There's No Need to Introduce the ABBA Group to Anybody – Two
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There’s no need to introduce the ABBA group to anybody – two extremely talented composers and two perfectly complementing female singers, the eight studio albums and innumerable amount of compilations, over 130 released songs, more than 20 worldwide hits among them, eight consecutive albums on top of British charts (compilations counted) and the Eurovision Song Contest victory in 1974 with the song Waterloo. And of course much more triumphs after disbanding – a mulitiplatinum Gold compilation (1992) and still amazingly popular Mamma Mia! musical (1999). This is only the short description of the band, penned for those, who don’t want to carefully check the ABBA story. But what to do, if we need to tell to someone much more about the band? Or if we simply want to join to the group of the ABBA fans? The Polish publishing market has not coddled ABBA fans so far with an excessive amount of publications devoted to the band. Suffice it to say that in addition to the book published in 1999, The Winner Takes It All (from Marzena Tarka and Jan Skaradzinski, the In Rock publishing house) and short, few-words articles in encyclopedias, dictionaries or in the press, there was nothing at all. This lasted until 2013, when the Poznań publishing house Rebis undertook to publish two completely new books about the band, due to the upcoming 40th anniversary of ABBA's victory in the Eurovi- sion Song Contest. One of them is the The History of the Supergroup by Carl Magnus Palm, which is a translation of the ABBA biography, originally published in September 2008, titled ABBA. The Story. Carl Magnus Palm is known for his name for almost anyone, who has at least one ABBA CD, released after the year 2001. Born in Stockholm in 1965 Carl is not only Universal/Polar Music consultant, who helps to enrich the re-editions and new issues of ABBA catalogue. He wrote short essays to the booklets of the albums, he brought the idea to make the Deluxe Albums series, and also he spent much time in the band’s archives, to find many previously unreleased tracks and many of them finally saw the light of the day due to his intercession. He personally made reviews with Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Frida, but also with many other artists, who had been working with ABBA. He also took a part in some documentary films (one of them – Biography. ABBA – was even aired on TVP2 a few years ago) and wrote many popular books about ABBA. So, how does The History of the Supergroup look like? The History of the Supergroup could be also called an ABBA-Bible. The book was penned not only for devoted fans, but also for casual listeners and for those who don’t want to take a deep look into the ABBA music. On 488 pages completed with three inner sleeves with pictures, the au- thor depicted the whole story of Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid, described with the smallest details their tough way to reach the success on the Swedish music scene, a few-years-long work to- gether as composers and producers, which finally leaded them to form the ABBA group, and the tough and also pioneer way to promote their music outside Sweden. Much space of the book was also devoted to Stig Andersson, who was not only the intelligent, determined and smart manager (who could be also called an informal fifth member of the group), but who didn’t afraid of believing that ABBA could reach an international success with their music. There was also a place for other artists and musicians, who worked with ABBA (i.e. Lena Andersson, Ted Gärdestad or genius sound engineer, Michael B. Tretow, an architect of the unique ABBA-sound), huge sections describing the band’s finances (like the business deal with Poland, which made possible to produce licensed ABBA albums in Poland) and also a place for describing the political and cultural background of Sweden, which wasn’t so proud of ABBA, as it should be. All of this was fulfilled with quotations from ABBA members and from many people who worked with them through the ten crazy years and after the disbanded of the group in 1982. The whole text was thought and written very well. I guess there is no other book in which we could find almost anything about the group. The text was divided into chapters, but there are no traditional numbers of them – instead, as a titles, we have a quotations from ABBA members, Stig Anderson or from the press. The content side is at a high level and perhaps the only complaint could be to devote quite a modest amount of space to wider descriptions about the extremely complex cre- ative process of the group. Information about individual albums or songs are usually limited to just a few sentences or one or two slightly more extensive descriptions, usually discussing the selected album / song, or ideas or technique particularly important from the band's history point of view. It seems, however, that this procedure was well thought out by the author and is quite purposeful, as from the first half of the 90s on the market there were already a few other titles about the group, also signed with his name. The supplement with the aforementioned creative aspect would be another book - ABBA: The Complete Recording Sessions (originally released in 1994), whose pre- miere in the significantly revised and expanded version took place in March last year. Unfortu- nately, it is not known yet whether the book will be seen in the Polish version, and due to the fact that the author, together with the fans of the group from around the world, funded its release, the book is rather expensive. A separate paragraph should be devoted to a brief discussion of the Polish edition of the Hi- story of the supergroup from the purely technical side. It is at a high level, but some minor mistakes have not been avoided. The book appeared in a hardback with a colored dust jacket, decorated with the band's name, for which the opalescent paint was chosen. It is very close to the original Swedish edition (entitled ABBA: The Story), with one difference – on the cover of the Polish edition ... Agnetha Fältskog does not smile, although the same photo of the band was used (minor retouching was made in the origi- nal). It is worth noting that the Polish publisher has also decided to replace the individual elements of the dust jacket. Comparing to the original, a short note about the author was shifted from the rear to the front dust jacket wing, thus completely removing the short quotes from Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Frida and Stig. Instead of the band's concert photo on the back, the description of the book was extended and three short excerpts from the reviews that appeared in the western press (Sunday Times, Smålandsposten and Expressen Söndag respectively) were added. The translation of the History of the supergroup is at a very good level. The persons respon- sible for them have done their job without a complaint, avoiding making substantive errors that are often shared by many similar books. Although, unfortunately, there is one exception, which isn’t nice - this is another Polish translation in which the singer Dusty Springfield became a male! And this is probably because of ignorance or simple negligence. OK, it should be respected, that not everyone has to be an avid music lover. But if the translator and the corrective team undertake to translate a book dedicated to music, it is worth checking out the names of artists that they may not have heard about, because such errors are not only an offense to them, but can even lead to public ridicule of the translator / editor. Dusty Springfield definitely isn’t one of many old music stars that can be forgotten, because they did not bring much to the music. She was a well-known, appreciated and respected artist who fully deserved to be labeled great. On the plus side, it is definitely worth noting that there are no notable typos or other edito- rial errors in the text. The book was printed on high-quality matt paper, and for the inserts with pho- tos, lacquered paper was provided. Unfortunately, as I mentioned (and showed) earlier, the book is not completely free from small errors, which will surely be quickly discovered by people more familiar with ABBA. Perhaps the biggest of them are in the photos inserts. However, if the photo of the band from the Polar Mu- sic office (made in January or February 1976) described as a photo from June 1974 is just a trifle, describing the photo from the session to the music video and the Super Trouper album from 1980 as pictures from ABBA: The Movie of 1977 is already quite abusive. Unfortunately, both errors are cer- tainly the fault of the editorial office, which is confirmed not only by the record books, but even by the author himself, with whom I contacted to finally clarify my doubts. The error was also made on the dust jacket, in a short note about the author, where we can read that The story of the supergroup is a significantly expanded and enriched version of the book Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The Real Story Of ABBA. Unfortunately, this is not true, and a possible mistake of the Polish publisher may result from the fact that the author on his website mentioned the release of the extended edition of Bright Lights ..., which happened soon after, in 2014 (the original edition was released in 2000/2001).