ABBA : A new Dawn in concert viewing experience

[Gilly Goodness]

3 days to go before the world first sees ABBA's virtual concert. This will be a pivotal event. Beyond holograms. Beyond light shows. Beyond pop music performed as we know it.

ABBA built there own stadium in London. It is massive. They will all be there for the event.

Will it succeed? As a moving performance? Lifelike yet still fantastical, nostalgic yet futuristic? Questions whose answers may determine concert going into the followin' century?

How good will the technology be? Will their be a vibe?
Soon we will find out. Apart from Dancin' Queen, what songs will they perform?

Will Geoff Downes be at the after party?

3 days to go.

[Ceasar’s Palace]

It will be interesting, surely.

But can you blame me for just wishing them to perform as their old and wrinkled selves, with an acoustic band, maybe some backup singers?

[Gilly Goodness]

It will be interesting, surely.

But can you blame me for just wishing them to perform as their old and wrinkled selves, with an acoustic band, maybe some backup singers?

Sure. A small bar. Smoke curlin' langorously in the air like sensuous smoke snakes. A quick shower drives us in from outside. We shake our raincoats dry and sink a warmin' whiskey. Seated we tingle in anticipation as the 4 wizened old entertainers shuffle onstage. Then begin. Agnetha so close, you could almost caress her still beautiful cheek, lined by a long life lived well.

Or you could pay 650 large ones to look at holograms.

[Ceasar’s Palace]

Sure. A small bar. Smoke curlin' langorously in the air like sensuous smoke snakes. A quick shower drives us in from outside. We shake our raincoats dry and sink a warmin' whiskey. Seated we tingle in anticipation as the 4 wizened old entertainers shuffle onstage. Then begin. Agnetha so close, you could almost caress her still beautiful cheek, lined by a long life lived well.

Or you could pay 650 large ones to look at holograms.

Agnetha.

I stopped reading after that...

[Esthe]

It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out, I guess.

[Gilly Goodness]

The King and Queen of Sweden have just walked the red carpet!

[Gilly Goodness]

Kylie is in the house!

[Gilly Goodness]

THE GUARDIAN CALLS IT A TRIUMPH THAT WILL BE COPIED!

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We’ve all seen the band’s eerily de-aged digital avatars – or Abbatars, as they persist in calling them – but what form they take has remained classified: the only solid clue was that they weren’t holograms, which hasn’t stopped the British media doggedly referring to them as holograms ever since.





Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson at the premiere of Abba Voyage. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Whatever they are, the effect is genuinely jaw-dropping. Watching the four figures on the stage, it’s almost impossible to tell you’re not watching human beings: occasionally, there’s a hint of video game uncanny valley about the projections on the giant screens either side of the stage, but your attention is continually drawn to the human-sized avatars.

They gaze sadly into each other’s eyes during The Winner Takes It All, deliver cheesy speeches between songs – “I wasn’t married at the time,” says the figure representing Björn Ulvaeus, explaining the genesis of Does Your Mother Know [that you’re out?], “or was I?” – and protest at the British judges giving them nul points during the 1974 Eurovision song contest. There are even lulls in the performance, just as there are at a “real” gig, usually when the action shifts from the avatars to more straightforward footage: a lengthy animation shown during Eagle providing an opportunity to visit the bar.

Aside from an opening salvo involving 1982’s darkly powerful The Visitors and Hole In Your Soul, a track from 1978’s Abba The Album, the setlist largely sticks to crowd-pleasing greatest hits – Waterloo, SOS, Knowing Me Knowing You – rather than scouring Abba’s oeuvre for deep cuts. This is both smart commercial sense – this is a show designed to run and run, potentially in several countries at once, something you’re never going to achieve if diehard fans are your target market – and probably for the best, given what a treacherous business scouring Abba’s oeuvre for deep cuts is.


Inside the Abba Arena. Photograph: Johan Persson


You’re as likely to encounter something like Put On Your White Sombrero or King Kong Song – “can’t you hear the beating of the monkey tom-tom?” – as you are anything approaching the sublimity of Lay All Your Love On Me or The Winner Takes It All. Just as the Dolce & Gabbana-designed costumes rework the band’s 70s wardrobe in a tasteful way – evincing a restraint that Abba themselves seldom deployed in their heyday – so the music, performed by a live band, is occasionally faintly tweaked from the recorded versions the vocals are taken from: Voulez-Vous feels punchier and more raw.

By the time the show hits its finale with Thank You For The Music followed by Dancing Queen, any lingering sense that you’re not actually in the presence of Abba has dissolved. It’s so successful that it’s hard not to imagine other artists following suit – you strongly suspect the surviving members of Queen will be on the blower to Industrial Light & Magic before the week’s out.



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However, Ulvaeus has already issued a warning to anyone planning on following Abba’s path to resurrect a deceased star: “It is better to do it with someone who is alive because … the measurements in the cranium are the same.” It’s a warning that’s going to go unheeded: access to cranial measurements or not, Voyage is the kind of triumph that’s destined not merely to run and run...

[Gilly Goodness]

Blinkin' hell. Natalie was there too! It's a Neighbours reunion!

[Gilly Goodness]

So. Old. And new.


Various opinions now. Most newspaper reviews have called it a revelation. Some dissenters on line esp on Steve Hoffman Music Forum.

Have they used studio vocals or retweaked Live vocals? There was a Live 10 piece band playin' alongside extra Live singers.

The girls look amazin' and have kept their naff dancin' and moves. Which is great. Just 2 ladies havin' a ball singin' and dancin'. Folky pop bangers.

Funnily enough, have seen vision of Benny hailin' a London cab for the 4 to get to the venue. Which is near Greenwich. Time out of Time? Hehhehehheeee

So will Queen do this? In Vegas? The Beatles? Fleetwood Mac? INXS? U2?

Who would you like to see? Alive or dead?

[Ceasar’s Palace]

So will Queen do this? In Vegas? The Beatles? Fleetwood Mac? INXS? U2?

Who would you like to see? Alive or dead?

Too late now, cat’s out of the bag, but why not only with the dead?



Therefore, in a decade or two: The Beatles. I liked what they did with the Rock Band game.
They have the money and the skills to make it at least as impressive as Abba.

[Esthe]

So. Old. And new.


Various opinions now. Most newspaper reviews have called it a revelation. Some dissenters on line esp on Steve Hoffman Music Forum.

Have they used studio vocals or retweaked Live vocals? There was a Live 10 piece band playin' alongside extra Live singers.

The girls look amazin' and have kept their naff dancin' and moves. Which is great. Just 2 ladies havin' a ball singin' and dancin'. Folky pop bangers.

Funnily enough, have seen vision of Benny hailin' a London cab for the 4 to get to the venue. Which is near Greenwich. Time out of Time? Hehhehehheeee

So will Queen do this? In Vegas? The Beatles? Fleetwood Mac? INXS? U2?

Who would you like to see? Alive or dead?

No one. It feels wrong to have a concert where you aren’t even performing. I hope this doesn’t become the new trend.

[Old Frothingslosh]

It's absolutely going to happen. Too much money to be made.

[Esthe]

It's absolutely going to happen. Too much money to be made.

Goddamn you ABBA! Music was already too inauthentic as it is, now bands won’t even have to perform concerts!

[Ceasar’s Palace]

It’s interesting from a philosophical standpoint. Is there a fundamental difference between this and watching an old concert movie?
And if so, why not?