Bälinge byfest = Bälinge Village Party

Bälinge byfest was a Swedish cult pop-music programme apparently for teenagers showing them the newest hits from big artists. It was a short-lived late-night series, which started on 19 September 1980 and finished on 26 December 1980 and consisted of only 8 episodes. Bälinge is a place located in Uppsala county (Sweden), although in spite of its title the programme wasn't filmed in Bälinge, but in Stockholm and it also had nothing to do with Bälinge, except for the name. 

Frida appeared in a few short clips throughout this show and also introduced On And On And On from Show Express.

Episode 8.

Running order:

1. Opening tiles
2. John Hiatt – String Pull job (introduced by Frida)
3. The Selecter – Bombscare
4. John Hiatt – Back to the War
5. Reeperbahn – Apparaten som visste för mycket
6. Comedy scene (the fire)
7. ABBA – On and On and On  (rehearsal for Show Express introduced by Frida, pulling her famous range of funny faces!)
8. John Hiatt – It Hasn’t Happened Yet
9. The Selecter – The Whisper
10. Magnus Lindberg – Tårar över city
11. John Hiatt – Destination

In the first burst of Frida, the sketch prior to her appearing was about changing the name from Bälinge byfest to something even more crazy.  Frida seemed to think that the suggested name sounded "just like a western TV show".  She said, "”Säterbo bälgasväng? Nej, det tycker jag låter som en västernserie.” (Säterbo is the name of a place, ”bälgasväng” is a word made up of ”bälg” the middle part of an accordion, and ”sväng” meaning swing.)

Frida says at the very end of the show, "Det är verkligen slut nu" which roughly translates as, "This is really the end now".

The whole programme is available on the SVT website (unfortunately for Swedish people only until 31 May 2021.

The Frida bits can be seen here.



 

Throughout the programme, they used and varied the background set for the studio performances so they looked similar to Show Express (presumably so it seemed ABBA's performance of On and On and On was made FOR this programme?).

Archive data from Swedish Media Database:
Stockholm, SVT, TV1, 1980-12-26
Tablåinnehåll Ur TV-arkivet. Programledare: Arne Wise (21:31-)
23:11:12-00:05:46 Bälinge byfest. 
Tablåinnehåll Del 8 av 8
Utgivning
År/datum 1980-12-26 
Utgivning Stockholm : SVT, TV1
Utgivningsland Sverige
Originalformat
Originalsystem VCR
Arkiv
Leverantör SVT
Exemplar
Digital Betacam TVK99-0705 
Antal enheter 1
Kondition Dålig bild från 23.00 till 00.01 
Arkivnummer TVK99-0705 
MPEG-1 ZS_svt_svt1_1980-12-26 
Filbeskrivning 1,5 Mbit/s, MPEG-1 layer 2, 48 kHz, 128 kbit/s
Kondition Dålig bild från 23.00 till 00.01 TVK99-0705 
Arkivnummer ZS_svt_svt1_1980-12-26

Thanks to Jozsef, Philip Muytjens, Henk Jansen, Jan Bach, Erik Liebstaedter, Julian Djuric, Petri Kaasalainen, Gary Millar, Mohammed, Dustin, Robin Andersson and especially Carl Magnus Palm for identifying the programme.  Extra thanks to Terese Wedelin and Jasper Pye c/o ABBAtalk.
YouTube link c/o abba registro