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• Saturday, July 19, 2008 05:32 PM

  Forgive me -- but part of what I resented about ABBA was that they took Phil Spector's rough-down-and-dirty wall of sound

  and made it shimmering and safe....

  The Momma's and the Poppa's took the same imersion aesthetic but added "cerebral" lyrics, played inter-genre, and did more with rhythm and "surprises"

  Abba reminded me too much of the caliope on the Santa Monica Pier where I grew up.

  Yes, there are commonalities between the ABBA, the BeeGees who I loathed -- and Culture Club (whose album I also bought knowning it was both ersatz something and real fun) -- and the Momma's and the Popp's ... with Phil Spector's total immersion wall of sound.

  I don't recall Simon and Garfunkel in the same class ... they ran instead to a precious sparse perfection ... even with the string section and -- again -- more "cerebral" (I am loathe to say "intellectual" or "brainy") lyrics made a difference.

  Fleetwood Mac was some bizarre synthesis of faux-intriguing lyrics, some killer transitions, and studio effects.

  It was new at the time and they made a lot of money ... but some were more "fabricated" to the market than originals in their own right as evidenced by "later work" ... which presence or lack of which may be the greater acid-test.

  —susan sunflower Read susan sunflower's other letters
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