ARRIVAL, a very authentic ABBA tribute band is currently performing a limited two-week run on the East Coast.
HOW WE GOT THERE
I accidentally stumbled onto a little thread yesterday morning on the Steve Hoffman forum, followed the link ( http://www.arrival.se/#frame5 ) and discovered that ARRIVAL would be closest to my location yesterday (Friday) evening. They were to be in the tiny town of Jim Thorpe, PA, a small rural town in the foothills of the Pocono mountains, playing at a venue called Penn's Peak.
Looking all of this stuff up on Google Earth and Mapquest, I determined that they were going to be all around me over the next few days, but not dramatically close. They'd be in South Orange, NJ, York, PA, and Baltimore, MD. Ironically too, they're heading to Florida next week and so are we, permanently! But they're going to Coral Springs, down near Ft.Lauderdale/Miami and we're re-locating to Central Florida. So there were lots of opportunities in the schedule, as long as we were willing to take a little road trip.
Comparing prices of tickets, it turned out that the Friday night show in Jim Thorpe was the most reasonable - only $28 for the most premium seats. So it became a question of whether we wanted to travel that far or not, and whether tickets were even still available. A few phone calls yielded the information that it wasn't sold out, so after printing some maps out, we headed for the car.
It turns out that this Jim Thorpe town is only 58 miles from our current PA location, and about a 1 hour, 10 minute drive. Add 15 more minutes for rush hour traffic on a Friday evening and we were on our way.
THE VENUE
In the Internet descriptions of ARRIVAL, I learned that they'd been to this particular place before - a year and a half ago - which told me that they must have liked it. It's a medium-sized hall all made out of wooden floors and beams, with padded folding chairs for seating - really attractive. A balcony area around the periphery gave folks up there a good view of the high stage at one end. Food and drink concessions were along the back of the rectangle, opposite the stage. It was all clean and modern, and really well- kept. We managed to get seats in the main floor seating area, in the first row after the break from the "orchestra" section. TV screens above gave everyone a close view, even if they were in the somewhat obstructed-view sections along the sides.
ARRIVAL
This group apparently formed around 1998 or so, so that would put it around the time of the first MAMMA MIA phenomenon. Listening to, and watching them, on the videos on their website, I got the idea pretty quickly that they were reasonably authentic-sounding. Since they're Swedish, I reasoned that even their accents would be authentic, too, and I was right about that.
I'd seen a couple of other ABBA tribute bands over the past decade, one was pretty bad, and one was not too bad. The bad one was a knock-off we'd seen in Disney World playing at EPCOT. They were really OK, but nothing to write home about. And the decent one was "Bjorn Again" and they put on a fun-filled show with some humor to it, and at the time I thought it was as good an "ABBA" performace as I was ever going to see.
Wrong! This group, ARRIVAL, has it all down pat. The looks of the ladies can even fool you at times, with the Frida-lookalike even facially resembling the lady she's mimicking. The blonde lady emulating Agnetha wasn't quite so authentic in the facial features, but her body, her moves, and her voice were surely the embodiment of a young twenty-something Agnetha.
The Bjorn character was a bit too tall, and the Benny character a bit too skinny, but overall, they performed their parts well too. They only "guy" tune they really did was "Does Your Mother Know" and it all sounded just like the record.
They ran through a nearly two-hour set of the most famous ABBA tunes; they brought out the man who drummed for the ABBA tracks back in the '70s and '80s, and they sang and played their hearts out. There were no recorded parts - everything was played and sung live by the twelve members on stage.
There were three female backup singers who had the overdub backing parts down pat, making things sound just like you remembered them from the records. The costumes, we learned from the Internet, are as authentic as you can get, copied and designed by ABBA's original designer, and the show had the look and feel of a real ABBA concert, the way we've seen and heard portions of in videos and concert footage.
Every song was a highlight, from the opening "Voulez-Vous" to the main-set closing of "So Long". In between, we were treated to perfect-sounding renditions of things like 'Mamma Mia", "Take A Chance On Me", "The Name Of The Game", "People Need Love", "He Is Your Brother", "Waterloo", "Honey, Honey", "Money, Money, Money", "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", "Knowing Me, Knowing You", while even throwing in some of the female-lead album tracks like "Kisses Of Fire", "I've Been Waiting For You", and "One Man, One Woman".
The encore set began with "Summer Night City" and concluded, of course, with a rousing rendition of "Dancing Queen".
I think I can now in all honesty say that I've seen a "real" ABBA concert - it's just that ABBA wasn't there!
If you get a chance to see this show, by all means do it.
Harry
HOW WE GOT THERE
I accidentally stumbled onto a little thread yesterday morning on the Steve Hoffman forum, followed the link ( http://www.arrival.se/#frame5 ) and discovered that ARRIVAL would be closest to my location yesterday (Friday) evening. They were to be in the tiny town of Jim Thorpe, PA, a small rural town in the foothills of the Pocono mountains, playing at a venue called Penn's Peak.
Looking all of this stuff up on Google Earth and Mapquest, I determined that they were going to be all around me over the next few days, but not dramatically close. They'd be in South Orange, NJ, York, PA, and Baltimore, MD. Ironically too, they're heading to Florida next week and so are we, permanently! But they're going to Coral Springs, down near Ft.Lauderdale/Miami and we're re-locating to Central Florida. So there were lots of opportunities in the schedule, as long as we were willing to take a little road trip.
Comparing prices of tickets, it turned out that the Friday night show in Jim Thorpe was the most reasonable - only $28 for the most premium seats. So it became a question of whether we wanted to travel that far or not, and whether tickets were even still available. A few phone calls yielded the information that it wasn't sold out, so after printing some maps out, we headed for the car.
It turns out that this Jim Thorpe town is only 58 miles from our current PA location, and about a 1 hour, 10 minute drive. Add 15 more minutes for rush hour traffic on a Friday evening and we were on our way.
THE VENUE
In the Internet descriptions of ARRIVAL, I learned that they'd been to this particular place before - a year and a half ago - which told me that they must have liked it. It's a medium-sized hall all made out of wooden floors and beams, with padded folding chairs for seating - really attractive. A balcony area around the periphery gave folks up there a good view of the high stage at one end. Food and drink concessions were along the back of the rectangle, opposite the stage. It was all clean and modern, and really well- kept. We managed to get seats in the main floor seating area, in the first row after the break from the "orchestra" section. TV screens above gave everyone a close view, even if they were in the somewhat obstructed-view sections along the sides.
ARRIVAL
This group apparently formed around 1998 or so, so that would put it around the time of the first MAMMA MIA phenomenon. Listening to, and watching them, on the videos on their website, I got the idea pretty quickly that they were reasonably authentic-sounding. Since they're Swedish, I reasoned that even their accents would be authentic, too, and I was right about that.
I'd seen a couple of other ABBA tribute bands over the past decade, one was pretty bad, and one was not too bad. The bad one was a knock-off we'd seen in Disney World playing at EPCOT. They were really OK, but nothing to write home about. And the decent one was "Bjorn Again" and they put on a fun-filled show with some humor to it, and at the time I thought it was as good an "ABBA" performace as I was ever going to see.
Wrong! This group, ARRIVAL, has it all down pat. The looks of the ladies can even fool you at times, with the Frida-lookalike even facially resembling the lady she's mimicking. The blonde lady emulating Agnetha wasn't quite so authentic in the facial features, but her body, her moves, and her voice were surely the embodiment of a young twenty-something Agnetha.
The Bjorn character was a bit too tall, and the Benny character a bit too skinny, but overall, they performed their parts well too. They only "guy" tune they really did was "Does Your Mother Know" and it all sounded just like the record.
They ran through a nearly two-hour set of the most famous ABBA tunes; they brought out the man who drummed for the ABBA tracks back in the '70s and '80s, and they sang and played their hearts out. There were no recorded parts - everything was played and sung live by the twelve members on stage.
There were three female backup singers who had the overdub backing parts down pat, making things sound just like you remembered them from the records. The costumes, we learned from the Internet, are as authentic as you can get, copied and designed by ABBA's original designer, and the show had the look and feel of a real ABBA concert, the way we've seen and heard portions of in videos and concert footage.
Every song was a highlight, from the opening "Voulez-Vous" to the main-set closing of "So Long". In between, we were treated to perfect-sounding renditions of things like 'Mamma Mia", "Take A Chance On Me", "The Name Of The Game", "People Need Love", "He Is Your Brother", "Waterloo", "Honey, Honey", "Money, Money, Money", "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", "Knowing Me, Knowing You", while even throwing in some of the female-lead album tracks like "Kisses Of Fire", "I've Been Waiting For You", and "One Man, One Woman".
The encore set began with "Summer Night City" and concluded, of course, with a rousing rendition of "Dancing Queen".
I think I can now in all honesty say that I've seen a "real" ABBA concert - it's just that ABBA wasn't there!
If you get a chance to see this show, by all means do it.
Harry
neeye: you're a bit different!
