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THIS RANT 05/08/96
Rant Of The Day is where I get to mouth off about whatever I feel like for however long I like. Theoretically, I'll update my whinge/opinion piece every weekday; in practice, maybe not so often. |
Regular Gusworld readers will have observed activities here coming to a standstill over the past few days. Lucky me, I had three days off work, and while I originally intended to keep pouring out rants from the barely-alive Gusworld home PC, OzEmail decided that last week would be as good a time as any to have a non-working FTP connection. The upshot? I couldn't upload anything, so I decided not to stress and to do other things.One of the other things I did was go on an tour of key ABBA locations in Sydney. I'm well aware that you think there probably aren't any, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of ABBA's first visit to Australia, and myself and a bunch of like-minded ABBA fanatics decided to celebrate this milestone by visiting everywhere they'd been on that trip that we knew about. Our pilgrimage took us to the Hilton Hotel (where the group held a press conference) for breakfast, the Opera House (where they made a public appearance) for morning tea, and the Hawkesbury River (where they filmed part of their TV special 'ABBA Down Under') for a relaxing two-hour cruise. We then proceeded (via a video-watching session at my place) to the Scandinavian restaurant Northern Lights in Hornsby, where we snacked on herring and quizzed the owner, who had been a waitress and served ABBA at the Sebel Town House when they toured in 1977. A great way to spend the day!
In commemoration of this unlikely occasion, feast your eyes on the cassette cover for the Australia-only compilation 'The Best Of ABBA' (which remains, even to this day, the best-selling album in Australian history). One thing you're likely to notice immediately is that RCA Australia (who distributed ABBA at the time) don't have much of a clue about marketing. Of the five tracks heavily promoted in bold at the bottom, only three were singles. The LP cover itself lists well-known numbers like 'Ring Ring' and 'SOS', but the tape prefers the obscure (if still somewhat groovy) 'People Need Love' and 'Bang-A-Boomerang'. And yet they still sold 1.2 million copies or so. It just goes to show you can't keep a good band down.
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