Rutger

I was not a fan of ABBA as a kid and considered their songs disco kitch. My pop music heroes at the time, from David Bowie to Frank Zappa, had a different approach.
But in recent years I began to appreciate how well-crafted some of the ABBA songs are and the musicians in the background had a lot to do with that; some consider e.g. bassist Rutger Gunnarsson as Europe's answer to James Jamerson. There is only this one video clip of Rutger on YouTube and some covers of his bass lines.
He passed away in April.


ps: One reason to re-activate this blog was to post a comment to my entry about asymptotic safety which OmarZ has sent by email.

But the timing is not completely random; I needed to remind myself that there is so much in this world, from Rutger's bass lines to the quest for quantum gravity, that is infinitely more important than the violence of some stupid assholes.