So Annette and I are watching a documentary on the topic of Abba, the famously jumpsuit-clad Swedish supergroup. They’re getting various celebrities to rank Abba’s top 20 songs. Super Trouper is listed at number 16, and I’m thinking “Huh, only 16? Thought that one would be in the top ten for sure, maybe the top 5.” Then, this …
Annette: “I don’t know this one.”
JSR: “This one what?”
Annette: “This song.”
JSR: “This song? Super Trouper?”
Annette: “Yeah. Never heard this one.”
JSR: “You fucking have.”
Annette: “I have not!”
JSR: “You’ve never heard Super Trouper?”
In order to express my amazement, I would have to include a picture here of someone going “Wha’!?” and I don’t have one. So use your imagination. I felt much the same as when, back in the 90’s, a good friend many years my junior said “Who’s Duran Duran?”
Additional unrelated note: They had an interview with Donny Osmond during this documentary, and he was being dreadfully earnest about how excited the lyric “Uh-huhhh” from “Knowing me, knowing you.” got him.
Annette: “He’s .. he’s very wholesome, isn’t he?”
JSR: “Mormon.”
Annette: “Ah, right.”
I actually have some memories of watching the Donny and Marie show on TV back in the 1970s and thinking that Donny was a pretty dorky. And I myself, was (a) a child aged in single figures and living in a small farming town in New Zealand, and (b) pretty damn dorky myself. So he must have been an utter spaz.
July 21, 2008 at 10:44 am
So he must have been an utter spaz.
He was.
July 21, 2008 at 11:25 am
When Crispin was a baby I had a whole nappy-changing song to the tune of “Super Trooper” with Trooper replaced by Pooper.
July 21, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Well, I’m with Annette, cos I only know Super Trouper from the cover version the Headless Chickens did on “Abbasalutely”, the 1995 Flying Nun ABBA tribute album.
I don’t remember it from the early ’80s, and I wouldn’t consider it an iconic ABBA song – not like Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen or Waterloo.
July 21, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I was just coming here to wonder how she missed the Chickens’ version of it!
July 22, 2008 at 1:57 am
huh! Clearly you never spent many a drunken night stomping round some impoverished students flat with me and JSR in our KAOS years drunkenly (and atonally) screaming “SUPER TROOOPER BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH! SHINING LIKE THE SUNNNNNNNN!!!”
Good times.
July 22, 2008 at 3:18 am
I … actually have no memory of this.
July 22, 2008 at 6:02 am
It was often played at Ilam Rd – Picasso’s – flat. But you guys weren’t too atonal to be fair, but you were loud.
July 22, 2008 at 7:49 am
you weren’t around for our death metal version of Roger Whittaker’s “I’ve gotta leave old durham town” then.
July 22, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I actually do remember that 🙂
July 23, 2008 at 1:15 am
_Really_? It’s one of my defining memories of KAOS parties.
huh.
July 21, 2008 at 9:57 pm
That whole ‘who’s Duran Duran’ thing still comes back to haunt me sometimes.
July 22, 2008 at 6:03 am
I always preferred A-Ha.
July 22, 2008 at 7:50 am
I bet you did.