Richard Dallaway's Blog Avatar
Richard Dallaway's Blog

ABBA (one week in Brighton exhibition)

Why not start a Friday with a visit to the ABBA: One Week in Brighton exhibition? YMMV, but as a child of the disco era, it put me in a pretty good mood for the day.

Walk, dance, and sing your way through the week that launched ABBA to global stardom.

A couple of things of note:

Uploaded image
I love that there were wall charts / score charts in the news papers of 1974 (Evening Argus, 30 March 1974).


Uploaded image
The play list of 1974: “This Extended Play record, containing the 1974 Eurovision songs by Sweden's ABBA, Switzerland's Pierra Martell, Italy's Gigliola Cinquetti and France's Anne-Marie David was distributed as a promotion to radio stations in the lead up to the contest. Anne-Marie did not actually perform at the contest. France withdrew at the last minute following the death of their President.”

And I sympathise with the stressful sounding on-site support:

Although there was an electricity supply to Brighton Dome the amount they wanted to use for Eurovision, with all the extra lighting and everything else was huge. So we had to make sure it didn't go off on the night. I was armed with a spare fuse and a meter to check how much current was being used.

— Chris English (Seeboard Engineer)

The exhibition runs until 4 August 2024. You can get the accessible + lovely audio descriptions.

events