ABBOT

Abbatars

A colleague of mine, who, like me, finds herself in London a lot these days, recommended I see there the avatar-first show ABBA Voyage. I am a fan of the band and am intrigued by the concept, which is to record a concert using holograms of the famous four as they appeared, and played, at their peak. There are many great groups I have never seen perform and even the most on-it musicgoer has inevitably missed legendary performances that might, surely, be worth experiencing in a sort of super 3D recording? I truly wanted this to work, and maybe it would have if I hadn't been reminded, the night before, of what a live show is really all about.

I'd decided to see ABBA Voyage on Saturday night, but, before buying my ticket, I texted a local friend to see what they were up to. As it happens, they already had plans to see an ABBA-themed show, the dinner theater, sing-along, unabashedly campy Mamma Mia! The Party. I believe that when invited by a local to a local event the only right answer is Yes. This offer challenged that belief: about the last thing on earth I would volunteer to spend time doing is eating terrible food while drunken idiots, egged on by hack performers, mangle songs I love. Still, when in Rome. So it was I found myself later that day, full of dread, on the Jubilee line to the O2 stadium complex.

Maybe it was my lowest of low expectations, or perhaps the cheery company of my friend and his family, and certainly the actually quite decent prosecco we started the evening with helped...in any case, I enjoyed every moment of this three hour show. It was cleverly staged and orchestrated, performed competently and with seeming enthusiasm, and the food, to my great surprise, was decent. Above all, it was rapturously received by the audience, many of whom, statistics show, were repeat customers. ABBA's music stirs deep emotions in me and even this performance of their songs--sung in fragments by B string talent accompanied by tables full of increasingly drunken bachelorette parties--touched a chord. I was reminded of how much I really do love the band and, carried on a tide of prosecco-fueled enthusiasm, bought a hundred GBP ticket to ABBA Voyage for the next night.

Maybe it was my elevated expectations, or perhaps the fact that I was alone at what is clearly also a destination for bachelorette parties, but ABBA Voyage fell flat for me in almost every respect. The audio quality was oddly flat (I get a more lifelike sound from my tube stereo at home), a good chunk of the show was dedicated to what appeared to be a side quest from the Legend of Zelda, and the recorded performances of the avatars communicated nothing of the human pathos behind the songs: without the feeling it simply isn't ABBA. The show is a one trick pony, though that trick, an immersive visual experience that used not only state of the art simulation on the stage but also clever lighting effects throughout the entire theater, is a good one.

But above all what this concert lacked was the literally vital link between the performers and their audience which is, I'd argue, the reason most of us go to see live music. The fact that the audience only came alive a good third of the way into the show, when the actually live accompanying band was given front stage for a song or so, was the clearest possible evidence of this. Indeed, even the recording of ABBA's famous but frankly underwhelming performance of Waterloo at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, projected on giant screens at one point during the show and embedded for you below...

...had more life in it than did the brilliantly crafted toys on stage. The directors' transparent attempts to bridge the gap between the undead and the living by having the avatars speak directly to the audience as the band might well have done had they been there in person only made things worse. Indeed, I found the repeated thanks of a prerecorded avatar to be simply repulsive. Expressions of gratitude from a bot cannot achieve even insincerity.

I would still pay good money (though not that much good money) to see large-screen projections of recorded live shows, but I will never again waste any money on a simulated performance. The experience taught me that much, and more, it helped me understand the fears and consternation people express at the thought of human content creation being replaced, as increasingly it is, by AI "slop." It's not that the AI output is lacking in quality, but that, however high the quality, the AI creator cannot ever care about how you received it or whether you truly want more. When I respond emotionally to ABBA's songs, I am forming a bond with a person whom I will never meet and who is at that moment far away in time and place. That bond is real and is why I love ABBA and am, with them, grateful for the music.