Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We will not go back.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

You are here: Home / Music / PopCult Open Thread: Action Horror

PopCult Open Thread: Action Horror

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But if you want some really terrifying green-screen work…

I quite like Abba — never said my tastes were sophisticated! — but this ‘digital concert’ is strictly Uncanny Valley.

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    My husband and I were on a walk the other day when a group of teenage girls came running down the street, apparently training or doing gym class. As they came nearer, we realized that they were listening to “Dancing Queen.”

  2. 2.

    Brachiator

    This was mentioned on some radio show the other day, and I was surprised that it was apparently true.

    The group was offered a billion dollars to reunite by an American consortium, or so said Benny Andersson, ABBA’s other songwriter, to NPR in 2009.

    BENNY ANDERSSON: We said no because it’s good that the people out there remember us as we were when they listened to the music. ABBA: (Singing) Mamma mia, here I go again.

    By waiting until now, the group apparently gave up some big bucks.

    ABBA never was one of my favorite groups, but good for them and their fans.

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    Anne Laurie, the Artists in our Midst post was scheduled for 5, but I think both posts at the same time works well, so please don’t think about pulling yours.

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    I know it marks me out as a big ol’ fuddy-duddy, but they’re still one of my favorite bands.  I used to own all their LPs.  Ah, well, no longer, b/c I gave up on LPs in 1986.

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic

    Was elsewhere during the rains of Ida, so came home today to a very pleasant surprise of no water anywhere in the basement. Local area seems to have weathered this well, as no obvious damage around, despite what the gauge says was 4.5″ of rain over that night. So 2.5 hours of lawn mowing, and now an ice-cold martini. Life is OK.

  12. 12.

    RaflW

    Guilty pleasure admission: I went to the ABBA Museum in Stockholm in 2019. I rarely go to expensive private collection joints, but dang it was fun. And decently curated – at least it exceeded my low expectations in terms of museum-grade work.

    I was the only one of the three of us to go in a sound booth and sing along. The monitor headphones weren’t very good so I had a hard time telling how out of tune I was. My sweet cousin who lives outside Stockholm claimed I was fantastic.

    The only drawback, and it wasn’t nothing: I had ABBA earworms that took a looooong time to shake (not, in itself that unusual. I’ve had a Billy Brag song bouncing around my seemingly empty brain for over a week now. It’s a great song but even it is starting to wear thin. ABBA’s confections are too sweet to nibble on for that long.)

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    No horror, just a sad note: weatherman Willard Scott has died at 87. It’s been decades since I last watched the Today Show, but I always found Scott a soothing and cheerful presence. RIP.

  17. 17.

    Chetan Murthy

    @ThresherK: Awwwww yeah!  I have the CD of that, from the first release.  Saw the Broadway production (man, it was so much less than the CD ….. *indignant snort*)

  19. 19.

    John H. McDonald

    @WaterGirl: I remember reading once (can’t be bothered to look up whether it’s true) that at their peak, Abba was the biggest contributor to the GDP of Sweden. Bigger than Volvo, in other words. When they played concerts in eastern European countries with relatively useless currencies, they got paid in commodities–20 railcars of potatoes for a concert in Prague, or whatever. So I don’t know if a reunion would have been worth a billion dollars, but they were definitely a big business.

  20. 20.

    Woodrow/asim

    As someone who grew up post-Disco, I carried, for a long time, prejudice against Disco, in my heart. Mamma Mia, did not help, even with my man (and Irish treasure) Pierce Brosnan in the flicks.

    I’ve only recently come to enjoy a lot of it, in part due to understand some of why the culture turned against Disco, and how Disco connects directly to my beloved Electronica. I’m actually fascinating, for example, by the structure of “Dancing Queen” — starting the song with the chorus? Damn!

    Anyway, as I unwind: a story about my own Belly Dancing days, and my hate-on for Disco, just to show how silly I got:

    A friend of mine ran an outstanding belly dance camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. One of the classes on tap was labeled something like “Disco Belly Dance Choreography”, which was an instant NO for me.

    When that class started, a bunch of my pals and I were sitting on top of a ridge that oversaw the teaching area — including one of my fellow dancer’s husbands, whom I bonded with over a shared love of Hip-Hop. Class starts, we’re talking…and we stop as we hear the “disco” song they were teaching to. Horns blaring, the first lyrics about remembering come out…

    …Reader, it was Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September.” This, was the teacher’s “disco song”.

    And so, as one, me and my pal yell out “That’s Not Disco!” to the laughter of all assembled.

    I regret not taking that class, to this day. sigh

  26. 26.

    Redshift

    @Chetan Murthy: Yeah, if I remember right, the touring company for Chess never really happened. I was at some event, can’t remember what, where a knowledgeable person said that it had been pulled so the writers could try to “add more plot.”

    I’ve seen two regional theatre productions of it, period pieces by then, and it seems like the two options for the plot are either for it to make no sense, or for it to have a really depressing ending for everyone.

    Still great songs, though!

  27. 27.

    WhatsMyNym

    The live musical Mamma Mia! has been a money maker.

    Over 65 million people have seen the show, which has grossed $4 billion worldwide since its 1999 debut

  30. 30.

    Woodrow/asim

    @WaterGirl: To me and my pal — and people I’ve talked to, since — “September” is pretty squarely in the 1970s R&B style. A lot of it is about what I’ll call proto-Electronica elements — R&B was (at that point) not using a lot of synths and related elements, whereas Disco was all about that Jazz :)

    This is where I insert that my intro to loving synths, and eventually getting into Electronica [and back-porting into liking Disco in the future] was “The Reflex” by Duran Duran, which was really constructed by the now-legendary Nile Rodgers. So…yeah, it’s not a thick line :)

    I’ll confess some of it is down to “feel” unless/until you’re talking to actual musicians, which can go on about this stuff for hours (in fairness, ask me about a lot of dance stuff and I can bore you to tears.) I mean — I know what belongs on, say, a Quiet Storm and what doesn’t, because I grew up with it, not necessarily because I studied it (although I have, since my youth, a bit).

    Anyway, I hope that makes sense?

  32. 32.

    Nicole

    @Redshift: Chess did tour, but the challenge the show has is that they just cannot figure out the book.  I think for awhile no one was allowed to change Nelson’s rewrite (for the original American production), but I see on wikipedia that Tim Rice has tried to rework the book a few times.  I agree, great music.  And the last song from a Broadway show to hit the Billboard top 10!

  34. 34.

    Ohio Mom

    That type of horror sci-fi film is so not my thing but thinking about how the earth ends seems strangely appropriate for the evening before Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world.

    ABBA has also been so not my thing, though they have grown on me over the years.

  37. 37.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Nicole: …see, that’s also fascinating. Thank you for this link, it’s a great workup of the song!

    I’m intrigued Tom sees “Dancing Queen” as a song that “has disco somewhere in its DNA.” This may be where my limits of musical genre-flagging, esp. on Disco, come in. It might be the beat he’s hooking the def. on; disco is pretty heavy on the “four on the floor” style, and that’s not exactly the game “Dancing Queen” is playing. Hunh.

    I also love the invocation of “In Da Club,” a song that’s thick with meaning itself.

  40. 40.

    zhena gogolia

    @Ohio Mom: Me too. I hated them back in the day.

    Apparently Colin Firth did too. I saw a charming interview where he talked about how he used to sneer at them.

    The Mamma Mia movies have made me reconsider. They’re charming. And the songs survive the singing of Pierce Brosnan.

  41. 41.

    zhena gogolia

    @James E Powell:

    A friend of mine posted a performance of Kurt Weill’s September Song the other day, and one of the commenters was surprised to learn it wasn’t the EWF song.

  42. 42.

    Origuy

    @John H. McDonald:

    When they played concerts in eastern European countries with relatively useless currencies, they got paid in commodities–20 railcars of potatoes for a concert in Prague, or whatever.

    Imagine if they had played Russia in 1989!

    In exchange for Pepsi’s soft drinks, the Soviets offered them a veritable Navy. Pepsi agreed to the deal, taking possession of a Soviet cruiser, a frigate, a destroyer, 17 submarines, and a handful of oil tankers — instantly making the drink distributor the owner of the sixth-largest navy on the planet.

  43. 43.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @ThresherK: Just FTR in 1993 I got to see Chess at Towson State (now just Towson) University. I was impressed with the quality of the production. The school is routinely disparaged in the region compared with Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, but it’s put on a number of notable productions over the decades (Lorca’s Blood Wedding being another I saw) as well as hosting a highly respected jazz ensemble.

  45. 45.

    James E Powell

    @Woodrow/asim:

    There are differences, but I always thought of “Dancing Queen” as a Scandinavian version of American disco.  Seems to fit right in with TSOP.

  51. 51.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Doug R: Not gonna be tempted, until I hear from enough places that it’s good.  Don’t want my favorite band of all time to be, y’know, sullied by age.

  52. 52.

    Ramalama

    I am obsessed with ABBA especially Frida. I was a fan when they were still a group. I was heartsick when they stopped recording after The Visitors. I was upset with loving Chess and Benny and Bjorn did not use Agnetha and Frida in any of the roles. I spent my childhood sitting like the dog in a certain commercial in between two speakers absorbing their albums. Listening to certain songs over and over. Sometimes I’d get into Move On. Other times, it was all Knowing Me, Knowing You. I’d cleanse my palette with another song that wasn’t my favorite just to clear myself for another blast of I Wonder or Slipping Through My Fingers. When Frida released her solo album Something’s Going On, I obsessed over the sounds on each song. I liked it. Sometimes I loved it. But not as fiercely. I never caught the video in full on MTV, not for lack of trying. Willing it with every cell in my body. So many of my friends kept seeing it. “Hey I saw ABBA gal today on MTV.” Everyone but me. When Frida released a solo album in Swedish, I thought, that’s how Abba would sound in modern times. I loved it. I finally saw There’s Something Going On video as an adult in the era of the internet. I saw the making of her album. Gorgeous, beautiful.

    The new songs are not as I’d hoped but the singing is brilliant. Maybe Benny’s been spending so much time on musicals that they forgot to use an acoustic guitar.

    I think I’d better stop. It’s out of hand. I’m out of hand.

  54. 54.

    prostratedragon

    @WaterGirl:  If by “disco song” is meant a song actually played in/danced to in discos, then yes, “September” counts. Sounds like kids who didn’t want to admit that they liked some disco songs.

    Just saw below of the death of Mikos Theodorakis. About a month ago I posted his soundtrack to Serpico. Here is his soundtrack to one of the greatest political thrillers, Z.

  55. 55.

    James E Powell

    Sad note, but this is an open thread.

    Tunch Ilkin, former Steelers great and the namesake of a certain feline friend/co-owner of our blogmeister’s home, passed away today.

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    @Woodrow/asim:

    I’ve only recently come to enjoy a lot of it, in part due to understand some of why the culture turned against Disco…

    I always thought that the anti disco thing was mainly insecure white guys who did not know how to dance, amplified by other insecure white guys who were upset that any musical genre might become more popular than their narrow conception of rock music.

    After this, racists, sexists and homophobes jumped onto the anti disco bandwagon. Then, the brainless conventional wisdom of “Disco sucks!” kicked in before everyone eventually calmed down.

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @gwangung: that reminds me, Teri Gross did an episode on the Philly Sound a few weeks ago that I keep meaning to go back and listen to

  60. 60.

    Chetan Murthy

    Since it’s a music thread, I’ve found this new source of earworms: a DJ who goes by the name “Satin Jackets”.  I never inquire too deeply into the people behind art I like, for fear I’ll find out they’re, y’know, like Woody Allen.  But I really like his mixes.  Very “new age disco” I think (but hey, I’m a Philistine when it comes to music).  You can find ’em on Youtube — there are a couple of multi-hour mixes that I just start playing and leave it running.

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    “September” is funk, but disco evolved out of funk. It’s proto-disco.

    Always thought of at least some of ABBA as disco, though maybe not as core disco as Donna Summer or Chic or the Bee Gees.

  71. 71.

    James E Powell

    @Brachiator: 

    Jeff Porcaro lays down quite the groove on Lowdown. Very much a disco/dance groove. My anecdotal evidence from those days is that song usually filled the dance floor.

  80. 80.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @zhena gogolia: The BeeGees or Andy Gibb, maybe.  I hear my share of disco every day at work.

    ETA: The Home Depot playlist is very interesting, mostly from 1970-1981, but some omissions.  No Queen, only one McCartney song(Goodnight Tonight), very odd.

  84. 84.

    Matt McIrvin

    Lots of bands that weren’t really disco bands experimented with the sound in that period. I mean, there were songs by the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead that had elements of disco in them. Blondie wasn’t really a disco act, but “Heart of Glass” (as released) has this big disco sound and it was a huge hit. It was in the air.

  89. 89.

    Jager

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I told my wife, Newt uses Dancing Queen, so she changed her ring tone instantly…now she’s upset, muttering something that sounds like “that miserable son of a bitch”

  92. 92.

    JimV

    I’m not sure what sophisticated musical taste is, if it doesn’t include the great music ABBA made. Are there actually people in the Western world who don’t like it? I can remember the first time I heard them on a car radio (“Waterloo”). I hope that is my last memory as I die. Or maybe “Dancing Queen”. I’d settle for a random selection.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Would you say McCartney is a disco artist because of ‘Goodnight Tonight’ or the Stones because of ‘Emotional Rescue’?

    The Stones “Miss You” also has a disco feel.

    And there is nothing wrong with being a disco artist. Or doing disco songs. Nothing to defend.

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    But to return to the original point — Abba was not disco. Not a single song.

    Who cares? Abba didn’t seem to be connected to any particular genre. Some of their stuff was very danceable, I think.

  98. 98.

    ...now I try to be amused

    I quite like Abba — never said my tastes were sophisticated! — but this ‘digital concert’ is strictly Uncanny Valley.

    It reminds me of the Frank Zappa hologram tour.

  103. 103.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I’ve always been an ABBA fan. There’s something to be said for well constructed pop songs and they have a lot of good pop songs. Several years ago,Sirius XM had one of their channels become all ABBA for the month – some of the stuff I learned – There have been academic studies of ABBA songs and why they’re so catchy, Queen Elizabeth’s favorite song is Dancing Queen and at their peak ABBA was a bigger export for Sweden than Volvo. Anyhow, I thought one of the reasons they turned down the offer to regroup a few years ago was because one of the guys had Alzheimers or some kind of dementia?

  105. 105.

    Ramalama

    @Chetan Murthy: Hey ear candy for me can sometimes also be Cesaria Evora. I think a few of her songs are gold, but Petit Pays is a perfect song. I happened to hear a rendition of it while walking my dog ‘downtown.’ I live in a small french town that’s kind of depressed. Empty buildings on the main drag. But this guy comes out occasionally and plays a rusty sounding trumpet accompanied to recorded music at the center. Amplified. I don’t pay him much attention because his dog does not like my dog.

    But yesterday he was playing this song, and I felt for him.

    youtube.com/watch?v=r7w1MNsGtRE

  106. 106.

    Chris Johnson

    This thread got me relistening to my Ace of Base FLAC :) I mean, if you want Scandinavian…

    Got to love how both the biggest hits off The Sign use the same vaguely drum-and-bass kick drum hesitation, and major-to-minor (or vice versa) trick. It only goes to show, I think.

    It reminds me of how you can tell a lot about a drummer by whether they’re really impressed with the James Brown drummers Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks… there’s a whole language in there. And those Ace of Base tracks are absolute fluff, but at the same time the big ones have this addictive triplet-over-sixteenths feel that’s actually quite weird :)

  107. 107.

    Ramalama

    @Mai Naem mobile: Bjorn has said in recent years that he has no memory of earlier ABBA moments, like when they won Eurovision. I’m not sure there’s a report that he’s been diagnosed with anything. His wife has lymphoma.

  108. 108.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Nicole: Towson has a deserved reputation as an excellent school for theater majors. Johns Hopkins, not so much.

    When I was a Hoppie, I don’t recall a single course in dramatic arts, or music, or for that matter any sort of art (other than History of Art) – let alone a department or major. They had (still have, I think) a little theatre (“the Barn”), but strictly voluntary and extracurricular.

    (I’ll give the Hop this, though – when you’re a small school [<2000 undergrads] you’re better off doing very well the few things you really want to do & passing on the rest. It doesn’t hurt if you can artificially inflate your reputation by association with the med school – particularly if you can con naive kids into enrolling as pre-meds thinking it’s the easiest way to get into the medical school, when in fact it’s probably the hardest. There’s a reason why the Johns Hopkins term for “wonk/grind” is “throat” – short for cutthroat – premeds sabotaging their competition by any means possible is a time-honored tradition…)

    My brother majored in art at Towson, and parlayed the degree plus his abundant skills and a level head for business into a career as half of a successful graphic design shop. Yay for Towson!

  109. 109.

    Ramalama

    Here’s another perfect song. Pop. The lyrics kind of make no sense to me but they work perfectly with the song. I thought of Talk Talk as a studio band. Heavy on synths. But this live performance is so good because of seeming disparate elements (well, electric + non)  played by master musicians, especially the guys on percussion and the mullet man on 6-string. But really everyone’s killing it here.

  110. 110.

    Chris Johnson

    I also just went down a rabbithole that really shook me, revisiting the stories of how some of Ace of Base were literal Nazis. I think it’s ‘woke’ in a good sense that I can’t go far with enjoying that music without remembering there was a sting in the tail.

    It’s actually reminding me of Innuendo Studios’ videos on alt-right recruitment. As near as I can tell, the fourth guy in the band Ulf (the others were all siblings) was in a REALLY toxic Nazi skinhead band. I’m not clear on whether he wrote the horrifying lyrics or how much of a fellow traveler he was: he denies it but Nazis lie so that means absolutely nothing for or against. Impossible to tell.

    As far as Ace of Base lyrics, if you stretch you can insist ‘All That She Wants’ is about a Jewish woman wanting to breed Jewish babies… or that it’s about a woman picking up hot guys to have sex with, no darker motive needed.

    And ‘The Sign’s fluffiness could hide a parable of why and how Ulf LEFT the Nazis and took up with the pop band instead. ‘life is demanding, without understanding’ ‘take you up into the light where you belong… but where do you belong?’ makes sense when you know that chud lifestyles are DARK, terrorized, and miserable. Little wonder somebody would step back from the woodchipper and try to hide their dark past among a fluffy pop band… only to be found out. Do you let ’em recant, or once a Nazi forever a Nazi eternally trying to hide Nazi messages and subvert people into their misery and fear?

    Fuckin’ politics, man. Sometimes being woke is very wearying. I’m going to take a shower… and a nap.

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