June 22, 2008
A really wonderful evening’s entertainment by a proper tribute band, who dress up as and pretend to be the celebrated 70s supergroup. Authenticity is clearly their watchword; they opened the show wearing replicas of the glam-rock inspired costumes in which the real Abba won Eurovision in 1974 – even down to Agnetha’s blue silk pixie hat - and progressed through the years with other outfits familiar to fans from Abba: The Movie and other records of live performances. They did maginificently well at re-creating the Abba “Wall of Sound”, there were no mishaps with the sound system, the volume was perfect; and the two girl singers were outstanding at reproducing the trademark Abba amplified harmonies. They looked super – though these girls aren’t quite the leggy amazons that the real Agnetha and Frida were, they were very attractive in their sparkly platform boots, and both could combine lyrical sweetness with belt-it-out power.
The real Abba were often criticized for the boringness of their stage shows, in which Agnetha and Frida would wear something very weird and bop a little bit – it was long before tippy-top choreographed routines became a requisite for live bands – and Abbamania have done very well at achieving a balance between reproducing what Abba actually did with what today’s audiences would actually like to watch. Their other significant achievement is to involve the audience in the performance in a big way. They know that everyone is singing along to the songs anyway, so they bring it out and make it a feature – they get people standing up, waving arms and swaying in unison, bopping away on the spot, or actually dancing in the isles, they allow the audience to finish lines, they get the audience split in two halves to compete with one another. It was all excellent fun, and the audience, as you can imagine, was wildly enthusiastic, yelling, screaming, whooping and whistling when mere applause didn’t seem emphatic enough to express their appreciation.
Having recently gone to see Thriller Live! it was interesting to observe how differently this concert was structured. Abbamania did not pretend to leave the stage without playing the song everyone was waiting to hear; but they also didn’t build up the audience’s anticipation for that favourite song by playing a long run of really boring ones first – indeed they couldn’t have if they’d wanted to, because Abba in fact produced hit after hit of incredibly catchy tunes with increasingly thoughtful lyrics, and it appeared on Saturday that everybody knew and loved all of those songs and almost all of the words, including my 11 year old daughter (how, I do not know). There just wasn’t one single dud, all the way from Waterloo to Super-Trouper. I was teenager in the 70s and it really brought it all back to me in all its salty splendour. I would definitely go to see this act again, and I’m just on my way to HMV now to get a copy of Abba Gold…
The real Abba were often criticized for the boringness of their stage shows, in which Agnetha and Frida would wear something very weird and bop a little bit – it was long before tippy-top choreographed routines became a requisite for live bands – and Abbamania have done very well at achieving a balance between reproducing what Abba actually did with what today’s audiences would actually like to watch. Their other significant achievement is to involve the audience in the performance in a big way. They know that everyone is singing along to the songs anyway, so they bring it out and make it a feature – they get people standing up, waving arms and swaying in unison, bopping away on the spot, or actually dancing in the isles, they allow the audience to finish lines, they get the audience split in two halves to compete with one another. It was all excellent fun, and the audience, as you can imagine, was wildly enthusiastic, yelling, screaming, whooping and whistling when mere applause didn’t seem emphatic enough to express their appreciation.
Having recently gone to see Thriller Live! it was interesting to observe how differently this concert was structured. Abbamania did not pretend to leave the stage without playing the song everyone was waiting to hear; but they also didn’t build up the audience’s anticipation for that favourite song by playing a long run of really boring ones first – indeed they couldn’t have if they’d wanted to, because Abba in fact produced hit after hit of incredibly catchy tunes with increasingly thoughtful lyrics, and it appeared on Saturday that everybody knew and loved all of those songs and almost all of the words, including my 11 year old daughter (how, I do not know). There just wasn’t one single dud, all the way from Waterloo to Super-Trouper. I was teenager in the 70s and it really brought it all back to me in all its salty splendour. I would definitely go to see this act again, and I’m just on my way to HMV now to get a copy of Abba Gold…