Dancing Queen: 40 Years On

Dancing Queen is a song whose power is hard to resist. It’s the record [Pete] Waterman calls his “get-out-of-jail card … Whenever I lost the floor as a DJ, I just stuck Dancing Queen on.” It’s a track even the Queen is supposedly fond of boogying to (Chris Evans claimed that she told him: “I always try to dance when this song comes on because I am the Queen and I like to dance”).

If you’re left in any doubt over Dancing Queen’s charms, then just consider the 1996 Sex Pistols reunion show in Finsbury park, north London. To remind the audience just how stale the music scene had grown before Johnny Rotten et al came along, the PA blasted out the likes of the Bay City Rollers and other cheesy 70s pop staples. Unfortunately, that playlist also included Abba’s Dancing Queen – when it came on, the old punks gathered together failed to sneer: instead they began singing in unison. As Craymer says: “That’s what people do with Dancing Queen – they just surrender.”

Tim Jonze, The Guardian.

It's ABBA, not Abba, Tim - ABBA.

Justice: Rough Justice

When you're not working, do you still hang out?

Xavier: "We don't really hang, but that's because Justice takes a lot of our time … even when we are not in the studio we are still making stuff for Justice. So we don't have the sense of 'What are you doing? Let's go to the movies!' but that's because we are permanently together. It's a permanent hang-out."

I love the idea of a permanent hang-out!

Xavier: "It doesn't seem gay to us but… "

Gaspard takes out his phone and shows me a manga-style cartoon of Xavier straddling him. It's been made by a Justice fan. Justice fans, it transpires, are fond of writing slash fiction, or making slash art, about the pair and posting it on Tumblr blogs.

"They are so disturbing," grins Gaspard. "The weirdest thing is they are made by 15-year-old girls."

Xavier: "It's great to imagine people taking time to make those drawings and stories. We'd like to collect them all and show them at some point. What have we done to make them do something like this? We'd love to meet them and understand."

Tim Jonze interviews Gallic symbols, Justice for Guardian Guide.
There's some Xavier/Gaspard slash fiction on this Tumblr here.
Actually written, not by a 15 year-old girl, but - surprise - by a grown gay man.