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The Brunettes — Heather Mansfield and Jonathan Bree

Auckland band The Brunettes, led by Jonathan Bree And Heather Mansfield, are touring NZ to promote new album Structure and Cosmetics, their first official stateside release via revered US indie label Sub Pop…

Someone has invented the Baby Bed Cage; Art + Object’s 20th century popular culture auction; 41 Money facts that will blow you away; The Ugliest Men Of Rock ‘n’ Roll; And an irrational fear of clowns…

ABBA, comprising Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and their respective girlfriends (then wives, then ex-wives) Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog, were huge in their day.

The Swedish pop group sold more than 370 million albums worldwide during the peak of their fame from the mid-70s through the early 80s, and Andersson and Ulvaeus now probably live off the royalties of their hit stage musical Mamma Mia, based on 24 of their hit songs. There’s also the inevitable film version coming up, starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan.

But any chance of an ABBA reunion is fraught with peril due to the fallout from divorce and petty jealousies, the latter unintentionally played out in front of the TV cameras in this clip…

It’s a hard road finding original pictures on the web, so here’s a compilation of the best 17 images from the last year of my Sideswipe column in the NZ Herald, re-packaged for the amusement of Spare Room readers…

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia 8.30pm, Sunday 12 August, MGM Sky Digital

With a title like that, how can you not want to see this film? For many years, Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) was slated as the worst film ever made. A modernised, ultra-violent western, it’s now considered to be one of the director’s purest works…