Abba returns to the stage ... sort of

The holographic pop phuture that Ira predicted when he saw The Who performing Quadrophenia nine years ago apparently will be coming to London next spring, courtesy of the reunited Abba.

[news.sky.com]

It's bad enough when the performers submit to the knife for revolting plastic surgery [list too large to name goes here]. Now they just simulate them with computer graphics and deliver a robotic simulacrum of pop music. with no capacity for surprise. All of these simulated popstar things just creep me out! Especially when the performer is dead [see: Roy Orbison]. it's like some horrible SciFi dystopia we live in now. The earth is rebelling against the infection of mankind with heat, fire, and water. Unstoppable pestilence is spread across the globe. Power is entrenched against progress. Rampant technofascism encroaches everywhere. The dead are exploited as performing zombies! Philip K. Dick was too on the money.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[url]https://postpunkmonk.com[/url]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Wow, I didn't think this news would provoke such a tremendous, all-encompassing response ... although I can't refute a single thing that Monk said.

From the photos and the article, I gather that Abba will be performing with a live band at a specially designed venue in London -- much the same way that performing spaces in Vegas are configured (and reconfigured) to suit the performers who will be using it. They simply won't appear onstage themselves; instead, they will be manipulating the holographic avatars of themselves onstage.



Why are they taking this weird-ass approach? Simple. They know that, however much the fans may clamor for an Abba reunion, nobody really wants to see the band members as they are today -- septuagenarians. Part of the appeal of Abba, the band, the entity, is that they've been frozen in public perception as beautiful twenty-something stars for forty years. (It's telling that their upcoming reunion album, Voyage, is the first Abba album of new material that doesn't include the band members on the cover.) So, one could argue, they're offering the public what it wants ... even if the means by which they're offering it is creepy as hell.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2021 06:10PM by Delvin.

I’m on record as saying these hologram concerts are creepy. Maybe a LITTLE less so with the act still being alive and having a hand in it, ala Abba. Yes, it’s true, we want our rock stars to always look young and hot… but this is still creepy. I can’t get around it.

I can see Kiss using this tactic down the road. Oh, and the Grateful Dead… propping you a 3D Jerry.

A show like Beatlemania was one thing, a gifted cover band. Setting up a computer-generated Cavern Club-era Fab Four would freak me out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 07:05PM by Bip.