Chad Holtzman is a Canadian employed by Australians to play a Swede on behalf of dancing queens everywhere - from here to Timbuktu, in fact. But the extreme global demands haven't dampened his enthusiasm and bemusement over spending the past seven years carrying the titular burden of Bjorn Again, the world's first and most successful ABBA tribute band.

That success story is about to take a chance on us for the first time when Bjorn Again brings its note-perfect ABBA renditions to the stage of the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts (7:30 p.m. Nov. 22).

With every last costume spangle intact.

How uncannily precise are their live recreations of ditties like "Dancing Queen," "Take a Chance On Me" and "Mamma Mia"?

So close that even several of the famously elusive original ABBA members have come forth to testify ("the closest fans are going to get to seeing ABBA," quoth Benny Andersson himself).

Because the blonde and very Nordic-looking Holtzman is only 34, that means he was just a babe in swaddling clothes when the original ABBA was churning out its perky repertoire - that enduring meld of pop harmonies, disco beats and a wholesome enthusiasm that has not only stood the test of time, it's practically rendered it a moot point.

"The awful truth is, prior to joining the band, I'd never listened to ABBA," says Holtzman, who assumes the persona of ABBA overlord Bjorn Ulvaeus for a good chunk of his waking life these days.

He reconsiders the statement: "You know, I probably heard a few of the songs, maybe. But that was the extent of it. I was more jazz, rock and blues-oriented."

Holtzman was born in 1974, the year that ABBA first cracked the American Top 40 with its summertime anthem, "Waterloo." ABBA disbanded around the time he was turning 8 (1982).

Holtzman, already a guitarist and singer gigging around the Calgary bar scene in his native Alberta, got his crash ABBA course when he landed the spot of bass player for Bjorn Again's backing band of instrumentalists.

"It was really just another gig for me," he confesses, "and a chance to do some traveling. So I did a year or two of playing bass, even though I was actually a guitar player."

Eventually he moved from bass to guitar, "and I started checking out the tunes at that point, and I realized that, yeah, some of the songs were really pretty good - well-crafted dance-pop music."

Then the songs' deceptively perky lyrics began insinuating their way into his too-young-to-remember psyche.

"Some of them are actually pretty serious about relationships - no kidding," he says. "So I have a very deep respect for Benny and Bjorn, who were the chief songwriters."

Bjorn Again's genesis, as mentioned, is a la Down Under: It was forged 20 years ago in Melbourne by two musicians, Rod Leissle and John Tyrell, who packed impressive science degrees and worked by day in a research lab for one of Australia's biggest mining companies.

Music trumped science eventually: Leissle, who was bothered by the fact one of his favorite bands, ABBA, wasn't being played on the radio much in 1988, proposed re-creating the long-defunct quartet, all the better to keep their sound above ground.

Their first gig, circa 1989 in a Melbourne pub, sold out, provoked "hysterical" reactions and inspired the two men to keep at it.

Within a couple years, they were touring globally, including a 1990 visit to the land of ABBA itself, Sweden, where "they thought they would never tour."

Over the next two decades, the band's popularity helped fuel the ABBA revival that spawned the stage success "Mamma Mia!" and ruled the soundtracks to movie hits like "Muriel's Wedding" and "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," both with Aussie pedigrees, it should be noted.

From his vantage point, Holtzman describes Bjorn Again as "a really high-end cover band."

As a Canadian rock-blues guitarist who was weaned on Led Zeppelin and spends a lot of his night these days in a spangly white jumpsuit ("my satin pajamas"), he admits it can be "amusing, very amusing at times."

Holtzman is reminded of a quote from the original Bjorn, who, after witnessing the band's uncanny cloning job, remarked, "Best of luck - anyone that looks like me ought to have a successful career!"

Bjorn Again recently attended, for whatever reason, a Beatlemania festival in Florida, where they were given the full red carpet treatment and made the focus of glitzy photo ops.

Clad only in those "satin pajamas," Holtzman says, "I felt a little silly. But it was also great to meet and talk with all the fans."

By and large, they are sane folks just out for a good time. "They like to take pictures with us and stop backstage after a set and say 'hello' and that's just fine."

Occasionally, the faux-ABBA has also crossed paths "with people who think we are the real ABBA, and that's a little scary."

Even scarier, he notes, is that "if we were the real ABBA, we'd be in our 60s, and I'm hoping I don't look that weathered!"

Despite his time spent embodying and perpetuating ABBA, Holtzman isn't automatically motivated to seek out other ABBA-centric entertainment.

Take, for example, the recent film version of "Mamma Mia," which placed the likes of Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan in an ABBA song-singing context.

Though he has no desire to see the movie, Holtzman has encountered the stage original several times and will only say that he finds it, for whatever reason, "hilariously … disturbing."

As for Bjorn Again and his Canadian-by-way-of-Australian-by-way-of-Swedish lifestyle, Holtzman says "we all take pride in playing the music, and it's clear to the audience that we're having fun playing the music."

His caveat for anyone planning on partaking of that fun: "We're bringing our sparkly costumes to cut a rug, so you bring your sparkly costumes and get set to cut a rug, too."

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At a glance

What: Bjorn Again

When: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 22

Where: Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 110 E. Mulberry St., Bloomington

Tickets: $22.90 to $34.50

Box office number: (866) 686-9541

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ABBA dabbling they do

Among the offbeat credits, stats and reactions racked up over the 20-year history of Bjorn Again:

• Wedding band for actor Russell Crowe at his 2003 nuptials in Australia

• Post-movie concert band for world premiere of "Muriel's Wedding" at 1994 Cannes Film Festival

• Ranked as most successful international tribute band of all time

• Logged more than 5,000 concerts in 50 countries

• Ranked with Nicole Kidman and Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan as one of "Australia's Top 10 Highest Entertainment Earners"

• Has lasted twice as long (20 years) as the original ABBA (10 years)

• Has subdivided itself into five internationally touring quartets

• Played for Bill Gates and Microsoft at 2003 launch party for Windows 2003

• Biggest audience ever: London's 1996 Gay Pride Parade (300,000 dancing queens)

• One of few tribute bands to score its own hit single (1992's "A Little Respect," which peaked at No. 25 on U.K. charts)

• Made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1994 as first band to perform live from four different areas of a city (London, for the 1994 Prince's Trust Variety Concert)

• Father knows best: "Fans had better make the most out of Bjorn Again … because that's the closest they are going to get to seeing ABBA." - ABBA founding father Benny Andersson, circa 1999

• Finding his religion: "I find Bjorn Again inspirational!" - Michael Stipe, R.E.M.

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Born to love Bjorn

Chris Holtzman, who takes the role of ABBA architect Bjorn Ulvaeus in Bjorn Again, ranks his picks for the Top 5 ABBA hits of all time:

1. "Does Your Mother Know?" (1979)

2. "Voulez-Vous" (1979)

3. "Dancing Queen" (1977)

4. "Take a Chance on Me" (1977)

5. "Knowing You, Knowing Me" (1976)