Sydney was chosen as the only city in Australia to host an official Dancing Queen 50th celebration! So lucky!! Only seven countries around the world had this special honour: Sweden, Germany, Mexico, United Kingdom, Poland, The Netherlands and Australia.
Interstate guests flew in: Brenda and Brenton from Adelaide and Allison and Angel from Canberra!
Our free gift was a free ABBA disco at Harbord Bombies hotel (350 fans) and a lovely pink Dancing Queen sash (reusable, with a velcro attachment so you could rip it off, Waterloo skirt-style!)
We got drinks and a pizza to share at Bombies and Dancing Queen was played at least three times through the evening. We got there when doors opened at 6pm and the crowd filled out when the DJ started at 7.30pm. It seemed to finish early around 10pm with Thank You For The Music and Angeleyes.
For a while, we wondered if the DJ only had a copy of ABBA Gold to play, so it felt like being stuck on a cruise ship with only one album onboard. However, we were thrilled to hear When I Kissed the Teacher and Head Over Heels, indicating they also had More ABBA Gold!
It also meant “Rock Me” was nowhere to be found for mega-Bjorn fan Brenda, who requested it. No rockin and reeling for you!
There were a couple of amazing dancers wearing mirror balls around their heads and sparkly costumes and I was wondering why they were so petite — then realising I’d gotten so used to seeing only tall drag queens dancing in costumes!
Damien, who hadn’t turned up as he was attending an ultra-hip-cool birthday/pyjama party, texted to check what he was missing. When I replied that it was only ABBA Oro and ABBA Mas Oro, he wrote: “What?!! No chance of ever hearing You Owe Me One?!!” Nope, we’re missing all the fun! Meanwhile, the PJ party was so uber-cool, it was being live-streamed via Twitch.tv from the living room!
Hey, I need to apologise to Yol, who said that Dancing Queen was a CPR (Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation) song (has the correct beat for doing chest compressions). I’d recently completed a CPR course and was told it was Take A Chance on Me! “The person would DIE if you were doing the slower compressions to Dancing Queen,” I said. Wrong! Google showed it came it at the slower end of 100 beats per minute, but patient would still SURVIVE!! Dancing queens live on!
With our first aid knowledge refreshed, we confidently hit the dancefloor with all our authentic chorry moves, which totally went over the heads of the many youngsters. They didn’t know the words, but I suspect it’s because there are too many to learn for someone who didn’t grow up with incremental single and album releases over time. Maybe big-time young fans don’t know the words?
I felt like a freak for knowing them!! I danced with some of them and was asked where I’d got my ABBA Tshirt from. $70 from ABBA Voyage London! They were aghast at the price!
A guy, said he’d watched my Hallet’s Beach video and liked it. Thank you!
Most of the Sydney fans were there: Louise, David, Judy, Donna (transport expert), Christian, Manly Mark, James, David, Maureen, and ABBA expert Ian Cole!
The previous night we’d (me, Louise, David and TC) been to an ABBA night at the new GLBTIQA+ club, Tribe, which started with a screening of Mamma Mia the movie, and had three levels of different ABBA song styles and remixes and drag acts and the DJ sang along and knew all the words! The only drawback was the disco started at 10pm, which was a little on the late side! (even the 1990s ABBA discos started at 8pm!) We’d watched the movie, then left, as we’d wanted to save our big energy for the official Universal launch the next night. Louise and TC had stayed on to boogie and reported back that it was a very successful evening and they’d love to go again. Which we will!
It seems the GLBTIQA+ clubs still, 50 years later, know best how to please the “hard core” fans!
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(An earlier drama was when a bus driver dropped me off at the wrong venue, Harbord Diggers, so I was waiting all alone from 4.45pm until 6pm, texting everyone and being unable to find them in the huge multi-level eateries! This stuffed up my idea of a group shot at the nearby beach, and at 6pm when I insisted at the front desk on knowing where the ABBA disco was, the Concierge said there wasn’t one being held there. She said there were no taxis or buses to get to Bombies, so I asked for a way to get home. She looked me up and down in my ABBA t-shirt and cap and like a fairy godmother said: “No! You WILL go to the ABBA night!” She walked off to ring their shuttle bus driver and 10 minutes later he took me directly to Bombies — even though he’d been instructed to park around the corner, as they’re not permitted to drive people to a rival hotel! So I arrived in a mini-bus with “Harbord Diggers” in big letters on the side! Luckily it was still early enough to enjoy all the fun!)
Cotton Ward 