Friday, July 18, 2008

ABBAcadabra?

This blog's ABBA-mania has run its course. No more jump suits. No more blue eye shadow. However, one last "Thank You For The Music." If this is a (fair & balanced) escape from the dog days of summer, so be it.

[x Salon]
Knowing Me, Knowing ABBA
By Mary Elizabeth Williams

(Summary: How did a cheesy Scandinavian pop group in jumpsuits and blue eye shadow become as seriously beloved as the Beatles?)

AP Photo

The four singers of Swedish pop group ABBA pose for a photo in 1977. They are from left to right: Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha (known as Anna) Faltskog, Annifrid (known as Frida) Lyngstad and Benny Anderson.



[x YouTube/amigosdx Channel]
ABBA — "Thank You For The Music" (1977)


Forget the sparkly jumpsuits. Forget the girls with blue eye shadow, the boys with feathered hair, the less than impressive dance moves. Forget how uncool you ever felt belting out "The Name of the Game" in the privacy of your car. And while you're at it, let go of the shame surrounding your secret yearning to tuck in to "Mamma Mia!" this weekend. Because ABBA rock. Embrace it. Own it.

What is it about this rather cheesy Scandinavian pop group that sticks in our hearts like hot chewing gum on a summertime pavement? How is it that a group that essentially disbanded in 1982 is still selling upward of 2 million albums a year? It can't just be a collective nostalgia for wide collars, kitsch and up-tempo songs sung with an English-as-a-second-language accent. We can wrap our critical credibility around other acts more obtuse and obscure, we can brush off our relationship with ABBA — Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog — as purely novelty based. But how cynical would we have to be to believe that the brightness and liveliness and pure fun of something diminishes its artistic value? Is it possible to stop worrying and learn to love the Björn?

You wouldn't be alone. Elisabeth Vincentelli, author of the 33 1/3 series book "ABBA: ABBA Gold," says, via e-mail, "The band has tons of fans among the kind of artists that usually get the kind of 'serious' critical recognition ABBA itself sometimes doesn't get (Elvis Costello, Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields, et cetera). The songs are incredibly melodic, and their sophistication hides behind apparent simplicity. The arrangements are often complex (Andersson and Ulvaeus used a lot of multitracking, both on the instruments and on the voices), and the interpretation by Fältskog and Lyngstad is a very canny mix of a pop sensibility and one that's closer to musical theater."

The story begins in 1966, when Björn Ulvaeus, a member of folk group the Hootenanny Singers, met Benny Andersson, keyboardist for the Hep Stars. Before long, Ulvaeus and Andersson were collaborating, writing songs and playing together. It has to be the first and last time in pop history that words like "hootenanny" and "hep" ever spawned anything so auspicious.

By the early '70s, Ulvaeus had paired off both musically and romantically with young pop singer Agnetha Fältskog, and Andersson had done likewise with vocalist Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Frida for short). And when Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid acronymed themselves into ABBA and started making music, they created a sound so big it reverberates on the dance floor to this day.

The first time I heard the Swedish supergroup, I was a little girl, out shopping with my mom. I had been raised on Top 40, on the Fifth Dimension and the Carpenters. But ABBA stunned me. I didn't know quite who Fernando was, or what the hell he was doing that "frightful night" he crossed the Rio Grande, but the melody was so intriguing, the girls' harmony so pretty, I felt like crying right there in the supermarket.

The group had already had its big breakthrough two years before "Fernando" hit my eardrums, cleaning up at the Eurovision song contest with "Waterloo," a criminally infectious paean of romantic surrender. Over the course of the '70s, ABBA continued their stream of hits, becoming one of the biggest-selling acts in the world, spawning sold-out tours and shattering chart records from Australia to Japan to the U.K. Back at home, I was morphing from a Jackson Five-loving 'tween to a surly prepubescent with a taste for punk. Even at the group's height, it wasn't considered cool to like ABBA. But deep down, I always knew that no amount of Sex Pistols would ever shake the grip "Money Money Money" had on my soul. Other bands of the same era, notably the Raspberries and Badfinger, tinkered with similar elegantly orchestrated, bouncy styles. But do the members of Badfinger have a museum in Stockholm devoted exclusively to their history, as ABBA members do? Has there ever been a Raspberries-based hit musical?

Part of the secret of the group's allure is ABBA's startlingly spiritual foundation. Says Matt Barton, curator of recorded sound at the Library of Congress, "Here and there, there's something that's so much like a hymn." In fact, notes Barton, ABBA organist Benny Andersson has gone on to record his interpretation of a Swedish hymn. Anyone who has ever gathered to sing up to the heavens has a little ABBA in his or her cultural DNA. No wonder the group has been known to provoke near Pentecostal fervor.

But it's not the gospel-choir-like charm of the music, or even the elaborate way it comes together, that makes ABBA enduring. No, it's the potent cocktail of the subliminally spiritual mixed with the flat-out libidinous. Listening to ABBA again lately, I've become increasingly aware of something I'd only vaguely perceived at all those "Does Your Mother Know?"-tinged wedding receptions and ironically themed gay bars — this music is actually pretty damn sexy.

There's something undeniably, urgently compelling about a song like "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" a greedy love call for satisfaction (no wonder Madonna sampled its hook for "Hung Up"). It's there in the brazen sexual equanimity of "Voulez-Vous," with its shivery ah-has, and the kittenish oooohs of "Dancing Queen." The lyrics may not be quite Shakespeare or even Holland-Dozier-Holland, even if you grant extra slack for not having English as a first language. But oversaturated orchestration, the way the women's voices could soar through the changes in an "SOS" or "Knowing Me, Knowing You" -- they're forces too potent and insistent to be mere disco-era pastiche.

By the early '80s, both of the couples that formed ABBA had broken up, and the band went into a hiatus that has lasted to the present. The members did solo projects and minor collaborations, though nothing they did individually ever matched the impact they had as a foursome. Their image remained frozen in a polyester time warp. But the music never went away. It turned up in soundtracks, like those of "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and "Muriel's Wedding." It became the basis of a successful Broadway musical, "Mamma Mia!" which in turn spawned the movie now hitting theaters. Despite the clothes, the awkward choreography, the often nonsensical lyrics, ABBA endure because there's something spiritual and sexual and just plain sweet in their harmonies, something playfully innocent and disarmingly sophisticated. It's the soundtrack to Grandma's 80th birthday party, or a one-night stand. So if you want to sing along to "Take a Chance," don't feel embarrassed. That's what it was written for. Besides, you know all the words.

[Mary Elizabeth Williams has a degree in Radio/Television/Film from Temple University. She has been a restaurant critic, a film critic, and a web critic. Williams is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. By her own admission, she has very little formal training for anything, but is quite good at giving her opinion.]

Copyright © 2008 Salon Media Group, Inc.


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Forget The Joker, We've Got The Hopester!

Pardon me, Joel Stein, but your jokes about The Hopester are lame, too. If this is (fair & balanced) truth to humor, so be it.

[x LA Fishwrap]
How To Make Fun Of Obama: Tips For Those Who Find It Too Hard To Joke About The (Presumptive) Democratic Candidate
By Joel Stein

I believe comedic change is possible. Since the New Yorker dropped a bum joke on its cover this week, comedians have appeared on every news outlet to whine about how hard it is to make fun of Barack Obama. Really? They have an arsenal of jokes to use against a 71-year-old ex-POW cancer survivor and Obama is too touchy a subject?

I'm here to help. I called some comedian friends to compile a guide to making fun of Obama. The consensus is there's not yet one standout attribute to pound away on (McCain is old! Clinton cheats on his wife! Bush is stupid! Al Gore is a robot! John Kerry makes me feel inexplicably sad inside!), but there are areas to explore. If we just work a little harder, and sacrifice a little bit, we can achieve greatness. We are the immature jerks we have been waiting for.

He's a nerd. Yes, he seems cool because he plays basketball and fist-bumps and knows about pop music. But that's because we're comparing him with other politicians, all of whom are older than our grandparents. Compare Obama with other 46-year-olds and he's Urkel. He's the kid at the Model United Nations conference who says, "Guys, guys, c'mon. Let's not make fun of Eastern Europe." And the brutal truth is, even if women faint at your rallies, you'll never feel cool inside when you have Alfred E. Neuman's ears.

He's ridiculously earnest. Obama is the kind of guy who not only talked you into showing up for Hands Across America but afterward insisted that it was awesome. On "Saturday Night Live," Fred Armisen plays up Obama's weird pauses and brow furrows like he's Yogi Bear getting bad news from a doctor. Comedian Marc Maron does a really smart bit about how Obama stares out into the distance while giving a speech. "The first time you see him you're like, 'What's he looking at?' But then you're like, 'I don't know, but it's good and full of hope. And he's the only one who can see it. If we vote for him, maybe he'll take us there.' "

He's black. Apparently, the differences between black people and white people can be funny. Trust, me I've seen this on HBO's "Def Comedy Jam."

When I called "Simpsons" writer Matt Selman for help on Obama jokes, he came up with this: "A lot of people are worried about Obama being assassinated because he's black. The solution to that is a much blacker vice president. I'm thinking Flavor Flav." Admittedly, Selman nervously said, "Don't make me look racist!" about 20 times before and after telling me his joke.

He's manorexic. No one loses weight on the campaign trail, when you're grabbing fast food and eating whatever is offered out of politeness, but this guy is always turning down doughnuts. It's like he signed up for running for president because he thought "president" was some kind of 10K race.

As comedian Aisha Tyler told me, "He has the build of an ex-high school javelin thrower. He's the guy on the track team who only does that one event, and he weighs the same as the javelin."

He's effete. He's well-dressed. He eats arugula -- which he buys at Whole Foods. He mocks those who use guns. He is, as we mentioned, quite thin. He may only be half-black, but he's three-quarters gay.

He called his own grandmother a racist. We all have racist grandmothers, but we don't brag about it to everyone. I like to imagine that his granny wasn't that bad and that Obama was just super-sensitive. Like she would tell him it was bedtime and he'd yell, "Oh, I have to go to bed because I'm black!" Or she'd tell him to clean up his room and he'd start yelling, "Oh, clean my room, huh? My people stopped obeying the white woman 100 years ago, Grammy!" Then they'd both laugh and she'd whip him.

His name is weird. The unfunny people beat us to the Osama/Obama bit, which really could have been mined. But Obama also dropped the "Barry" nickname in college. Do you remember those classmates who suddenly found their culture and had to share it with you like they were on the ninth step of AA? You just wanted to trudge through "Portrait of a Lady," but they felt compelled to sit you down in the dorm hallway and explain how they're no longer Susie, they're Mei Mei now. Then they recounted their whole journey of identity by using a lot of words that made it clear that Mei Mei was going to be a lot less fun than Susie was.

His platitudes need deconstruction. "We are the people we've been waiting for"? Actually, I'm pretty sure we're the people who put all our money in Yahoo and then bought a house to flip and now are hocking everything we have. We're the people China has been waiting for.

[Joel Stein is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a regular contributor to TIME. A New Jersey native, Stein attended Stanford University and received a BA and an MA in English. He wrote a weekly column for The Stanford Daily during his undergraduate years.]

Copyright © 2008 Los Angeles Times


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Quit Whinin' So I Can hear This Song!

E.T. (aka Former Senator Phil Gramm, R-TX) is The Geezer's former economic advisor. E.T. is vice chairman of UBS Warburg, a Swiss banking and financial services giant. UBS is currently the focus of a DOJ investigation into money laundering via offshore banking enterprises. Of course, E.T. is diversified: the former senator has invested in soft-core porn films: "Beauty Queens" (pageant judges having sex with contestants) and "White House Madness" (with a crazed Nixonian president wandering around the White House in the nude). Gramm's effort to participate in the financing of "Truck Stop Women" was undone by poor timing: the producers already had enough money raised by the time Gramm offered them his check for $15K. Which version of E.T. is more disgusting? The tough-minded econ prof scolding all of us for being whiners? Or, the sleazeball slumlord financing skin flicks? Has The Geezer seen "Truck Stop Women"? Perhaps E.T. told The Geezer the "joke" about the woman who was raped by an ape. If this is (fair & balanced) bat guano politics, so be it.

[x YouTube/Versusplus Channel]
"Bearish"
Marcy Shaffer's Parody Of "Cherish" (Words And Music By Terry Kirkman)



[Rick Logan - Lead Vocal; Background Vocals
Greg Hilfman - Music Director

The co-producers of VERSUS wrote:

So many wrongs. So little time.

Thus the genesis of VERSUS. Born of the conviction that musical parody is mightier than PowerPoint, VERSUS is an equal opportunity skewer-er of the ruthless, the truthless, the reckless, the feckless.

VERSUS parodies are written by Marcy Shaffer, whose professional writing experience includes television, film, lyrics, verse and … musical parody. The parody lyrics on the page become the audio of VERSUS courtesy of some of the best musical talent in the business.

VERSUS is co-produced by Russ Meyer, a private equity veteran whose industry expertise includes financial services as well as entertainment.]

℗ © 2006, 2007 RMSWorks LLC. Lyrics © 2005, 2006, 2007 RMSWorks LLC.


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