The ABBA songbook

In recent weeks my elder girl’s Favourite Film pick has become the ‘ABBA musical’ Mamma Mia, which I’ve now watched about 36 times, more times than I’ve seen Au Hasard Balthazar, The Conformist or Viridiana (put together...) So, yeah, I know Mamma Mia pretty well now, and can even admire its vigour, its dramatic construction and canny appeal towards every imaginable audience demographic (except maybe Males between 28-34.) It’s no easy feat to be that popular, though the storytelling choices are just a bit easier in the genre of the wish-fulfilment Musical than they are in your standard Drama. (I was interested recently to read a hymn of praise on some creative/script-writing site to the supposedly exemplary narrative design of The Sound of Music, my elder girl’s Former Favourite Film. Yes, all very well, it moves along nicely, but I would say that when it comes to handing out the big plaudits and anointing the role models it’s not solely about how a story was told but why it was told, and with what ambition...) Sticking with what’s problematic about the creeping cultural dominance of the mass-popular form, I’ve been reading David Mamet’s Theatre, and had to laugh at his terse lament for the way all theatre on Broadway must now be tailored to the taste of the spectacle-&-star-loving Tourist: “No adult resident in London”, says Mamet, “would go to see the Crown Jewels, and no adult resident in New York went to see Mamma Mia, for to do so would have been culturally repugnant, branding him as a tourist, or dufus...”
Anyway, so, in a few weeks I’m due to go with the kids to see Mamma Mia in the West End...
Moving on – obviously I now have ABBA songs in my head morning, noon and night, which leads me to wonder: exactly how good were they? Better than Lady Gaga, whose ‘I Like It Rough’ has been ringing between my ears for the last 24 hours after one chance hearing? I suspect ABBA do deserve a fair bit of respect, especially for how their song-writing grew from foot-tapping pop tunes about falling in love to rather more wistfully melodic songs about getting divorced – which, of course, the two singer/songwriter couples that comprised the group famously did, in the late 1970s-early 1980s.
Of course there is in pop-musical appreciation this funny business of ‘credibility’ but then ABBA pretty much had that even when I was a lad. I seem to remember Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys hymning the ‘Bergman-esque’ period of the Divorcing Songs, which is maybe not so surprising, but better yet I recall the moody Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen picking ‘The Winner Takes It All’ as one of his Top Ten Tunes on a Radio 1 show of the mid-1980s. The presenter asked him rather sarkily to say why, and he said in heavy and resolute Scouse, ‘It’s just a great song’...
My favourite, though, is this ‘un.

Capsaicin: the fire every time...

'A great meal fades in reflection. Everything else gains. You know why? 'Cause it's only food...' Thus pontificates Richard Roma, philosophically-minded top-dog salesman in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, a play that I once (rather haphazardly) co-directed while at college. Roma says so as part of a spiel to trap a prospective customer (in a Chinese restaurant...), so I don't know if he means it; but I do agree with him.
This Christmas I have enjoyed some exceptionally fine cooking courtesy of my Darling Wife's family. I even did some OK cooking myself - a braised rolled shoulder of lamb for nine people, weekend before last. In the act of food preparation I can see the point of any number of rigours, whether it's the honey and mustard for the parsnips or the goose fat/parboiling/shaking of the potatoes, or precisely what wine you use to break down the sinews of the meat while steeping in the pot. And this is only to speak of the strictly humdrum middle ground of cookery cares. If it's got right, the taste is the vouchsafe and validation. But on the whole I'm still with Roma, on the grounds that lesser cares can in theory lead to even happier results.
To whit, what little cooking I've done in the months since mine became a four-person household has been heavily 'influenced' by green chillies. I'm not proud, but I am a happy eater. God bless capsaicin, salve for the soul, (possible) reliever of umpteen ailments! I understand the stuff is addictive, but then so is cocaine, and as far as I've heard it that stuff never did no good for nobody, even as it siphoned all the money from their purses.
Tonight, pressed for time, we ordered in pizza and wine, the provider being the excellent Lupa, and my thin-crust pie loaded with fiery red chillies and shaved grana padano was, for me, the definition of culinary heaven - setting aside, just for the moment, certain curry houses dear to me, and the one London fish ship I know where the chips are still done in beef dripping... Cf. Roma, of course, even these simple/glorious meals fade in reflection too. But you can have a lot more of them in this life, for less expense of time and bother; and who thought happiness could be so cheaply bought, if not pursued in anything like moderation?