Postcards from Spain…
Last week, we were in Spain: first time ever for Chris, first time for me in about forty years. I’m not going to do a fully-fledged coherent article on the topic, but here’s a set of notes on various elements of the trip.
Abba Voyage
Abba Arena, London
June 5, 2025
My love of Abba has been previously documented. So when staying in London for the first time in a number of years, there was one item essential on the to-do list. Attend the Abba Voyage show, recreating the band in their late seventies prime. It was an ambitious endeavour, utilizing motion capture, work by Industrial Light and Magic, and digital projection in a three thousand capacity, custom-built venue, taking six years from concept to opening, and at a total cost estimated to be $175 million. That’s a lot of effort, but has paid off. Since opening in May 2022, the show has played seven times a week at 99% capacity. At an average ticket price of close to three figures… Well, do the math.
Eurovision 2025
I’m making a strenuous effort to avoid spoilers this year, or even discussions which might end up giving any indication of the winner. So, no browsing the Eurovision subreddit, or checking the betting odds, and I’ve avoided Googling the show too much, so that my news feed doesn’t include any hints as to the outcome. Whether I will be able to sustain this, until the point when we will be able to catch up on the show – either very late Saturday night Arizona time, or some point on Sunday – remains to be seen. I may have to go completely dark on social media once it starts, just to be sure. I know too many people who are fans of the show on some level to take the risk…
Kraftwerk
Orpheum Theater, Phoenix
April 14th, 2025
The last time I saw Kraftwerk live, I was thoroughly unimpressed. It was July 1991, at Brixton Academy, and my twenty-something self left disgruntled, “What was the point?,” I muttered. “That wasn’t a concert.” Three decades later, Kraftwerk haven’t changed. At least, not in style. The only member remaining from that line-up is Ralf Hütter, which is why a friend refers to them as the ‘band of Theseus‘. Though given a defining trait is the group’s entirely deliberate lack of stage presence, few musical ensembles are better built to cope with personnel changes. But I did warn Chris beforehand what she should expect, based on my earlier experience. Kraftwerk will take the stage at 8 pm, on the dot. They will not interact with the audience in any way. They will play for two hours in front of their video wall. They will leave.
Turns out this was almost entirely spot-on, and the same as in 1991. Except, this time I really enjoyed it.
Pascagoula 73
Dir: Darcy Weir
With: Philip Mantle, Charlie Hickson, Calvin Parker, Maria Blair
Format: four x 60-minute episodes
Available: on Amazon, TubiTV and ROKU
The Pascagoula Incident is one of the more perplexing ones in UFO history, because it’s not just an account of an abduction, it’s something which happened to two people at the same time. It took place in October 1973, when Charlie Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. The men claim to have seen a UFO, whose robot-like occupants (both) paralyzed the pair and took them on board the craft, carrying out an examination of them there before returning them to the river-bank. Most abduction reports involve one person, which makes them easier to write off as hallucinations etc. Cases like this – the Betty and Barney Hill abduction would be another – are more resistant to prosaic explanations, though “hoax” is always a reliable fall-back for skeptics.