Thursday, September 09, 2010

Gabba on Beat Room


According to internet-lore (AKA wikipedia), Gabba first took shape in the mind of Londoner Stig Honda in 1996 when he put together a group to play the music of Abba in the style of The Ramones. Three years later he christened the group Gabba and released their first (official) album "Leaving Stockholm". They quickly caught the attention of the UK media who fawned all over their act, gaining them write ups in rock journals like Mojo, Melody Maker & NME. They did a few live sessions for BBC, including the one featured in this post. All this love came to an end less than a week after the release of their 2001 album "Tijuana Dance", when it was banned by UK officials for being "Anti-Establishment" due to Spanish lyrics that accused the Queen of England of being a Nazi Storm trooper.
As with most novelty acts you have to take all supposed "facts" about them with a bucket of salt. The truth is that the act's novelty kind of wears thin after about 15 minutes, and lacking the musicianship of a band like Beatallica, they really had nowhere to go after their first album. Really that is all a band like this should last anyways, or else they turn into an annoyance like Dread Zeppelin.
So enjoy the above clip, and know that you most likely are seeing one of the worst Howard Stern Joey Ramone impersonations ever.

1 comments:

The Hamzinger said...

See? I told you we should've toured the UK - we would've been ENORMOUS!

Friday, September 10, 2010 at 1:18:00 PM PDT