summer night city...

Ready to disco?? On Friday night, despite my horrific cold, Heidi and I were off to Summer Night City (AKA Ravinia - is that not perfect? ) for the music of ABBA, courtesy of our friends Arrival from Sweden. I love me some ABBA, and I guess lots of other people do, as well, because they were ALL jam packed into the parking lot and sprawled on the lawn at Ravinia that evening! Because really? This is perfect summer music - light and happy, singable, danceable and just plain clap your hands to the beat fun. The gift shop also got into the spirit of the event, displaying completely awesome sequined cowboy hats that had lights on their brims, in addition to jelly rings, bracelets and other assorted light up accessories.

We had seats in the pavilion, but I would wager that the real disco dance party was on the lawn. Everyone in the pavilion were strangely sedate, like aliens had descended into Highland Park and replaced all of the concert-goers with pod people - I mean, have you EVER been to a pop or rock music concert where everyone politely stays in their seats for the entire thing? At the U2 concert, as soon as the band hit the stage we were on our feet and we stayed there for the entire show.

Here, everyone sat calmly. The familiar strains of Mamma Mia got everyone going a little bit, and towards the end of the show, the crowd got up and danced to Take a Chance on Me (And I mean, everyone in the crowd which was like, huh? I didn't know that this song was that huge. I like it a lot, but I thought for sure some of the other songs would have been more of the crowd pleasers) and also Dancing Queen. But the rest of the time - everyone stayed in their seats. I don't usually attend pop music events at Ravinia, are they always like that?? Is it because donors snap up the tickets first and they tend to be older (and richer, with disposable income?) ? Is it because the original ABBA audience from back in the day is also considerably older now and less inclined to get up and boogie? Or what? Last year, they had a dance floor right in front of the stage, but they didn't do that this year (too bad!). Don't get me wrong, the audience was appreciative and all, it was just a little startling that everyone just sat there, stock still. I was dancing in my seat and clapping and singing along (as best I could. I'm losing my voice, thanks to my cold!) and I would totally have gotten up if everyone else had been doing that. Are people worried they will block the view of people behind them? That wouldn't be a problem if everybody was up and dancing! This isn't a Tony Bennett concert here, people!

Okay, sorry. Arrival from Sweden are lots of fun. There are four of them, playing Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Frieda (So really, they should be ABBF or maybe FABB) and they wear costumes identical to the ones ABBA really wore in their concerts. So naturally, they are completely awesome in a hilarious, 1970s kind of way. The group even sounds a lot like ABBA, and they filled their two hour concert with all of the group's greatest hits.

(This picture unfortunately does not do justice to the costumes, especially the crazy boots that everyone was wearing! Our "Benny" was sitting at the piano wearing high heeled sparkly boots! And the girls had on, at one point, above the knee white go-go boots - call me a boot bitch if you must, but they were adorable!) I have to say, I was devastated that I was not able to sing along with all of my favorites, but it was still a great night for this aging and rapidly decaying dancing queen. Just wait until next year...