Not a huge fan, but they did some undeniably good stuff. Bought the album set for a decent price and enjoyed listening through their development. Good band.
There you go, they might be taking the time to make a couple more, add in the odd revision of an older tune (please please please Just Like That) and it's an album. Trouble is, with no budget or real time constraints (the tour likely not happening), there isn't the motivation to say "we are done!".
Yep, I really hope they keep going and record a full album — and then release it once we're on the other side of this wretched pandemic. What a great gift that would be to the world.
I live in Adelaide, South Australia and ABBA played at a now demolished footy stadium near where i grew up. I didn't go but heard them quite clearly from my back yard. I wasn't quite 8 years old but to my young ears(and memory) they sounded superb. ABBA were massive in Australia, brilliantly made pop music! Incidentally, Football Park back then hosted some great concerts, a few that come to mind were Neil Diamond, ELO and the Beach Boys in the late 70s. In the 90s I was lucky enough to catch U2 and the Rolling Stones there. Great days indeed
Well, this brings back some memories! As you said Bobby, ABBA were absolutely massive here in Australia. As an earlier poster mentioned, when ABBA finally touched down for their tour the newspapers simply announced "They're Here" because everybody knew who THEY were. At one point at this time, somebody did a test changing stations to find one playing an ABBA song and they were able to go for 24 hours just changing station to station as they were played so prolifically. There was ABBA merchandise everywhere. There were t-shirts, socks, pillows, stickers, badges, posters, MORE posters, newspaper liftouts, magazines - it was total saturation point. That of course is why there was a backlash, because they were EVERYWHERE. ABBA were my first ever favourite band. At 14 I had bought my first ever cassette, The Best Of ABBA, pictured upthread [which is also the first thing I bought on CD]. I had seen all the TV specials, watched all their appearances on Countdown [a national TV music show that broke the band here by playing Mamma Mia all the time before it was a single, which made them release the single!] Sound Unlimited and any other place I could see them. They were Top 10 all the time. I think at one point they had like 4 songs in the Top 10 and more in the Top 40. Fernando was #1 for 14 weeks and was put on the Australian version of Arrival, where in UK it was on ABBAs Greatest Hits [their version of our The Best of ABBA]. When they announced the tour I begged to be able to go. My parents sent off the mail order form [due to popular demand being so high this was the only way tickets were sold here in Perth - not sure about the Eastern States] and I eventually got my ticket in the mail. My seat was in the very back row. Which sucked, but was better than not going. Of course, about halfway through, maybe earlier, my memory is a little fuzzy now, I saw people going down to stand next to the lounge area barrier. I went too. I got MUCH closer. It was awesome and I will never forget it. The show was the second of two that night. The first one had been stopped for a while as there had been a bomb scare. This delayed our show a little, but you would never have known it by how the band were. It was on the radio and in the press etc, ABBA being here was HUGE and they were here for I think 5 nights starting March 9th and they were the last dates of the tour. 5 shows over 3 days. Fortunately I had a great dad, who knowing how much I loved them, took me down to the hotel where they were staying. I got to meet the whole band and have them autograph my copy of Arrival and the tour program. Both of which I still have. I kissed Frida on the cheek! It was amazing. I have been a fan ever since then, although the following year Queen came along to eventually win favourite band ever stakes, but I still love ABBA and play them frequently.
How amazing that you got to meet them! I didn't get to see ABBA live in Melbourne because my parents told me I was too little to go to a concert. I wept for days. Maybe weeks. And the merchandise was everywhere, wasn't it. I had ABBA socks and badges and a pillowcase and also a lunchbox, I think? I just read that their first Australian TV special received bigger ratings than the moon landing, which seems incredible in 2020 but was par for the course back in 1976. The whole country was obsessed with ABBA.
You see, even though ABBA were massive here in 1976/77, I don’t recall this kind of reaction. There may have been merchandise, but I didn’t have any if there was.
There was this guy known as Rob Zac, who was a notorious troll on one of the bigger Abba forums, before they all crashed and burned: and he raised the tribes wrath to a fever pitch by claiming Agnethas actual doppeganger was another Swede - a blonde known only as Seka. Heh. that was amusing.
It wasnt just un-hip. I could not reveal that I secretly liked Dancing Queen to my punk bandmates, or they would have kicked my ass good.
Somethings going On is the best thing any of them ever did after Super Trouper. Thats not a popular opinion with abba fans, but its mine. Agnetha's pre-Abba Swedish and German stuff is a real favorite of mine. Some of it is so kooky and weird I find myself wondering, "who thought THAT was a good idea?" but I love it anyway. She has made ONE album I like post Abba - My Colouring Book, and I wonder how much she had to do with it actually. In the old days, apparently she was quite large and in charge, knew how to run a console at least enough to operate playback, etc.. the arranging was always left to somebody else and she never played piano on her own records - but there was a quote from Little Gerhard who said, "she came so far at one point she didnt need me anymore". I dont like ANY of her 80s albums.
I started working at a radio station the very month that ABBA released "Waterloo", March of 1974. I remember our station playing the record. The station had been a sleepy MOR station for about five years and was beginning to break out into a bit more uptempo pop. So for the next few singles, our station was playing whatever ABBA released. The station continued its journey toward a more rock-type sound and ultimately got rid of the pop and stayed with the harder rock, so the ABBA records were no longer needed. I collected a bunch of those early Atlantic promo 45s as I saw them. Most of the promo singles were of the variety where the stereo version was on one side and the mono version was on the other side. Here's the one for "One Of Us". I moved to another radio station and they were really soft, so the ABBA records were all too hard. About the only one they played was "Fernando". Again, a bunch of ABBA single 45s got tossed, all of the promo variety, and I was there to grab them. For many years, if I needed to hear an ABBA song, chances are I had the 45 and could listen there. As a result, I never bought an ABBA album. To this day, I still don't own an ABBA vinyl album. Ultimately I bought ABBA GOLD for a CD, then the DEFINITIVE COLLECTION after seeing the show MAMMA MIA! While in Europe, I splurged on the powder blue COMPLETE STUDIO RECORDINGS. I then went further when the deluxe editions came out, I dutifully bought each one, and updated the GOLD and MORE GOLD collections with further masterings. One day, a decade or so ago, I put together a CD-R of all of the mono versions of songs that I had on promo singles. It's generally understood that these are all fold-downs, and they probably are, but where else are you gonna go to hear ABBA in mono? I've pretty much stayed out of the discussions about which version of an ABBA record sounds slightly better than the rest. My philosophy is that ABBA always had a bit of a noisy, compressed, wall-of-sound and that's the best way to experience them.
I was an early antagonist of theirs. I can´t fathom why now, but I absolutely hated "Mamma Mia" and the eponymous album when it appeared. I had liked "Waterloo" when they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, but I soon grew to dislike them. Perhaps I was a little snob at ten years old? Wouldn´t like what everybody else liked. Stupid, I know. But that soon changed. A childhood friend of mine had the "ABBA" album, and he played it a lot. I soon realised what a fool I had been, and I bought the "S.O.S." single soon afterwards. I fell in love with the vocals, the synthesizer motif befor the chorus and... Just about everything. ABBA is now one of my dearest sources for music. I find it hard to dislike any ABBA song - I can even overlook the trivial and clumsy lyric of "Crazy World"! So count me as a fan.
I’ve got a couple of questions about promo records. How did US and UK promo records get into the hands of the public? Were they for sale? Were they in bins/skips? Does the Mono or stereo versions of the songs sound any different to each other? Is mono more compressed as you said?
What a great reminder of all the stuff that was out there. This ad reminded me that I much preferred the Australian release cover for Ring Ring. The original is not a great favourite. I think the blue cover is much better.
I agree 100% that the blue cover is the best one. The Swedish original cover is charming, but it looks like a period piece.
This was is the lovely inner sleeve cover for Arrival which was only sold during the 1977 Tour. I like how the catalogue used the same font as the Australian cover for Money Money Money. Looking at discogs, it seems really expensive from £24-37. Even on popsike it goes as high as £77.
And yet according to John Lydon, the Sex Pistols all loved ABBA! Glen Matlock has admitted that the riff for 'Pretty Vacant' was inspired by 'SOS' and Sid reportedly ran up to Agnetha and Frida at Stockholm airport and asked for their autographs. They screamed and ran away! What a pity all this wasn't known at the time. With the Pistols' endorsement, you could've been an out and proud ABBA-loving punk!
Radio stations were given the promo records by the record company, usually in multiple numbers as records wore out in general on-air use. If a record wasn't going to be played by the station, the music or program director would occasionally clear his or her desk by setting the records out in the office for general consumption of the employees. I'd always rifle through the piles looking for anything I recognized, either song title or artist or even in my case, anything on my favorite label, A&M. Some employees would grab stuff from those piles and march right down to the local record store that sold used records. They'd buy them at a discount and sell them, which is how they filtered out to the public. If you read the small print on most promo records, they state that they cannot be sold and are the property of the record company who can request that they be returned at any time. I don't believe there's ever been a single case of a record company demanding the return of their promo records! I've listened to the mono versions and am pretty sure they were simple fold-downs for the mono radio stations.
There was an ABBA boxset released in 1988 which included the albums from Waterloo to The Visitors. I would love to have it even if it looks cheap and tacky. I’ve looked on popsike just now and it goes for a disgraceful amount. £155-£244.
And speaking of A&M, for a time in the 90s after PolyGram bought A&M, ABBA records were manufactured and distributed by A&M in the US. I've always liked this "Dancing Queen" CD single with the A&M artwork:
Love these. The pillowcase is brilliant. As usual, Frida is the only one making a genuine effort to be sexy.
