Movie night conversion from dislike to like
LIFE is not fair.
I never take management fishing because she hates it. So why do I have to go to her shows?
I am referring to last week when I was dragged kicking to see Mamma Mia 2.
We arrived early, so (to the surprise of no one) I suggested a cold brewski to kill time.
The only pub was a bowling alley with kids from management’s school smoking outside. You take what you can get.
Except not in this case. The grunge music, louder than a Guatemalan volcano, swamped us like steaming verbal lava as we entered.
The full-blown-bicep barman with tattoos and nose ring, looking bemused as we blatantly weren’t regulars, apologised that the scraggly pool table was non-functional.
‘No problem,’ I said. ‘We’re going to a movie.’
He asked which one, which put me in a dilemma. Did I confess to being a total nose-picker going to an Abba musical while he’s got grunge thumping at top-throttle?
‘Ummm ... Mamma Mia.’
He punched the air, looking camp even with muscles rippling.
‘I loved it,’ he said.
Now that I am cracking on agewise, I can confess that even as a former Doors/Stones/Dylan devotee, I sneakily admired Abba.
They, or at least the two ‘Bs’ - Benny and Björn - elevated pop-fluff to an art form, while the ‘As’ - Agnetha and Anni-Frid - sang and looked like gorgeous songbirds.
Life is not fair, and good luck with changing that.
However, I don’t think Abba would have been a mega-success singing ‘Dancing Transgender Person’ with two hirsute frontliners. But what do I know?
There are no spoiler alerts here. The movie happens on a Mediterranean island and the heroine is a free spirit who expresses herself by singing... well, Abba stuff.
The turquoise background is stunning. In one opening scene, the heroine’s husband is in New York and looks somewhat pasty in his Manhattan hotel.
When he arrives in the Ionian archipelago, he’s transformed into a bronzed specimen. It’s not trick photography.
But back to Abba. If you believe in rolling the dice, this is the time to get on your knees and pay homage to the fickleness of fate.
Origins
The group’s first foothold on pop music’s greasy rung was winning the Eurovision contest in 1974, the most non-rock ’n roll event invented.
If you think that’s wussy, consider Abba’s even more naff origins. The band was created by a guy called Stig Anderson, singer of the heroically named ‘Mashed Creampuffs’, who discovered Benny and Björn, ‘stars’ in the equally heroically-named ‘Hootenanny Singers’.
At least the two ‘Bs’ had a song, ‘Froken Frederiksson’, an epic about a guy without underpants on a breezy day. Need I say more?
Then the ‘Bs’ married the ‘As’, which is pop’s equivalent of unravelling the Bermuda triangle enigma. How did the two rat-faced geezers pull the most stunning squeezes in music? It’s right up there with who built the pyramids.
Unlike fairytales, happy endings don’t happen. The Abba couples split, although the two ‘Bs’ remained mates.
Not so with the ‘As’. Anna-Frid and Agnetha frisbee’d gold records at each other in hissy-fits exclusive to people with gold records.
It seems Anna-Frid thought she had a better butt, contrary to opinion polls. In my inexpert opinion, she did.
Today, Anna-Frid is an eco-campaigner wearing natural fibres irrelevant to butts. Agnetha lives as a recluse on a remote island.
‘I wish I had known about yoga during the Abba years,’ she says. ‘Then I wouldn’t have drunk champagne before going on stage.’
Ahh. That explains why she never was much of a singer.
As for the ‘Bs’, Benny made an album of Swedish birds (no, not his ex-wife), said to be ‘the perfect introduction to ornithology’, while Björn recorded obscure folk music called Klinga Mina Klocka (Toll my bell).
But despite Agnetha becoming a hermit, Anna-Frid covering her butt with organic fibre, Benny’s birds and Björn bells, I walked out of the movie feeling great.
Perhaps too much so. Management said I talked more about a film I didn’t want to see than ones I do. As this column attests.
I think she’s priming me for Mamma Mia 3. I live in dread.
Or is it hope?