DUGGLEWORLD– Can you Dig It?

You may have missed the big news in the wake of Super Bowl hysteria and other distractions:  ABBAWORLD is open for business.  The 25-room touring extravaganza debuted in London (are they has-beens in Stockholm?), and reportedly features priceless ABBA artifacts and recreated scenes of their greatest musical triumphs.  Move over, Graceland and Beatles Magical Mystery Tours, here comes the Dancing Queen.  Mama mia!

I can understand enshrining Elvis and The Beatles, but ABBA?  Okay, they sold 375 million records, but Anni-Frid, Bjorn, Benny and Agnetha hardly roll off peoples’ tongues like that other “Fab Four”, John, Paul, George and Ringo.  Unlike Elvis, they’re not The King of  annything, even in Sweden.   And never have I heard a new band receive the appraisal, “Well, they’re not bad, but they’re no ABBA.”

If ABBA can do it, so can I; plus my hometown of McFarland, Wisconsin needs a new tourist attraction much more than London.  Introducing (insert power chord):  DUGGLEWORLD, a compendium of memorabilia from my storied– and music-ed– career, including:      

-  The nickel I received for my professional debut at age five at the Sunset Supper Club in Muscatine, Iowa, singing “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.”  I still reprise that chestnut in my “Circle of Life” show, for not that much more money.

-  My eighth grade version of “The Three Little Pigs,” written as a Shakespearean play, which prompted my teacher to observe that, “Someday you might be able to become a writer.”  Folks still occasionally tell me that.

-  The Hall of Battered Percussion, featuring the carnage of drumsticks and heads I shattered during teenage stints in neighborhood garage and school marching bands.  My idol of the day, Keith Moon of the Who, was blowing up his entire drum kit, so I considered myself a petty criminal by comparison.

-  A 1970s  Chicago street map to help me find the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times from the University of Iowa.  An anticipated bidding war at the papers for my talents never ensued; neither did anything else beyond a cursory dismissal from the receptionists. 

-  A Hall of Rejection containing all the form letters politely declining my book and magazine article ideas over the years.  Better make that two halls.

– A “Learn to Play Guitar” guide, accompanied by an instrument, that I bought in my twenties because breaking drums in friends’ living rooms seemed increasingly anti-social.  I now have four guitars, and am deciding which one to learn to play.

–  A small ceramic mug on a string, looped around my neck one evening at the finale of a client’s sales meeting in Puerto Vallarta.  I quickly learned that lifting the tiny tankard signaled the willing waitstaff to fill it with tequila.  There was food and a band– I think– and the Eastern Regional Manager fell off a balcony, but not too far.  Other memorable tales abounded, if only I could remember them.

Like all expectant exhibitions, DUGGLEWORLD relies on support from people like you.  Fear not:  I seek a job, not a handout.  Help feed the passion by contacting me for a new writing project or musical engagement.  Barring that, you may have the opportunity to purchase the aforementioned items on E-bay in the near future.