There go my hopes of a well-limited conversation about ABBA.
Oh god, I wondered what we'd all done for Ben to punish us like this. I don't *remember* torturing one of his pets? Maybe I did so while sleepwalking?
NIHILIST Chicago, Illinois
Panicsville is a Chicago noise music group founded in 1992 by Andy Ortmann (founder of Nihilist Records) with David Forquer and Ryan Kohler. It has become an ongoing project for Ortmann to work with other musicians. Early shows consisted of pelting the audience with items like dry ice, meat, blood and insects. The group currently execute experiments of subliminal mind-control via "entertainment".
I too liked it.
I think I may have just spotted neb at a screening of Ugetsu, but he did a swift lanky-person stride out the door as soon as the house lights came on.
6 I gotta know neb, was that you? Why did you ghost lourdes so?
I will take it over absolutely any ABBA original.
8: The ABBA version of this song is interesting because of the contrast between the sadness of the lyrics and the joyful energy that is ABBA's musical signature.
I kind of liked ABBA, but I draw the line at the BeeGees.
Being the absurdly young and spry whippersnapper that I am, I had never actually heard Abba outside implied punchlines until recently. They're actually really good. Conquered the world for a reason. I haven't listened to the cover because lazy.
11: I didn't remember having heard "Knowing Me, Knowing You" before, but I would not guessed that it was possible to be alive for the last 20 years and not have heard "Dancing Queen".
11 is me 5 or 6 years ago. I spent a couple weeks like: "'Knowing Me, Knowing You' is actually a good song! Who'd have guessed? (One Day Later:) 'Angeleyes' is actually a good song! Who'd have guessed? (One Day Later:) 'Super Trouper' is actually a good song! Who'd have guessed? (One Day Later:) 'Summer Night City' is actually a good song! Who'd have guessed? (One Day Later:) 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)' is actually a good song! Who'd have guessed?"
I have heard "Dancing Queen". It's actually a good song! Who'd have guessed?
Abba (the first time round) was the inescapable soundtrack to my miserable teenage boarding-school years: Fernando, The Name of the Game, and Money Money Money blaring from a cheap radiocassette player on the ancient kitchen dresser in the dormitory where we stored our permitted three items of mufti and hid bread and sugar smuggled out of the dining room.
I recall there was a mid 90s ABBA boom in movies. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding in particular. Were there others that I'm forgetting?
16: an earlier boom saw Christopher Plummer and Rod Steiger in Waterloo.
Gimme Gimme Gimme (The Head of Alfredo Garcia)
The Wolf of Wall Street Takes It All
Starship Trouper
Chiquitita 2: Soldado
16: In the late 90s a surprising entry - Summer of Sam.
http://www.abbaomnibus.net/stage/film/moviesongs.htm
16, and those were just the Australian ones!
20: There definitely seemed to be some sort of ABBA-Australia thing going on, but I was never clear on what the connection was. Were ABBA just a bigger deal in Australia than elsewhere?
21: It's a mystery, but it was definitely a thing.
Now I'm imagining alternate versions of other famous Australian movies with ABBA soundtracks.
Picnic at Hanging Rock?
Breaker Morant?
The Road Warrior?
I was at Ugetsu! I didn't know lk was there!
It's quite a series. I saw Double Suicide in an earlier screening, and it blew me away.
Oh nice, did you catch the Naruse?
I'm jealous and will have to console myself with the fact that Agnès Varda is coming to Arrakis in March (also Pawel Pawlikowski and Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
30.1 Or rather I should say, will you catch the Naruse?
30.2: A meeting of the alliteration society?
I liked it except for the amateurish vocals.
29: Yes! I was out of town when the series started but am definitely going to catch Double Suicide on the next showing.
33 sounds too harsh. I really do like this arrangement. Between this and some Jolene cover neb posted in response to my praise of the "slow-ass Jolene" (Parton's 45 played at 33) I'm concerned that our tastes overlap.
30.1 Or rather I should say, will you catch the Naruse?
Sadly, I will be attending a birthday party.
I'd guess that the Jolene cover was Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's.
Huh, I like that one too, but it's not what I remember, but a quick archive search didn't yield anything else.
It was weird, man. Like, really weird.
Then perhaps he should be concerned.
Here I must confess, I do not like and I have never liked ABBA.
I would be interested if they had a song with abba stanzas, but I bet they don't.
My next guess would've been Dead Raven Choir or Wolfmangler, but they don't seem to have done the song (which is itself kind of strange).
Neb does have good taste.
To the OP, Meryl Streep's performance of "Winner Takes It All" in Mama Mia is excellent. By far the best scene in the (solidly good) movie, and is both well-sung and well-acted.
On a different part of the spectrum, I also like Teddy Thompson's country-tinged cover of "Super Trouper."
Richard Thompson's Money Money Money is good too.
By the way, has anyone else read Cat Valente's Eurovision In Space novel? I thought it was disappointing overall but that one scene near the end made the whole book work for me.
48 led me to attempt a search for a great Richard Thompson and Henry Kaiser version of "Annihilation in Allah" which I had learned of from neb on this very blog some years ago. Somehow I managed to first render it as "Annihilation in Abba," but am pleased to see the intended target is now available on YouTube.
As is the best fucking rendition of "Ode to Billy Joe" ever (by Henry Kaiser, with a great vocal performance by a relative unknown named Cary Sheldon).
50: I was just asking Barry on twitter recently about Thompson's pronunciation in that song!
49: I started it but couldn't finish -- maybe I should go back and read the end.
49: Yes.
http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/01/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente/
and
http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/03/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente-the-b-side/
Quoting myself from the second bit, "John Scalzi has often said that Hitchhiker's was an extinction-level event for humorous science fiction. 'It was so clearly, obviously, blindingly popular that it just obliterated everything else in the field.' It's worse than that, in a way, because even Douglas Adams was really Douglas Adams only about half the time.
"So Valente is going full-tilt at a windmill that has bested many a lance in the forty-odd (some very odd) years since Hitchhiker's was published. Why does it work in Space Opera? Three reasons, I think. First, over-the-top is one of her natural idioms. The long and funny and occasionally random list; the apparent non sequitur that comes to a sharp point; the piling on of absurdist detail and action -- all of these are apparent throughout the Fairyland books, for example. When Valente moves this approach to space, it doesn't mean that she's doing Douglas Adams. It means that she's doing Valente in space, which happens to read a lot like Douglas Adams. ..."