Have you saw the footage of Molly interviewing them during their 1977 OZ tour. It is on Youtube. Youtube also had listed Abba on Celebrity Squares it was taken down due to multiple copyright infringments.

Omm, this Abba thread has been up for a while, and considering I've always been a big fan of them, even through the "anti-abba" era of the early 80s, I guess this is my take.

Being an eight year old in 1976, I recall hearing a lot of Abba, seeing a lot of it, and so on, but can't remember making much sense of it. All I knew is that I really liked their music. I vaguely remember Graham Webb's Television interview around March 1976, but that is really stretching the memory. Around 1980'ish 1981 I did tape some of their music off the radio, when the Super Trouper album was popular. During a family holiday to New Zealand we saw Abba Today (I think on NZTV1), this was about February 1981. Strangely again I saw the same doco on Channel seven around July 1982.

The first time I got my hands on Abba music, was when my mother bought the K-Tel compilation LP "The Magic of Abba" in the later part of 1982. It was 20 of their greatest hits - all chopped down to two and a half minutes. I recorded it to a Maxell UD 90 cassette and gave it a good thrashing during 1983 and 1984. Having asperger's syndrome, I just had absolutely no idea at this stage that they were classed as hideous and uncool, but I continued playing the tape regardless, I still have it berried away in my tape collection. The original LP it came from was my parents, and is long gone.

One of my brothers visited my father's side of the family in Holland in 1984, and he returned with a demo model of a CD player as one of my fathers brothers worked in Philips. Around 1987 and 1988, I bought "Super Trouper" and "The Visitors" on CD (the best two albums in my opinion. Not much later I bought "Voulez Vous" and a "Greatest Hits Vol 2", and there I was in 1988 with four ABBA CDs, spreading the secret infection of getting the rest of my family into secret Abba admirers.

Around 1990, 70s music started coming back into vogue, and well 1992 Abba Gold was released and vola, ABBA was back in fashion again. After ten long years, I was able to finally declare myself as an Abba fan, and felt proud about it. It was around this time; I completed my ABBA CD collection, and had all eight of the albums plus some UK compilation CDs which featured some of their missing album tracks. I even bought up Agnetha's and Frida Solo CDs as well, yes, I am an Abba hard core addict.

This was the time I got into community radio, and it was ABBA that heavily featured on my play lists. During my seven year stint in community radio, their songs certainly got a good work out over the airwaves. In 2001, I bought all their remasters, which did feature many of their rarer album tracks, but honestly I was appalled at the mastering.

The CDs were mastered very hot with much noise reduction, they sounded horrible. Their 2005 box set; "The Complete ABBA studio recordings" or something to that effect, was an improvement - but one thing for sure, I've certainly got a lot of ABBA now in my CD collection. In the end, I'm just very proud to be an ABBA fan.

If anyone is interested further in the mastering of Abba, there is a lot said about it on the Steve Hoffman boards, I know about this, because I frankly think much of their digital mastering is truly abominable. The best copies of their albums were their original Polydor releases from the 80s, but even some of these have mastering defects. For example the original Polydor release of "The Album" contains much high end distortion, because it was pulled from a damaged mixdown master tape.

On a finishing note, I'm just absolutely annoyed as hell that they won't release the original version of "Just like that" which featured Raphael Ravenscroft on Saxophone. This was the same guy who performed sax on Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street” which leads me to my top ten Abba songs:

1. Just like that (Raphael Ravenscroft sax version)
2. The winner takes it all
3. Super trouper
4. Slipping through my fingers
5. Like an angel passing through my room
(I love listening to this late at night)
6. The king has lost his crown
7. Kisses of fire
8. Should I laugh or cry
9. I am the city
10. Put on your white sombrero

Hey AbbaLuke,
I saw on The National Film And Sound Archives They have listed Outakes from Their Tv commercial Which Featured Them Singing Fernando to various Products.

Personally My Fav Tracks is The Winners Takes It All( I remember Bono commenting on this track)

When All Is said And Done.

I have a question to ask. what do you think of the Girls solo albums.

I love Frida's There Is Something Going On and Agnetha I Stand Alone.

I remember seeing them singing about National electronic products in one of their doco's.

I had no idea that this was going to be on and I missed it!

Does anyone know if it will be repeated, and if so, when...or if it's available, anywhere??

Bevvy, Bang a Boomerang is available for viewing here on the ABC iview website:

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/docs

Thankyou :)

Found it - watched it - loved it

One of the better documentaries I've seen about Abba's impact on Australia and vice versa,plus I'll be most grateful to this doco for making me go out and buy The Up Escalator by Graham Parker (the LP Molly was reviewing in the Humdrum segment featured early on in Bang-A-Boomerang).