By Wilfred Pilo
KUCHING, June 24: More than 2,000 music lovers gathered to sing and dance along to classic hits by Swedish pop group ABBA and British rock band Queen in ‘Dancing Queen Concert—A Tribute to ABBA and Queen’ at the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) last night (June 23).
According to Minister of Tourism, Creative Industry, and Performance Arts Sarawak Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, the tribute concert features ABBORN, one of the most successful ABBA tribute bands in Europe, who performed here for the first time.
“Though they (ABBORN) are not the original ABBA, they do a good job in performing songs from the yesteryears.
“I am sure those who grew up with ABBA’s songs in the 1970s would be entertained tonight,” he said to reporters before the concert started.
ABBORN performed 16 of ABBA’s classic hits with ‘Waterloo’ as the opening number, which made the Swedish pop singing group the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 held at the Brighton Dome in the United Kingdom.
Following that, ABBORN also performed ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’, ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, ‘Chiquitita,’ ‘The Winner Takes It All’, ‘SOS’, ‘As Good As New’, ‘Thank You For The Music’, ‘Money Money Money’, ‘Honey, Honey’, ‘Ring, Ring’, ‘Does Your Mother Know’, ‘Voulez-Vous’, ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’, ‘Mamma Mia’ and finished off with one of their most popular songs, ‘Dancing Queen’.
After a short interlude, the concert continued with the tribute to Queen performed by Singaporean band Killer Queen, with Indonesia’s very own Freddie Mercury, Alfred Ayal, as the frontman.
The crowd rocked the night away with 15 of Queen’s greatest hits:Â ‘One Vision’, ‘Hammer To Fall’, ‘Radio Ga Ga’, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, ‘Somebody To Love’, ‘Killer Queen’, ‘Under Pressure’, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, ‘I Want to Break Free’, ‘Crazy Little Called Love’, ‘The Show Must Go On’, ‘Love of My Life’, ‘We Will Rock You’, and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, before ending with the ever-timeless ‘We Are The Champions’.
During a short pause, concert-goers were also treated to an acoustic version of Queen’s ‘Love of My Life’ sung by Michael King, who is a renowned singer in Sarawak known for his opera, classical, soul, blues, and jazz singing styles, Miss Malaysia World 2014 Dewi Liana Seriestha, and Ayal; as well as a sape performance by Miss World Malaysia 2018 Larissa Ping. — DayakDaily
