Monday, January 12, 2009

Separated at Birth (Special Those Pernicious Swedes! Edition)

Courtesy of constant reader Nora Charles, I chanced across the photo below amidst a portfolio of publicity shots of Swedish dance bands of the 70s. That's The Claes Lennarth Club, who apparently were pretty hot stuff in the land of Ingmar Bergman and those wonderful meatballs at one time.



In any case, apart from proving that ABBA's fashion sense didn't occur in a vacuum, I was immediately struck by the uncanny resemblance between the band guy in the sweater in the middle (Claes Lennarth himself, one assumes) and legendarily dense TV film critic (I worked with him briefly, so I've got stories for another day) Jeffrey Lyons.



Jeffrey and a really interesting wig obviously had a second career going for themselves back in the day, and I can only say kudos and huzzahs.

In any case, if your heart can stand the strain, you can see more of the type of bands that passed for entertainment dans la terre du Sun de Minuit by clicking here.

6 comments:

Noam Sane said...

And still, they're hipper than Metallica.

Anonymous said...

Hey! I LIKE that sweater!

/GWPDA

(yeah - secret type in word, "unwingey". sure.)

Anonymous said...

Hmmm.... Are you saying the Claes Lennarth Club (or even Abba themselves) were the Jeffrey Lyonses of Swedish Pop? :)

steve simels said...

Both Jeffrey and Neal Gabler - the brilliant author of the definitive history of Jews in Hollywood "An
Empire of Their Own" -- wrote for a video magazine I used to work at.

I once asked Neal, Lyons' one-time partner on a PBS TV review show they were on together for a season or two, what it was like working with him.

Neal, a very nice man as well as a great writer, would only roll his eyes.
:-)
:-)

Anonymous said...

I can top that.

I stepped in a pile of dog crap the other day, and when I finished scraping my shoe off on the curb, I had the perfect likeness of Michael Medved.

Anonymous said...

I just figured the guy in front, who also bears an eerie resemblance to Annie Leibowitz circa 1972, was being Norwegi-rebellious.