Films Go Wild, then ABBA Goes Wild

Movie-goers in the late 20s just LOVED to watch pseudo-documentary footage of safaris and expeditions, even more than they loved watching gangsters drive their cars around. On the release of yet another safari film -- "Simba: King of the Beasts" -- the New Yorker film reviewer suddenly cracks on February 4, 1928, and he gives us a wonderful catalog of jungle-film stereotypes:

What with one movie and another I have seen more of Africa than Trader Horn. Victoria Falls is as familiar to me as Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, thanks to the Fifth Avenue Playhouse, where they will not show pictures of battleships but where they will and do show at least twice a month a picture of Victoria Falls. Thirty-two thousand natives have cavorted before my eyes in honor of the Rain God, or the Sun God, or just for the fun of it. I have seen countless crocodiles slip into every known river in Africa, and then have watched most of them waddle out again. There isn't a monkey in Africa that has not flitted across some of the screens that I have looked at. Hartebeests, wildebeests, and allmenarebeests have shyly rushed across every horizon of the Dark Continent while I have peered at them from theatre seats. As surely as I know my bootlegger's name so surely do I know that a lion can be chased twice without its developing any hard feelings, but that the third time he (or she) will get irritated and eat you up. N'koko incoge ke wa kirria ambwini ngogudema. With the proper incentive I could lower Stanley's time for finding Livingstone by six months, three days, and one minute to change pictures.

I'm unable to find a reference for his "N'koko" native talk, so can only assume it's his transliteration of something he saw on-screen.

Then ABBA Goes Wild

ABBA made a lot of baffling novelty songs in their early years. One that really takes the cake is "What About Livingstone." Agnetha berates some poor people at a newspaper stand who are questioning the worth of the space program, and to teach them a lesson she shrieks out:

What about Livingstone?
What about all those men
Who have sacrificed their lives to lead the way?
Tell me, wasn't it worth the while
Travelling up the Nile?
Putting themselves on the test,
Didn't that help the rest?
Wasn't it worth it then?
What about Livingstone?

We never learn how the people reacted at the newspaper stand, unfortunately, but somehow the song was never a hit.

Old UPhold: Songs About Neighbours

Nothing inspires like anxiety so it's no wonder that I've recorded so many songs about neighbours. I've just posted two old GREENman songs about living in close proximity with other human beings.

The first, an excerpt from "September," is part of an entire ALBUM about bad neighbours in student housing. We'd just moved into a student slum and I found the place to be incredibly stressful; the Bunny Killer was alternating wild sex with masochistic beatings on the other side of my particle-board bedroom wall, most of our neighbours were drunken frat boys, and there was pasta in the toilet.

I recorded "The Grey Yonder" over the first six months (which were by far the worst). "September," the first track, packs in all the chaos and fear and anxiety that I felt during the first few weeks, with Scott Irving whacking away on his bass guitar. I like it a lot but it's ugly. It's no coincidence that I'd been listening to a new cassette by Antiform at the time.

The second "bad neighbour" track is "Hot Comfort, Small Comfort," which originally appeared on "Drabbletales" (though this is a slightly remixed version from the "Snakes on Ice" CD). Also recorded in The Grey Yonder, this was about trying to sleep during the daytime while working night shifts in a donut shop (see an early draft of the words, above, written illicitly while on the job). Just when I'd finally begin drifting to sleep, the guy downstairs would blast his bad techno at top volume and my bed would literally begin to shake.

PS: Synchronicity! "Hot Comfort, Small Comfort" is mostly based around samples from Frida ("Comfort Me") and Agnetha ("The Heat is On.") See the post about ABBA, below. ABBA was my obsessive solice while living in The Grey Yonder.

Both songs were recorded on cassette 4-track. "September" is pretty much a free-form composition (with an additional two tracks layered on afterward), while "Hot Comfort, Small Comfort" was sequenced on a nutty Yamaha QX-21.

I'd Buy Anything By...ABBA

I haven't kept up with the times. Is it cool to love ABBA again, or not? Are we supposed to just dismiss them as happy "Bang-a-Boomerang" fluffsters, or is it alright to acknowledge their songs about single parenthood ("Hey Hey Helen"), spousal abuse ("Should I Laugh or Cry") and Soviet dissidents living in fear ("The Visitors")?

Should we be focussing on Agnetha's "sexiest bottom of 1977" award, or on her charity work and strangely reclusive, almost withdrawn lifestyle? Was Frida just a bad haircut with odd teeth or did she have one of the best jazz voices around? Was Benny chubby and Bjorn short, or did they write a string of brilliant songs...in their second language? Wasn't their Swedish accent silly, or did they have a more lyrical grasp of English than most of us could ever hope to achieve? Was their engineer (Michael Tretow) a guy with an apallingly bad sense of humour who should never have been allowed to write liner notes for a box set, or did he meticulously create a sound so distinctive that nobody's heard the like of it since?

Okay, yes, Bjorn WAS short.

I would buy anything by ABBA, either as a group or as solo musicians. This includes interview discs, remastered versions, and -- yes -- "Oro" and "Mas Oro," as well as Benny & Bjorn's "Lycka" and the pre-fame albums by Agnetha and Frida (aka "Connie Francis" and, erm, "Frida"). I'd buy albums by "The Hep Stars" and "The Hootenany Singers" if I ever saw them in front of me.

In celebration of ABBA, here are clips from both sides of their career: "The End" and "The Beginning."

First here's "The Day Before You Came." It was their second-last single and wasn't even on the final album...this song -- along with the wealth of unfinished material that ended up on the box set -- is evidence that ABBA had a lot of music left in them before they called it quits. This is my favourite ABBA single by far: beautiful in its minimal production and visuals. Life-affirming but somehow sad.



"There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see." This is obviously part of Benny & Bjorn's movement toward musicals. It's long and wordy, it doesn't repeat, it has no chorus, and the theme is rigidly maintained throughout.

Now, in contrast, here's some terrifying pre-ABBA cabaret by Frida. It's "Baby Love," featuring "two glamorous backup singers." Frida, Benny, and Bjorn all mourn the bad cabaret they did early in their careers...and now we know why.