Shane’s Rock Challenge: ABBA – 1992/93 – Gold + More Gold
Shane’s Music Challenge: ABBA – 1992/93 – Gold + More Gold
10/10 and 8/10
Strap yourself in for some shocking revelations!!
For starters, I’m officially cheating on my Music Challenge for the first time: My wife owns a box set of all the ABBA studio albums, but I’m calling foul and only writing about this double pack best of.
Next: ABBA were the first stadium band I ever saw! Yep, all true. Age 12, I pestered my folks enough so they finally gave in and we got nosebleed seats at the Perth Entertainment Centre in 1977, which I’m pretty sure was pretty new then. [Editor’s note: a check of the Perth Entertainment Centre Wikipedia page says it opened in late 1974 and ABBA played FIVE shows – 2 on the 10th and 12th of March, one on the 11th March, 1977. This puts me at 10 years old, not 12, which actually makes more sense. In hindsight, I’m a bit peeved they didn’t take me to see Alice Cooper on the 14th and 15th of March instead, or at least as well as!]
It was pretty exciting for a kid, too young to care about ‘rock cred’ (we’ve come full circle on that one), and who only thought he’d be lucky enough to see the blonde one and the brunette one and have an awkward pre-teen boogie to Dancing Queen.
We had the added excitement of a bomb Scare, too!! “We have to evacuate the building” I remember Benny saying. (There was no YouTube then so I can’t confirm that 35 yr old memory!) “There has been a bomb threat, and we have our children backstage.”
If that memory is correct, then hell, dude – what about the 8000 people in the audience?!? Anyway, 12 year old me loved it, and I wouldn’t let Ma n’ Pa go home, standing outside for an hour instead, before filing back in, resuming our seats and letting the Super-Swedes finish the show!
So, do I need to listen to every Studio album and rate them? No. Gold is perfect. 10/10. More Gold is, as most follow-up bests, not quite as good. 8/10. Man those guys could write a tune, though – and if you doubt that from a rock or metal perspective, it should only take you 30 seconds to surf up some Metal renditions of their songs on YouTube, which all hold up brilliantly!
By Shane Pinnegar
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Category: Shane's Rock Challenge