorable and really inventive. Mamma Mia has that pulsing staccato line that would be at home in a Ramones song. If you isolated it and didnt know what song it was from, I bet most would fail to identify it.
Thats what impressed me about Abbas music from the beginning.. so much great playing and arranging underneath the hood of their songs.
And I think our bass player did change the chords along with me in SOS... nobody seemed to mind. We were doing a different, slower more very hard rock thing and I guess nobody noticed. The guys in our band werent ones to listen to the original version and try to nail it anyway. They knew the tune well enough, they just made their own parts work. Quite different than being in an Abba tribute band. I imagine that wouldnt be easy.
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Post by wombat on Nov 10, 2016 14:09:51 GMT
...I didn't understand them or couldn't play them - and reverted to the time-honoured 'cowboy chords and capo' approach again... That makes me sad though, because interesting and surprising chords are what I love most about music. They are only difficult to understand because musicians wrap them up in mystical jargon to make them sound more complicated than they are. And they are quite frequently easier to play than basic chords. Take C11 for example. You're already tying up all four fingers with a C7 cowboy chord, and somehow you now have to stack on top of that a ninth and a suspended fourth. Turns out you can do all that with one finger The exact ingredients of ABBA's appeal are elusive, but for me a part of it is down to the combination of largely well trodden chord progressions punctuated by moments of musical inspiration. Take DQ for example. If you play the E major to start, and then imagine that you are writing a song, where's your second chord for the 'you can jive'? No cowboy is going to come up with Db. And the first few seconds of STMF unusually take you straight from major to minor in the same key: 'schoolbag in hand'. TDBYC contains full diminished chords, as well as minor sevenths with a flattened fifth. No cowboy round the bonfire is going to write a masterpiece like that, unless he learns his chords. These moments are so well crafted, and so sparingly employed, that the secret of ABBA's success is often taken to be the simplicity of their song construction. But there's much more going on underneath the bonnet. I would argue that when songwriters are restricted to cowboy chords, it's like painting with primary colours, with no thought that they can be mixed together. Admittedly, my musical efforts tend to demonstrate that you can still paint useless pictures however large your palette may be If anyone is interested in learning to play ABBA songs, or sharing/discussing ideas/tips etc., we could start a thread for it. I do agree with all that. Their songwriting was often unusual, the use of unexpected chords, much the same way the Beatles did. I remember handing the guys in our band charts to play SOS, and the bass player looked at how the chords were put together and asked me, "Is there something in the water in Sweden?"
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Post by wombat on Nov 10, 2016 14:07:28 GMT
As a small aside, I love that phrase 'cowboy chords' as highlighted by wombat. They're very much my kind of chords. Like most useless songwriters/musicians, I went through that phase of trying to find more 'interesting' chords (elevenths, ninths and all that), then quickly realised I didn't understand them or couldn't play them - and reverted to the time-honoured 'cowboy chords and capo' approach again. Majors, minors, sevenths (plus the odd easy sixth) and I've more than got my hands full. I'd like to think Bjorn would understand. I dont know about that. Listen to the Who chronologically. At one point Townshend's knowledge of chords, inversions, and how they all fit together, starts to blossom and his songwriting is pretty incredible. I believe he credited Ted Greene's famous chord book, or maybe Mickey Bakers book of jazz chords... or maybe both. We dont know how much Bjorn knew about guitar or how well he played or any of that. It seems to me, working side by side with somebody like Benny for hours at a time, day after day... you might pick up something interesting. On the other hand, I've heard Benny say he didnt know anything about theory or chords either. Kind of impossible to believe....
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Post by wombat on Nov 9, 2016 17:40:00 GMT
Heh-heh, yes indeed. I'm glad you noticed this, because I almost included a long passage about it in my previous reply, having looked at some WIKTT videos last night. He is not only playing an E there rather than an E-flat, but he is playing (well, miming) through the whole song in the key of E, even though he is miming to a song that is blaring out in the key of E-flat. If you could hear his guitar, and if it was tuned correctly, the result would be horrendous on the ear. Of course, E and E-flat major aren't at all compatible with each other; they are as different to each other as E is to F. Thanks for your kind reply, Martin! I actually do know the difference between E and E-flat (even though I'm more 'guitarish' than guitarist ), but I'm going to blame my initial comment on loose reading, language barriers (its called 'Ess' in Swedish), world events and that old video we've both seen! But I agree, it is interesting. In my darkest moments, this discussion supports my theory that Björn might not have been a very big contributor after all... thats always been a big question. How much guitar did Bjorn play on the final, and how much of the guitar stuff that ended up on the final, was written by Bjorn? Somewhere I read that Benny and Bjorn worked with the musicians closely and it was a tight-knit group and the guys were encouraged to come up with stuff. Naturally they were not credited as the authors of whatever they came up with. Benny and Bjorn took it all but this isnt all that unusual in session work. Here in the States you sign a "work-for-hire" agreement and you know going in that anything you come up with, the "artist" is going to take credit for. That doesnt mean Bjorn did NOT come up with all those guitar parts. It just means that its hard to tell who created them.
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Post by wombat on Nov 9, 2016 17:28:10 GMT
Yes, it's in E-flat, which is interesting in itself, because it's the last key that Bjorn would have chosen for it when he and Benny were developing the song, and it's doubtful that Benny would have deliberately picked E-flat just to make Bjorn sweat on the guitar. If you were strumming away with a pianist, trying things out, you would want to be a semitone lower in D How are the E chords more difficult than the D ones if you're just strumming with the pianist? Concerning the vocal range, D and especially C are safer within the normal male domain, anything above the high E note gets tricky. If they chose that E key from the beginning, it's interesting because they obviously must have had the girls' possibilities in mind from the very start. in the first place, D can be easily strummed as a first position easy-to-fret with open strings chord. In my circle of friends these kinds of chords are called "cowboy chords". They're the easiest to play. If you are playing an actual Eb chord, it must be of a more difficult variety, usually a barre chord. Having said that, we dont know that he actually played an Eb chord in standard tuning. There were other options. A capo on the guitar, or tuning the guitar up a half step, or, just as possible, the entire track was sped up to raise the pitch. Allan thanks for the info above. I guess the fact that When I Kissed the Teacher was recorded halfway thru the album blows my theory out of the water. That song sounds worse to me than all the others.... Its a fabulous work of art, irresistible, but, the mix isnt their best. I wonder if its the wall of backing vocals that causes some of this.
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