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ABBAFEST Report Well, we're back from our day out to the ABBA Fest .... Only just catching up with email 24 hours later so here we go ... We arrived at The Brighton Centre around 9.20am and there was a small queue of fans waiting to get in ... only recognised a couple of familiar faces - Gareth, Chris Bowles, Steve Jacks and his girlfriend Diane, Mark Smith, Malcolm Mitchell ... we joined the end of the queue and shortly afterwards the doors opened and in we went. There weren't half as many stalls in the record/CD fair as we'd expected to see ... in fact there were probably less than 20 different sellers and of those only a handful were ABBA sellers. Here I saw my old friend Colin Collier and Michael Price who were selling off some of their collections. There seemed to be a strange mix of fans ... there's the internet community and the old lot that used to go to the Bristol ABBA Days. The two sets don't seem to be aware of each other, it was quite weird! Attendance was lower than I'd expected, and it seemed that many people hadn't realised that the event would start at 10am because they trickled in towards the end. 10am was approaching so we went upstairs to the hall where the fan club convention was taking place. As we entered, we were handed a Mamma Mia! carrier bag with an itinerary (with message from ABBA on the cover), some 1974 memories from various ABBA related and Eurovision related people (Terry Wogan, Marie Ledin, Katie Boyle, John Spalding, Anders Eljas, Mike Batt ...). I could see Helga and Anita at a fan club stand further down the hall and, as it is at Roosendaal, they were kept very busy. So I only got to the first table manned by Vaughan's wife Gina and Julie Rickwood. Here I bought some ABBA Fest rock and some raffle tickets for the prize draws later on. "Rock" is a traditional British seaside sweet/candy. It's a long tube of minty flavoured hard candy, usually pink in colour, wrapped in cellophane with a little black and white photo of the resort where you bought it. What makes Rock special is that it has the name of the resort right through the middle of it (look at this site for an example: http://www.sweetthoughts.co.uk/promotionalgifts.htm ). When I was a kid and classmates went on holiday (always to the UK, never abroad in those days), it was the done thing to buy a big stick of rock back for the class then it would all get smashed up into little pieces and everyone could have a piece.) Back to ABBA Fest and someone pointed out to me that the costumes were on display in the corner of the room. Sure enough, there they were - quite amazing and rather surreal to see them face to face. I'd seen the Waterloo costumes in London in 1999 and I'd seen some of the others on display at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm for ABBA - The Exhibition. But here they were just there in front of us ... some on dummies, some hanging from the ceiling on coat hangers. And do you know what? A couple of them look really worn and dirty .... and they are TINY .... I mean, Agnetha and Frida must have been stick-thin to fit into them. But then it was time to take our seats for the event to begin ... A video was shown ... I assume it was part of or inspired by Ann's video which was shown at Roosendaal but as I wasn't there I can't be sure. Alex will tell you. It was made up of hundreds of pictures of ABBA in different expressions set to music. Vaughan opened the event very official-like holding a microphone at a rostrum at the front. I assume he was used to speaking in front of an audience as he was very self-assured and confident. He introduced Helga and Anita who said that they'd been asked for many years to hold an event in the UK but only now had it been the right time and the right reason. They encouraged everyone to go to Roosendaal in the future. Back to Vaughan and he ordered us all to stand up saying that there were people from many countries in attendance and told us all to introduce ourselves to the person standing on our left. We had to remain standing for "Kings and Queens" .. a game to whittle us down to one person who won a fab prize. You had to choose whether you were a Dancing Queen (so you had to stand like a teapot .. you know!) or a King Who'd Lost His Crown (so you indicated you were wearing a crown). Vaughan picked a card and if it was a Queen you remained standing or a King you had to sit down .. and so on until 3 winners were left. The first guest was Carl Magnus Palm who was in Brighton for his first visit. The way the presentation/talk was done was that Vaughan would guide the questions and Magnus would answer so they'd obviously agreed beforehand what questions would be asked, in what order etc and it worked really well ... probably better than if Magnus were to just stand there talking and with Vaughan on the spot, one answer could prompt a certain question etc. Magnus described his wonderful day with Benny, Björn and Michael Tretow looking through the tapes .... and how long each of his projects take. Of course today was the day of the release of the new book, "Benny's Road To ABBA" but unfortunately supplies hadn't arrived in time and they were hoping for a last minute delivery at lunchtime. On the wall next to the stage a HUGE poster of Benny (as per the cover of the book) was gazing out over us but it kept peeling away from the wall so poor Paul Carter and Ursula had to keep Benny in place with tape. Magnus' session lasted about 20 minutes in total. Next guest was Anders Hanser, ex-husband (sadly) of Görel and ABBA's main photographer from 1978. I'd seen him before at the Mamma Mia! premiere in 1999 but I'd forgotten how very small he is. His English was perfect and again, Vaughan guided the interview. Anders came across very well. He told us how he'd become a photographer and his early meetings with ABBA which were on radio several years earlier. He described how ABBA - The Pictures (the slideshow) came about which then led to the book with Carl Magnus Palm. He announced that he'd compiled a new film with pictures of Sweden called Med Blagula Ogon featuring each month of the year set to music contributed by Benny. We got to see November and some of the pictures were spectacular. Didn't realise Sweden was so beautiful outside of Stockholm. Vaughan asked him whether the music played was something from Benny's new album and failed to recognise it as Stockholm By Night from November 1989. Ooops! Anders told us how he was going to present this film in July on a 30m wide screen outdoors at midnight on 13th July (I think that was the date). I was hoping to ask Anders a question but there was no Q&A at the end of the session which I found out later was on purpose. Apparently Anders had felt that as he'd be wandering around, he could answer questions directly that way. So later on I asked him if he'd attended every 1979 concert. He only attended the Wembley Arena concerts in the UK and attended most of the US tour ones. He said he'd seen the concert about 17 times so naturally he'd have hundreds of photographs. I asked if he'd considered releasing a picture book purely of the 1979 concerts but he hadn't and didn't seem too interested in the idea. I pointed out that we have salaries now and can afford (and want to buy) such things and offered my help for research purposes as he confessed he felt too close to the project to make the right decisions about which pictures to choose. I also asked him about the video to Super Trouper where they are standing in front of all the coloured lights and whether that was hard to photograph and he did say that that was a difficult session as there was a lot of flashbacks from all the lights. So next up was Owe Sandstrom, the costume designer. I was really looking forward to this as I just had a gut feeling that he'd be really entertaining. I wasn't wrong. He was absolutely delightful. He took the microphone from Vaughan and they both walked towards the costumes where the interview was conducted. Unfortunately there was a huge pillar in the way so people had to move, or stand to be able to see Owe talk through the costumes. Naturally some of what we heard was repeated from the various TV specials we've seen in the last 10 years. He started off with the cat costumes and how on a trip to somewhere far away he'd got the idea of the dragon cat for Frida's costume and made it yellow with the charcoal eyes. The blue cat it turns out is a memorial to his own pet cat at the time. These costumes actually looked pretty tatty but they probably had quite a lot of wear! The long dresses were on show with the short version over the top. I did take photos but we'll have to wait for them to come back from being developed I'm afraid. Then we had the little black bolero jacket as worn by Björn at UNICEF ... each of the shiny jewels on the front were hand cut crystals, each and every one of them. Owe told us that it was inspired by flamenco outfits - because he was a flamenco dancer in his time. The live 1977 costume for the encore of Dancing Queen etc. was next .. one costume of that. Someone asked a question of what was the girls favourite costume and he said this one they both liked. On another note regarding the 1977 tour, someone asked why Frida had longer trousers for the European leg but had shorts by the time she'd hit Australia and why was that? Owe skirted around the issue a little bit but I think the reason was that Frida had a nice arse and wasn't afraid of showing it off! One of the live 1979 capes was on show and Owe told us how the tight costumes (not on show) were made up of dozens of different types of material all sewn together. It sounded like hard work and Owe said, "never again!". The Waterloo costumes weren't designed by Owe but he told us something awful ... that Benny's trousers had been lost. They were on show in HMV in London in 1999 ... and the trousers went missing. Finally we had the Mamma Mia video outfits of Agnetha's white jumpsuit and green cape and Frida's ribbon skirt. He laughed as he told us that because the skirt was made of ribbons he asked Frida not to twirl too much but that she ignored him! He also pointed out that the fabric on the front of Frida's outfit (the top) - was see-through. Many questions were asked, some of them good, some of them really irritating as they'd obviously not been listening to Owe! Someone asked how the were stored and strangely, Owe said that was a secret - that he wasn't allowed to say! I wonder if he misunderstood the question and thought he was being asked Where they were stored? Someone asked whether ABBA members had bits of their bodies they weren't happy with and for him to disguise?! Owe said "no" but then added that some of the audience would have liked Bjorn's "well-trained" body! He hinted it was very nice! Owe is no doubt a really interesting and funny guy. He's studied loads of different subjects in his time - meteorology, botany, biology, zoology ... and sexology he said but added that was for personal interest!! He currently works for some zoological foundation in Stockholm committed to not keeping animals in cages and releasing them into the wild. We then had some videos on the big screen including clips from the Agnetha documentary. We also had the Our Last Video Ever which was great to see up on a screen. Everybody cheered when the ABBA members appeared and Paul said he was watching Anders Hanser's reactions and that he found it rather amusing to witness us all! A little video message was recorded by Benny and Bjorn in early June and this was shown ... it looked like they'd recorded it themselves. Benny was playing the piano - a bit of "Waterloo" and a bit of "When I'm 64" and they said, "hope you have a good time in Brighton, just like we did 30 years ago." More videos followed .. A quiz had been supplied in the carrier bag and Vaughan kept asking for us to complete and hand them in .... a pen in the bag might have been useful as that's why we couldn't enter - nothing to write with! After taking some photos of the costumes, including hopefully some close up details of some of them, and posing with Owe and Ice for a picture TAKEN BY ANDERS HANSER!!!, Marcus, Ice, me and Paul went for a walk along the beach to the pier and stuffed our faces with doughnuts and ice cream. We really enjoyed the event, the guest speakers were really interesting and very friendly and approachable. I would have loved it if Michael Tretow could have taken part but that aside, Vaughan needs to be applauded for a really great event. The quiz follows if you're interested (don't ask me for the answers as I didn't hear them!). Thanks to ABBAMAILer Sara Russell Sandhurst, UK Quiz 1) ABBA's only US number one Dancing Queen, reached the summit of the Billboard chart in 1977. But on which date? a) 9th April b) 16th April c) 5th March 2) "Cold as a stone no more pain where there was pain before" Name the ABBA track 3) In how many different languages did ABBA record Waterloo? a) 5 b) 4 c) 3 4) ABBA's 1979 North American Tour kicked off in Edmonton, Canada but can you remember the date? a) 16th September 1979 b) 13th September 1979 c) 11th September 1979 5) Carl Magnus Palm's new ABBA related book receives its world official launch today. But what is the correct title of it? =================================== For pictures of the costumes on display at ABBA Fest, please see the following link. Also on the page are the pictures that I asked Anders Hanser to take of Sara Russell, Owe Sandstrom and I!! http://www.icethesite.com/abbafest.htm Thanks to ABBAMAILer Dominic 'Ice' Wallis London, UK |