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Post by shoshin on Nov 9, 2016 15:54:32 GMT
but it is probably F-sharp. I think I've managed to convince myself he's starting off, on that video, doing the old F / B-flat thing. Does he muck around in this way with TV performances of other songs, or is it reserved for WIKTT? It could indeed be F/Bb, but his index finger seems to me to be too far away from the nut for it to be across the first fret (best seen at the start of the second verse rather than the intro). Also, if it started F to Bb then the next chords are good old C followed by Am and Dm right in front of him, so he has no need to travel high up the neck like he does (again best viewed in verse 2). Whereas starting with F#, then after B you're looking for Db then Bbm, which would make the trip up the neck easier to understand. It's weird, because he seems to be having one or two selection problems, as if it's a completely new key just thrown at him and he is trying to find the next chord wherever he can lay his hands on it. This would mark him out as a good rather than a poor guitarist, but the only theory that i can come up with is that he set it as a challenge for himself on the spur of the moment. Alternative theories gratefully received  I have noticed vaguely related episodes in other tv performances, though it may take a while to dig examples out. Bjorn often puts a lot of effort into miming, even to the extent of correctly playing little passages that he would not necessarily have needed to come up with himself when writing the song; the kind of stuff that the band's guitarists would have added during recording. If the idea is to help to give the impression that this is a genuinely live performance, then the frequent lack of a drummer, not to mention microphones for the girls, does tend to undermine all of his hard work |
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Post by josef on Nov 9, 2016 16:18:52 GMT
I don't think I can add much to this (although I'm enjoying the responses) suffice to say that I also would have liked the intro to be slightly longer.
What I've always found a little disconcerting with this and other ABBA songs is the disparity between the song itself (energetic, driving, passionate) and some of the actual performances. Apart from the video for Dancing Queen, where Frida really cuts loose and is in perfect harmony with how she's singing (albeit miming), the girls often looked rather stiff, a few slight sways and awkward dance moves aside. Of course in The Movie and In Concert there's a lot more life and sweat evident. I'd love for them to have truly let their hair down more. But of course that was never really going to happen, being the squeaky-clean pop stars they were.
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Post by shoshin on Nov 9, 2016 16:37:50 GMT
I don't think I can add much to this (although I'm enjoying the responses) suffice to say that I also would have liked the intro to be slightly longer. ...I'd love for them to have truly let their hair down more. But of course that was never really going to happen, being the squeaky-clean pop stars they were. Two videos spring to mind, below. In IIWFTN the girls seem to be competing with each other enthusiastically, albeit that neither is distinguishing herself in terms of dancing ability  This is the perfect length for IIWFTN too as far as single potential is concerned; it's too long on the album. In Tiger, I'm impressed with their sassiness during the 'I am behind you...' part with the two male dancers who have joined them on stage. Frida is really into it, and even Agnetha manages to let her hair down for a few bars, before losing a bit of interest. btw I find the choreography of the Japanese troupe hilarious in this video, it never fails to cheer me up. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2016 17:11:54 GMT
I wonder how the public perception, at the time, might have differed if they'd seen Energetic ABBA a little bit more and Sanitised ABBA a little bit less. Would it have scared off the grandmas from the fan base? Would non-fans have looked on them more kindly?
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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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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 Deleted on Nov 10, 2016 9:03:44 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.
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Post by shoshin on Nov 10, 2016 12:24:13 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. |
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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 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 shoshin on Nov 10, 2016 15:43:03 GMT
^^ SOS is an excellent case in point, because the 'days' in 'where are those happy days' is diminished. This is quite unusual in a pop song, and brave even, given that it was a sht-or-bust song so a safety first approach would have been tempting.
One reason that bassists can get phased by ABBA songs is that, unless they have a jazz background, they tend to start from an assumption that their job is always to establish the root note of every chord. But ABBA songs quite regularly employ inverted chords. So for example just after they sing 'S-O-S' in the chorus, the bassist will want to change up from F to Bb and back again, whereas s/he needs to just stick with F all the way through. Plus of course, some of the bass lines are quite intricate; I've seen bassists rave on their forums about the beauty of OOU or IIWFTN. Credit to Rutger Gunnarsson rather than B & B though, which brings us back to a point you made earlier about relative contributions.
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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 iiwftn on Aug 19, 2023 13:22:32 GMT
It’s a very good song and I’ve heard Benny quote it one of his favourites.
I’m not a big fan of the goofy ‘classroom’ promo video though. It’s quite a high-octane song and would’ve benefited from a Bang-Boomerang-style video (in my opinion).
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Post by Alan on Aug 19, 2023 17:03:49 GMT
I’m not a big fan of the goofy ‘classroom’ promo video though. It’s quite a high-octane song and would’ve benefited from a Bang-Boomerang-style video (in my opinion). It’s not a promo video though. It was filmed for the TV special “ABBA-Dabba-Doo” in 1976, which included exclusive visual performances of eight tracks from Arrival (the exceptions being That’s Me, which later got a promo video, and the title track, though Dancing Queen was represented by the familiar video). The When I Kissed The Teacher film was included on the More Gold VHS in 1993 (as it was on the corresponding album) which has led some to think it was a proper video. It wasn’t. See abbaontv.com/programmes/1976/248 for more info. |
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Post by iiwftn on Sept 29, 2023 12:32:21 GMT
I’m not a big fan of the goofy ‘classroom’ promo video though. It’s quite a high-octane song and would’ve benefited from a Bang-Boomerang-style video (in my opinion). It’s not a promo video though. It was filmed for the TV special “ABBA-Dabba-Doo” in 1976, which included exclusive visual performances of eight tracks from Arrival (the exceptions being That’s Me, which later got a promo video, and the title track, though Dancing Queen was represented by the familiar video). The When I Kissed The Teacher film was included on the More Gold VHS in 1993 (as it was on the corresponding album) which has led some to think it was a proper video. It wasn’t. See abbaontv.com/programmes/1976/248 for more info. Fair doos, Alan. Appreciate it’s not the ‘official’ video but like many songs of that era, certain clips/performances eventually take on ‘de facto’ video status when re-shown visually over the years, be it on tv specials, music channels, You Tube etc. My point still stands though, such an upbeat song deserved something much better than the classroom clip. Would love to have seen the women properly dancing about to this one. |
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Post by evilincarnate on Sept 30, 2023 8:53:22 GMT
I would have also loved to have seen Benny dancing around but topless (and bottomless) - imagine what fun that would have been!!! |
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Post by joseph on Sept 30, 2023 9:54:00 GMT
I'm chuffed that a thread I started way back in 2016 is still getting responses?!
It's STILL one of my absolute favourites despite the fact the subject matter is now considered dodgy in some quarters. I don't care, it's just a bloody pop song (if a fine one at that). The sum total is more than its parts (if that makes any sense). I just love it, I find it so beautiful. I sing "tee-eee-eeechurr" in my head and wish I could do vibrato on "gonna teach him a lesson alriiiiiight". The clip in the classroom is cute, I love how young and fresh ABBA look although far from schoolkids lol but a proper promo would have been cool. I would have died and gone to heaven if this was on the setlist at ABBA VOYAGE but that's for another thread.
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Post by evilincarnate on Sept 30, 2023 10:14:47 GMT
Different times 'n' all - it was completely innocent and should be perceived as such - certainly a top-notch pop track in any case.
I too think it should be included in the 'Voyage' show (with Benny featured at least bare-chested) - maybe it will if the show ever makes its way to Australia where it was a radio staple and still gets the occasional airing.
"Angeleyes", of course, also needs to be included!
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Post by iiwftn on Oct 1, 2023 8:37:04 GMT
I'm chuffed that a thread I started way back in 2016 is still getting responses?! It's STILL one of my absolute favourites despite the fact the subject matter is now considered dodgy in some quarters. I don't care, it's just a bloody pop song (if a fine one at that). The sum total is more than its parts (if that makes any sense). I just love it, I find it so beautiful. I sing "tee-eee-eeechurr" in my head and wish I could do vibrato on "gonna teach him a lesson alriiiiiight". The clip in the classroom is cute, I love how young and fresh ABBA look although far from schoolkids lol but a proper promo would have been cool. I would have died and gone to heaven if this was on the setlist at ABBA VOYAGE but that's for another thread. It’s a wonderful song, Joseph; high-octane, melodic and incredibly well produced and executed. It ranks at #24 on my all-time ABBA top 40 list. |
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This is the perfect length for IIWFTN too as far as single potential is concerned; it's too long on the album. 
