Tag: ABBA

Eurovision 2024 Georges River Council

Went to Georges River Council’s booked-out Eurovision party at 4am in Hurstville. Incredible spread — free meatballs, cinnamon scrolls and coffee/hot chocolates!

FABBA performed 4.15am and they hadn’t seen my giant ABBA flag before, which we all waved around.

Yol and Ricki had attended last year and they invited me and Louise.

When the famous Eurovision fanfare blared at 5am, the auditorium was packed.

Council gave out free Eurovision Bingo cards and voting score sheets ranking “Bop-ability”, “Gives all the feels”, “Outfits be snatched” and “Flawless performance”.

My fave song was Croatia’s Ri Tim Tagi Dim, described by a critic as “for cat lovers and anxiety sufferers” and written and performed by Baby Lasagna (who hates lasagna!). It was inspired by many young people leaving farms and heading to foreign cities for better jobs. Though excited, the protagonist has anxiety attacks over leaving home and will mostly miss his cat. “Rim tim tagi dim” is the name of a fictional home village folk dance — “heavy metal with doilies” SBS called it.

I also loved Finland’s hilarious “No Rules” where a guy runs around pretending to be nude and there were last-minute strategically-placed props protecting his modesty. At Council’s party, several guys had dressed in the No Rules t-shirts, wigs and hats, so fun.

I loved UK entry’s Olly Alexander starring role in the AIDs TV series It’s A Sin and his song Dizzy unfortunately got zero in the public vote (which seemed unbelievable, considering the Eurovision audience).

ABBA’s appearance was mostly lifted from their Voyage show. Then my fave song didn’t win (came second) and it was all feeling like when your fave team comes last.

Just then I got a phone call from an ABBA fan we’d met early this morning and he offered a lift back so I gladly accepted and was out of there for a big long recovery sleeeeeeep…

Listening party for Agnetha’s new A+ album

5 ABBA fans watching Bobby's Brother on TV.Watching Bobby’s Brother on TV

We met at Pastizzi’s for Maltese pastries and tiramisu, then went back to mine to listen to Agnetha’s latest A+ reimagined album, in the exact tracklisted order.

Had a discussion about whether Agnetha’s A+ album cover was shot in 2023 or 2013. David sought a ruling via ABBAtalk and turns out it’s 2023 so the next dins at Pastizzi’s is on him!

The poor love was already exhausted after him and Angus had spent all day, when not doing their Nina Pretty Ballerina office jobs, running around since the crack of dawn trying to track down Agnetha’s A+ CD at any record shop in town. NONE had it! They’d wanted to recreate the record-buying excitement of a new album release from back in the good old days. At least we’d all combined our postage costs to do one bulk order from Europe so that’ll arrive one day…

There’s a fave line we all love from Agnetha’s new single, Where Do We Go From Here: “I thought I carried a heart made of steel, But you cracked it open ’cause you broke the seal.” Tech expert Angus used all his AI know-how, involving 10,000 super computers, to ask it to create a picture of Agnetha “breaking the seal” so we could all enjoy this artistic concept in visual format. “The main problem is the hands don’t look very real,” he said, oblivious to the fact that the concept of an imaginary Agnet breaking a seal was so far out there. (NB: His custom t-shirt-making machine had run out of transfer paper but as soon as he gets more, we’ll all be able to place orders…)

Angus’s AI
interpretation of
“Agnetha breaking
the seal”.

We ate Swedish pickled mushroom-flavoured potato crisps, Kafferep biscuits, Dumle candy and Daim chocolate, from IKEA, after Angus visited to get a free KÖR car organiser, designed for mid-sized SUVs, and a $10 voucher. While renowned for his attention to detail, Louise helpfully pointed out: “You just have to buy a car now so you can use it.”

I haven’t mentioned anything about George so far, suffice to say he spent the evening straightening all my pictures on the walls, as they were “slightly crooked”.

Then we watched Bobby’s Brother’s enlightening interview with Agnetha’s friend and producer Jörgen Elofsson. Why did he strip the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra off the entire album and replace it with a modern-day equivalent of Moog Plays ABBA?

Our faves were Back on Your Radio and I Was A Flower, with the great accusatory line: “Now look what you have done,” which prompted discussion about ABBA songs that blame someone else for their misery. George recalled Happy Hawaii has the line: “Someone is waiting and I forget you,” so we replayed that amazing ABBA song.

Had a moment’s silence for UK Alex’s canine critic Zippy, who loves the whistling bit in Perfume In the Breeze. Sorry Zips, it’s gone!

Am not going to name who looked totally confused during the whole listening, and the other whose fave song had been transformed into “something you’d play while doing the ironing”.

Meanwhile, at the same time out in Trundle they were holding the annual ABBA Festival in the middle of nowhere, and for the first time were live-streaming! ABBA fan H was planning on doing some busking there, but the council application required $10million in liability insurance! I dared him to play anyway: “I want live footage of you being arrested for playing Mamma Mia illegally on the main drag during an ABBA Festival!” But he knew there was no way we’d be visiting him at Bathurst Correctional Centre, since we hadn’t even made it to Trundle (5.5 hours’ drive from Sydney).

ABBA pool party!

“Sue lies by the pool…”

Rain and thunderstorms were predicted for my ABBA Pool Party in the height of summer in Oz, but luckily we caught a break and it was warmly humid with a mild breeze. 21 degrees, nice!

In order of Arrival, there was me, Louise, Yol, George and David. We were going to get takeaway and eat it by the pool, but cos we’d been brought up in the 60s/70s to “never swim within an hour of eating” (years later disproven) we decided to follow that maxim – the theory back then was you’d get stomach cramps and DIE/drown! We’re still too terrified to go for a dip after having thought about eating even a crumb, so we put all our food in the fridge and headed off to the pool.

Got there, whipped our covid masks off and jumped in.

Had a splash around and after a while we lined up along the side of the deep end for a photo, with the ABBA towel on the edge and ABBA dolls sunbaking on it. All ready for our closeups, when suddenly WHOOSH!! EMMERGENCY!! A gust of wind and the ABBA dolls and towel were blown into the deep end of the pool and needed rescuing!

“Sue lies by the pool” had become “Sue in the pool!”

Worse, the chlorine had made all the colours in the doll clothes and ABBA towel run, threatening to stain the dolls! All irreplaceable! Luckily the dolls all knew how to swim and floated, so I leapt out of the pool and ran back upstairs to my flat, with Louise’s wise words ringing in my ears: “Use the Colour Catchers!!”

I used nearly a whole pack of Colour Catchers in the washing machine and they all came out bright red after the wash!!

I gave the ABBA dolls and their clothes a thorough cold rinse. Then back to my guests!!

We all rinsed off and had dinner outside on the balcony – George had thoughtfully bought us all Newtown’s famous Clem’s chicken and tabbouleh, and we finished off with Connoisseur chocolate icecreams in blood orange and hazelnut flavours. Divine!

By now, it was about 8pm, so it was time to finish up, as I’d just invited everyone for only a casual swim and dinner get together.

But David started rummaging around on this phone and lo and behold found several rare ABBA clips he just had to share. “Fire up the chromecast!” he ordered.

I turned on the telly, then remembered I had three 1-hour BBC specials my fabulous ex had sent me recently – The Joy of ABBA, ABBA at the BBC and Agnetha: ABBA and After. Well, there was no way anyone was leaving before all three had been fully watched and discussed at length! (We found it shocking that’s LOTS of rare Aussie footage was featured in all the UK specials and we NEVER get to see that footage here! It’s because the BBC has more $$$ for sorting out copyright issues.)

Eventually, after mentioning Bjorn’s latest podcast, our admiration for Bobby’s Brother’s analysis of ABBA songs on Youtube, and the recent rising view count of my Someone Else’s Story vid, it was time to say goodbyes: “Take a pic of the ABBA dolls drying on the clothes stand!” So I did. And here it is!

Eurovision slumber party!

eurovision2017

Went to a Eurovision slumber party with scavenger hunt and bingo at Louise’s place. Started on Saturday night, watching the second semi-final, while Louise cooked delicious Ukrainian dishes – borscht soup and Chicken Kiev – to honour this year’s host nation.

It was lucky for us ABBA fans that Ukraine’s flag has the same colours as Sweden, so there were plenty of blue and yellow streamers strung around!

Continue reading Eurovision slumber party!

Found ABBA Photobook bargain!

bike
ABBA riding bicycles in Sweden.

Spotted lying flat on a box (far behind the counter at Vinnies) ready to be put on the shelves, the ABBA Photobook (with $75 price tag on it from Kinokuniya and nicely covered in protective plastic). Asked nonchalantly: “Oh, is that ABBA book for sale?” $20! I flicked through it studiously to check it was OK and the sales assistant seemed surprised anyone would want to buy it! Gave me that thrill again of finding stuff in secondhand shops when looking for ABBA stuff pre-internet!

Still on my wishlist is ABBA The Backstage Stories (my birthday this month) if anyone has a spare copy they want to offload!