No matter how many countries are said to lie within the borders of the Scandinavian Peninsular, it’s almost certain that Sweden is probably the one on the right hand side.
Also, if there’s anything more certain than her unassailable geographical location near Norway, it is that Sweden is rapidly gaining a well merited reputation as the home of Lapland West, a nite-life fleshpot-oriented clubland scene for those of us with a keen interest in watching performances of the Terpsichorean Arts occurring at the most adjacent of close quarters. We can expand at least one of our horizons by experiencing, out of no more than an academic duty, the post-erotic delights of one of the many Lapp Dancing clubs which, in recent times, have sprung up like confetti at a wedding outside a church on a sunny Saturday afternoon in June.
(Santa Claus is also supposed to live in Lapland but, after reading between the lines of several recent biographies on Claus, my belief systems have being stretched to the limit by the very concept of His existence.)
The Leisure Industry, such as it is, has always driven Sweden’s raison d’etre for being there, even before Father Christmas was born. In the Dark Ages, long before Digital Television was invented, people had to make their own entertainment, so bored Vikings would come across to Britain on dull Bank Holiday weekends for a spot of traditional pillaging. This activity offered a more potent alternative to domestic Viking Bank Holiday pastimes such as honing the business end of one’s axe to a razor-like sharpness, redecorating one’s Long Ship in magnolia and magenta (with matching oars) at the wife’s request, or forming an orderly queue to get into IKEA.
(Today, satisfying one’s ennui on such a macrocosmic scale would probably merit a custodial sentence in prison, a good example of how attitudes to pillaging, however much legitimised by time and convention, have hardened during the unforgiving years of the incumbent New Labour Government (Prop. T. Blair)).
Suddenly in January 1963 the pillaging stopped everywhere (except in certain districts of Newcastle). Sweden had discovered popular music in the shape of The Spotnicks, a group of musicians who were a) instrumental and b) instrumental in putting Sweden at the forefront of the Scandinavian music scene for several weeks with their recording of the lyrically arcane Hava Nagila, which means Please Buy This Record in an obscure 9th century Swedish patois in common use among the inhabitants of the more northerly suburbs of Malmo.
Appetites whetted by this seminal achievement in the sphere of musical excellence, the population of another sphere (Earth this time) was now forced to fast-forward ten years (like Superman in the movie but the other way round and for a lot longer) before stopping again for the next major Swedish breakthrough in the world of entertainment systems. The date was 6 April 1974 in Brighton, England, where the Eurovision Song Contest fell to ABBA, Waterloo and a quite totally wonderfully bizarre clothing experience displayed by the two front women, Agnetha and Anni-Frid.
(It’s perhaps unfair to lay the charge of cultural obsessionism at the door of such an amiable and welcoming (apart from Greta Garbo) race of people as the Swedes. Their country is, after all, the the spiritual home of the Adjustable Spanner. Also, the world’s first commercially available Turbot-Powered car was built and tested there. So it’s not a case of simply having fun all the time.)
ABBA’s approach to songwriting evolved into an elaborate and painstaking process which produced a lot of hit material. Their songs are inventively melodic, and possess an inherent dynamism underscored by a powerhouse production, or at least that’s what it says here. In order to illustrate this point let us discuss, however briefly (thankfully), one aspect of the arrangement of one of Bjorn and Benny’s most complex songs.
Dancing Queen is undoubtedly one of the best pop songs ever to be released in Scandinavia and enter the UK despite the best efforts of H.M. Customs. It is a seriously impressive musical achievement. Consider, if you will, its complex harmonies and counter harmonies appearing from nowhere and transcending the aural qualities embodied by your ears. Listen to its cadences and counter cadences vibrating through your speakers and metaphorically transporting you to a deliciously cheeky climax with their orgasmic musical foreplay. See its revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements going round and round at 45 rpm on a flattish disc of 1970’s Vinyl.
Breathtaking stuff.
ABBA parted company from themselves in 1983, a year or so after their popularity really began to get on everybody’s nerves. The band cited ‘sexual differences’ as the reason for the split. I’m really glad they packed it all in and stopped being in the charts when they did. It wouldn’t have given me any pleasure at all to see them finish up like the Wurzels, plying their trade in Somerset pubs, drinking cider all day and singing poignant songs about motorised agricultural equipment.
The ABBA legacy is by no means confined to a prominent position in the pantheon of Scandinavian Popular Music. The extra dimension they brought to their stage appearances by wearing various clothes of one kind or another formed a large part of their appeal. The many ‘fashion statements’ made by Bjorn and Benny (not forgetting the other two) during live performances or video releases are now available on the DVD The Definitive Collection, which contains 30 official ‘promo films’, in both sound and vision tracing the group’s illustrious career from beginning to end via the middle.
Sadly, I am unable to recommend this DVD for two reasons, the first being the presence of Thank You For The Music, a song which surely gives Schmalz a bad name. Upon hearing the strains of the introduction to this supreme exercise in self-indulgence, the viewer is advised to switch off the DVD player and switch it on again when the track has finished. This song is so cheesy that it should be treated like Roquefort and left to mature in a cave, although when the Roquefort is ready to eat, Thank You For The Music should be left in the cave on its own and the entrance to the cave blocked up with boulders and permanently sealed with some kind of cave sealant.
It’s as bad as that.
The second reason concerns Agnetha’s teeth. In a sinister move designed to unsettle the consumer, Track 1 (Waterloo) and Track 2 (Ring Ring) are not the contemporary recordings that one has been led to believe. On these two ‘promo films’, Agnetha has clearly received the benefit of dental treatment which is equally clearly seen to be cosmetically desirable for her career on Track 3 (Mama Mia) and Track 4 (SOS), both of which postdate the first two Tracks in every known chronological timescale system.
This pisses me off no end, because when I buy a DVD I don’t expect to have to sit taking notes while I watch 30 recordings by four Swedish Megastars (sorry, Icons) in order to establish when, exactly, the blonde woman had her teeth done relative to the order of play on the DVD menu. Furthermore I now distrust the entire contents of The Definitive Collection on the basis that chronological integrity may have been sacrificed in the name of dental perfection.
Despite the onerousness involved in so doing, I was moved to log all the raw data relevant to Agnetha-related dental matters from each of the 30 tracks on the DVD (excluding bonus tracks). I was then able to revise the order of play so that the tracks could be seen and heard in some sort of meaningful order, namely:
[ul]
ABBA: Pre Agnetha’s Cosmetic Dental Work and
ABBA: Post Agnetha’s Cosmetic Dental Work.
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Of course, due to the regrettable deficiencies of current DVD technology, I have to reprogram the unit to present the tracks in the new correct order every time I wish to play The Definitive Collection. This is something I will just have to deal with in my own way, as will we all, but our assiduity in trying to build order out of chaos does not excuse Polar Music’s cavalier attitude to historical accuracy in the sense of not getting everything in the proper order in a time/event context sequentially one after the other.
Unsurprisingly I now find that I am sick of the sight of ABBA, especially Agnetha’s teeth, which I much preferred when she had a gap between the two front ones, and therefore I am willing to sell my copy of The Definitive Collection, together with a short but highly informative monograph concerning its chronology, at the bargain price of £15.79 Sterling ($24.58 US, 247.11 Swedish Krona, 25.24 European Euros) excluding shipping charges and local taxes.
I will also consider a straight swap with anyone possessing a copy of Father Christmas: The Struggle For Recognition, in which His biographer tells of Christmas’s constant visits to the dentist for surgery, and of His subsequent decision to grow a beard in order to conceal from prying eyes the inferior crownwork now occupying His mouth. (The Spotnicks, when faced with a choice between beards and Space Helmets to conceal their dental deficiencies, wisely chose the latter.)
ABBA: The Definitive Collection is available at my house to anyone with the correct change (or Father Christmas book) and if I’m not at home I’ll leave it under the Shed at the bottom of the garden. Do, however, beware of The Cat. It’s her territory and she has just returned from having her teeth done by the Local Vet.
