ABBA On The Web · March 2010
Before the great ABBA revival in 1992 ABBA's release history on Compact Disc (CD) was rather hit and miss. Though The Visitors was one of the world's first commercially released CDs in 1983 (though not the first, as is commonly claimed), the next ten years saw a haphazard pattern of ABBA's eight studio albums and local compilations released by a variety of record labels with varying levels of quality.
The website ABBA On CD by Ken Griffin from Ireland documents those many and varied releases up to 1992. You won't find ABBA Gold or the latest remastered ABBA CDs here, but you will find many strange and different ABBA releases that you may never have seen before
Not only does the site list the various CDs available, it also shows sleeves, label designs, variations between different pressings or countries' releases, and also discusses the sound quality of each CD. There are also comparisons between the CDs and their vinyl counterparts, for those that were released on both formats.
With ABBA’s entire catalogue so easily available today it's hard to remember there was a time when ABBA music was hard if not impossible to find on CD.
The site is broken down into several categories. European CDs includes those first releases of the ABBA and solo catalogue albums, including ABBA's eight studio albums, several rare issues of Gracias Por La Música, ABBA Live, and Agnetha and Frida's post-ABBA solo albums. It also includes rare and hard-to-find first test pressings of The Visitors from 1982, almost a year before the first CDs hit music shops. There is a famous photograph of Benny and Björn holding copies of one of these versions when they got a preview of the new format from a PolyGram executive. Would you believe that it took five years from the release of the first ABBA CD until all the eight studio albums were finally available, and then not in every territory?
European compilations covers a wide variety of CD collections released across Europe in those years. Some of these CDs included unique selections of songs. At the time there were many songs, such as B-sides or albums tracks from ABBA's early years, that were only available on these compilations. These CDs are out of print and are now hard to find, including releases by PolyGram in Germany and the Netherlands, and Pickwick and Castle Communications in the UK.
North American CDs tells the little known stories of many ABBA CDs that were released in the USA and Canada by Atlantic Records. These were generally unique releases, with different versions of many CDs that were also released in Europe. Often the versions released in the US and Canada were different from each other! The most famous North American CD is ABBA Greatest Hits (volume 1), as this was that compilation's only release on CD until Universal Music's 30th Anniversary Edition in 2006.
Japanese CDs details the CDs released in Japan, first by Discomate, then by PolyGram. Like the North American CDs many Japanese CDs from these years are little known to fans, and are also different from the more common European releases. Some of these Japanese CDs, like their vinyl counterparts in the 70s, are highly prized by collectors for their improved sound quality and packaging compared to the concurrent releases elsewhere.
There are a number of CDs that Ken is seeking to include on the site listed under “Most Wanted CDs”. If you have any of these, or any other ABBA CDs released between 1982 and 1992 Ken would love to hear from you with details. Coming soon will be even more CDs, including several compilations unique to Australia.
ABBA On CD is a blog, like several other newer sites that have appeared in this column, so visitors can comment on each entry. Many fans have already left comments, sometimes including more information about the CDs listed. Navigation is easy, with the sections listed across the top, and also in a navigation bar down the side with each page also listed.
