With almost perfect timing for last night’s BBC Radio 2 ABBA tribute concert, Thank You For The Music, I stumbled across these two very rare unofficial ABBA CDs last weekend. As with most rare recorded and treasured finds, they turned up at the most unlikely place: in the Hylands House secondhand bookshop, next to the Hutton’s Courtyard Café.
(The Radio 2 broadcast was disappointing, but Kylie was undoubtedly the star of the show, with her Super Trouper and When All Is Said And Done live performances.)
Costing £3.00 for the pair of CDs, each one is packed with live performances of classic and album tracks (most likely recorded from the ABBA The Movie soundtrack), studio versions from TV programmes at the height of the group’s fame.
Bonus oddities and rarities such as the unreleased but brilliant Just Like That (the master tapes of which were rumoured to have been stolen from Björn Ulvaeus’ car), which has only previously appeared on disc four of the Thank You For The Music box set as part of a series of spliced together demos entitled ABBA Undeleted also add to the historic appeal.
A massive forty-two tracks in all, I’ll admit the quality’s not great, and does, in some cases, sound like the collection was recorded off a dodgy video. I can’t work out where they came from; aforementioned sound aside, the covers are of retail CD quality, and sleeve notes state that some of the tracks are from a Swedish-only promo.
They’re unofficial and therefore truly a mystery, but with that, unquestionably essential documents charting the band’s history that otherwise might be lost in the catalogue of more well-known and populist tracks that get played at hen nights, birthday parties, wedding receptions and fun fairs the world over.
The ABBA bootleg CDs are indeed very interesting to many hard core ABBA fans. It’s the only way one can hear a complete unedited concert for instance!