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Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Showing posts with label Thank You for the Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thank You for the Music. Show all posts
Monday, August 2, 2010
Yohanna's trip to Finland in May: Thank You for the Music; Into Your Arms; Jóhanna Guðrún Jónsdóttir
I'd been meaning to post this video of Yohanna rehearsing in Kuopio, Finland two months ago, capturing her singing both an ABBA favorite, Thank You for the Music, as well as Nick Cave's Into My Arms.
Though I've spoken of Yohanna more than a few times here in the past, I think even more than the previous videos of hers that I've shared here -the last new one being from a Christmas show in Stockholm that aired on TV3's "En Sång För Hemlösa 2009" (A Song For The Homeless 2009), where she sang a few songs, including a tremendous version of Don't Save It All For Christmas Day, see my January 1st post, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/wow-yohanna-sings-dont-save-it-all-for.html - you can really see her tremendous earnestness and sense of purpose.
Of, quite literally, wanting to get every note and chord just right
Over the weekend, while I was watching a Marlins-Padres ballgame on TV, a friend from overseas with a good memory emailed to remind me about a couple of posts I'd talked about in the abstract that had yet to materialize in this space yet.
You may well recall some of these as well, from prior posts of mine or thru emails, but as it happens, one concerned Yohanna's trip to Finland -Suomi.
I'd told her previously that my plan was to put this video and some comments up over the Memorial Day weekend, sometime between watching the Indy 500 and the anti-climatic NCAA Lacrosse Mens Championship game between Duke and Notre Dame, but that, well, she hadn't seen it yet.
Oops!!!
Having received that gentle reminder, I'm now sharing the video that Tiia Santavirta first uploaded for Chaos Tube at http://www.youtube.com/user/TiiaSantavirta
More photos of the trip are available at http://teamyohanna.blogspot.com/ and more Yohanna videos can be seen at the TeamYohanna YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/TEAMYOHANNA
Sunday, July 5, 2009
ABBA's Benny Andersson on BBC One's "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross"; clips of interview & song; Telegraph interview
To better set the stage for the following post and associated
videos, the Telegraph had the following story last Wednesday:
Benny Andersson interview for the Benny Andersson band on Hampstead Heath
Reading the article above reminded me of all the
B/W film that I and most other serious ABBA fans
have seen over the years that featured the guys
playing in Skiffle bands, at venues not unlike the
ones described here by Benny in the mid-late
1960's.
"Every town in Sweden used to a have a Volkpark with a stage and a dance floor where in the summer bands would play and people would bring their own booze and dance," says Andersson when we meet in the hotel he owns in Stockholm. "In the Eighties that started to decline, so in 2000 we started to play in Skansen to try and recreate the feeling of those big bands from the forties and the fifties."
This is perhaps the best single example I can think of,
when the music sounds like it was done just right, and
with Helen Sjöholm, you know the problem will never
be with the singer,
From 0:40 to 0:56 of this Rick Steves video of Skansen,
you can get a sense of the sort of folk dancing I suspect
Benny's talking about.
By the time the interview below with Jonathan Ross
concludes, and you combine it with his insightful
earlier comments in The Telegraph, you really can't
help but come away even more impressed, because
it's clear that Benny's positive attitude is undoubtedly
one of the keys to his continued success and health,
because he seems to keep things in their proper
perspective.
He really enjoys the life he has now, believes the other
three do as well, he has the freedom to write whatever
he wants and has the good sense not to want to turn
his life -and his family's- upside-down:
"To have talent is just luck. But you have to take care of your talent by working.
I try to write music every day. I am not an artist. I don't have that drive or ego to
perform. I just want to write music that other people want to listen to. I want to
have a conversation through the music and for it to be as good and meaningful
as it can be."
Benny's so calm and reassuring that I almost think he could play
a shrink in a Woody Allen comedy.
----------
From BBC One, July 3rd, 2009
For more info on other clips of BBC One programs see:
For more info and prior Jonathan Ross interviews,see
His program started airing on BBC America in mid-June,
and based on the schedules of guests so far -I'm watching
it right now with Dustin Hoffman- it would appear that
they're on in the U.S. roughly 2-3 weeks after they first
appear LIVE on his show in London, since for the first week,
the BBC iPlayer has exclusivity with the video throughout world.
His BBC America webpage is at:
Closing out this post with Molly Sandén singing the
same song from above, Thank You for the Music
from just over three-and-a-half years ago at Skansen
on New Year's Eve.
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