Golden email #21: Ace of Base and following links down a 90s web rabbit hole

I found this Ace of Base fansite: http://www.geocities.ws/linnandjenny, because I researched the just mentioned band. I remembered the songs "The Sign" and "All that she wants" from my childhood and I remember acknowledging Malin Berggren's voice as very recognizable and special, already back then. Then I found out that Malin Berggren not only left the band, but also left the public world completely at the start of the 2000s. So, the pictures on this site could be among the last ones taken of her out in public, at all. However, Malin Berggren is so charismatic, cool and effortless. She didn't care at all about the spotlight but still made a big impact in it.

Back to the site. I just love the text "May take some time to download" above the smallest images ever in history on the page http://www.geocities.ws/linnandjenny/various.html. And "Please wait untill the pictures are downloaded, you wont regret it!" on http://www.geocities.ws/linnandjenny/jenny.pics.html. We just take downloading pictures for granted these days, don't we?

The site looks old, but it still holds up, in a way. And it also really doesn't, in another way.

Then, on the page "Ace of Base links" you find some - you guessed correctly! - Ace of Base links. This is also according to the site creator just the right place to put links to:
- her other fan site about the Swedish singer Björn Rosenström
- her own personal site
- her boyfriend's site

So, let's look at the creator, who's called Nathalie,'s own personal site. It starts with the intro text:
"Oh, this is the hard part...To tell everyone who own this site, ok I don't have to but hey...Mabye it can be fun to read (I don't think so!)"
Some kind of context must be lost here... because that's a freaking weird sentence.

It's just that kind of site that was made by someone who just happened to know how to make a website, and then made a website. Without really knowing why, and how to do it right, because no one did at the time. Charming, and something you literally can't do today in a world full of knowledge about exactly everything all the time, especially about internet things.

And then, Nathalie's boyfriend's - Lord Myers - website. Now we're getting into obscure territory, and I'm also afraid we're getting frighteningly close to "not interesting" territory. Or maybe that's what makes it interesting? Anyways, I read the Lord Myers page with the attitude that this is one of the great thinkers, like Aristotele's ground rules, or Marx's manifesto. Because that's how he writes it: Lord Myers' Funderingar

While on the subject of old personal websites with a personal charm, I'll talk a bit about one of my absolute favorite websites: http://christianpopp.net/

"Feel free to take shelter from the cold world outside", he says. And that's exactly how I feel visiting the site. This site is still up and hasn't changed for 28 years. And it's so delightfully random and sincere.

I love how interesting all the incredibly uninteresting parts of the websites are: Where Christian Popp talks about Dogstar shows he visited and the people he met there (http://www.christianpopp.net/concerts.htm). Information only interesting to the people he knew, and not at all for me. All the meaningless trivia about things that happened among his friends before and after the concert. Isn't it weird, and cool, that this night at the Dogstar concert is saved forever online like it was a news article?

Current update about Dogstar: They disbanded in 2002, but got together again in 2020, according to Wikipedia. Maybe Christian Popp is visiting their shows again with his friends?

Also, be sure to try out Christian Popp's favorite search engine: Lycos. I've heard it's really great (http://www.christianpopp.net/hotlinks.htm). Everybody's talking about Lycos these days... Like, "let me Lycos that!" when they want to search for things.

Actually, Lycos is still alive today 28 years later, and seems to be going very well, at least, and only, according to themselves, and they coincidentally also run the service that hosted Nathalie's (the girl running the Ace of Base page) boyfriend's (the philosopher Lord Myers) website. Isn't it a small world we're living in?

I have tried to contact both Nathalie and Christian Popp about their old websites, but surprisingly, their 25 year old email addresses don't work anymore...
I have not, deliberately, tried to reach out to Lord Myers.

/kbrecordzz, 2025-02-10