This is ABBA, circa the late '70s. I wish I had the courage to wear white overalls in public...

I’m a 27 year-old man from New Jersey, and I have complicated feelings about ABBA.

That’s not to say complicated feelings are a bad thing, per se, they’re just, well, complicated. Good-complicated, like the components of a rich tomato sauce or the season finale of Mad Men.

I have vivid childhood memories of my parents and our neighbors hosting dinner parties, with ABBA Gold playing in the background (it seemed to be one of those records that every thirtysomething couple in the 1980s owned, as if it came with the stereo or was dropped off with the morning papers one Sunday morning). “Super Trouper” conjures up phantom tastes of a casserole our neighbors used to make, otherwise forgotten.

My sophomore year of high school, I fell in love with the weird, spectacular campiness of the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (soon to be a Broadway musical). This film (it’s great. Go rent it. Thank me later) features “Mamma Mia” prominently…and thus, the song was stuck in my head for three weeks following.

I also became a big fan of Muriel’s Wedding, which both features the music of ABBA and the amazing Toni Collette (also worth renting. Wow, three paragraphs in, and I’m already monopolizing your Netflix queue). I think this was my first real exposure to the whole ABBA experience; the weird and wonderful mix of relentless positivity, aura of disco-kitsch, and yes, more than a hint of booty-shaking groove. There’s something to be said for such unabashed, relentlessly optimistic fabulous-ity.

Other Abba-centric memories of mine include two upperclassmen in college who would begin (and sometimes end) most parties with a rousing dance-mime version of “Fernando,” and a terrifying summer theater production of Chess I once got roped into; that’s neither here nor there.

For those of us who came of age in the suburbs in the mid-to-late nineties, I think we were all caught in a weird echo-boom of nostalgia about ABBA; as our parents rediscovered the music of their youths, and the arts and entertainment contemporaries of their generation came into control of their industries, ABBA soaked its way in to a whole new generation’s ideas and ideals of pop culture.  This, ultimately led to that  grand-dame of all jukebox Broadway musicals, Mamma Mia, which, in turn, spawned the film of the same name. Mamma Mia will forever be remembered for reminding us that Meryl Streep can actually do anything, and Pierce Brosnan’s singing voice sounds like the dulcet tones of a braying water buffalo.

But, I digress.

The point here is that ABBA is this undeniable cultural touchstone, tied closely to rampant and unstoppable positive vibes. And all of us, being somewhat cynical children of the new millennium, have a slight resistance to that; it is, after all, a cynical world we live in.

You have to admit, there’s something cool in being able to neat those cynical impulses back with some soulful disco-pop sent our way from Sweden.

With this in mind, we’re headed to Morristown tomorrow night, for a GenNEXT event at the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts’ presentation of ABBA Mania.

Come with us. Dance. Jive. Have the time of your life.

…

That’s how the song goes, right?

Also, how fun does this look?