I was in London last weekend for a few days and had the chance to see the ABBAWORLD exhibition at Earls Court. Now, you may not like ABBA (seriously, who doesn't?) but the exhibition is well worth the cost of entry (cheaper if you just turn up on the off chance at around 20 BPS). I went with a musician friend who is not particularly an ABBA fan and, at the end of it, even he was very impressed.

This is a travelling exhibition which opened in London at the end of January and will soon be moving around the UK before it starts to move further afield. If it comes near you, check it out!

25 rooms of exhibits, from their silver, gold and platinum disks and music biz awards to costumes and more. The most interesting part for me was the mock up of the Polar recording studio with all its original instruments and equipment, the sound engineering booth (God, I still have some of that stuff - reel to reel tape recorder, a portable cassette recorder and so on but RB/PTPA gives me more of a DAW than they had at 48 to 36), the office, the creative writing studio, the costume design workshop and a 'green room'. Amazing but the ABBA time really does not seem so long ago.

There are also interactive exhibits, for example a live stage where you get to sing on stage with 3D ABBA holograms, karaoke booths, a virtual mixing desk where you can test your skills against the original (I managed 91%!) and various quizz machines plus loads of video footage, interviews and so on.

Well worth visiting for serious musicians (or even just music fans) and deserves about 3 hours to go round in total - we managed it in 2.5 because we ran out of time before they closed. It was also interesting that we met so few people there - we only saw 6 other people in all the time we had.

Highly recommended. *****

ABBAWORLD

Follow That Dream

Sam
Karaoke King

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Turning that corner again - I have to keep following that dream, no matter what