lolly
27-02-2004, 03:10 PM
From The Times
Now it's just a game of 38 halves
By Bob Stanley
Stitch-ups, shenanigans and skulduggery - now Eurovision is just like football
MANY THINGS that were crucial to my young world have sadly fallen from grace in the past few years: the singles chart, the FA Cup, the BBC, and (go ahead, point and laugh) A Song for Europe and the mighty Eurovision.
Dennis Wise, Andrew Gilligan and Jemini have conspired to chip away at the cornerstones, so it is neatly appropriate that this year BBC One is making a big deal of the Cup and our Eurovision entry.
There is no doubt that the UK has always felt itself to be intrinsically superior to the rest of Europe when it comes to pop. Even when it’s pap. The old folks still tut about the conspiracy that allowed Cliff Richard’s Congratulations to be pipped to the 1968 Eurovision title by Spain’s Massiel and her deathless La La La La. So the indignation of Jemini’s big fat zero in Latvia last year could never be allowed to happen again.
This year’s six Song for Europe entries are all written by “professionals” and performed by a motley collection of Pop Idol and Fame Academy veterans. One of the writers, to give you an idea of the standard, is Gary Barlow. I can’t tell you which song he wrote because the organisers are keeping it a secret, but With You I Believe (the clumsy title is a giveaway) is sung by Haydon Eshun, the former singer with Ultimate Kaos — who once toured with Take That. It pays to do your Euro homework. Eshun has trenchantly described A Song for Europe as “fantastic and frightening”, so he’s getting my vote.
An evening split between BBC One and BBC Three may seem like a lot of airtime for an ailing pop contest, but things are far more intense abroad. The Netherlands went through four programmes, all televised, before they even got to this stage. The eventual winner was a close cousin to Extreme’s More Than Words, pipping a song written by the two-time Irish winner Johnny Logan and another by the unsubtly named Camp Girls.
Indeed, there are 38 countries entering this year, so some people are taking it very seriously indeed, whether sponsors and record companies care or not. Even Andorra had nine aspirants in its national showdown, which left only about six voters in the country who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
There is always a dash of intrigue when a new country sits at the Eurovision table. What song will Andorra choose to represent the soul of their nation? How will Belarus try to explain that there is more to it than top-quality Olympic weightlifting? It seems sad but inevitable that almost every entry this year will be sung in English. When the former Eastern Bloc countries entered for the first time, it felt like a great cultural leap forward. Ukraine will show us the way, I thought. The romance of the east was encapsulated by the 1994 Hungarian entry, a melancholy gem by a girl called Fridirika, all gypsy flourishes and minor chords. It turned out to have been written by one Mathew Delius, singer with the Hands to Heaven hit-makers Breathe, more East Cheam than eastern promise.
What the influx of East European entries did bring us was the closest correlation yet between pop music and football — and the promise of nirvana. Relegation and play-off systems had to be introduced to keep the contest trim for TV companies and, realistically, our sanity.
You may think that finishing bottom last year means the UK has gone into some nail-biting qualifier with Israel (who says last year’s voting wasn’t political?) and 2003’s other big losers. But, as with the Champions League, everything is for sale to the highest bidder. As Steaua Bucharest will never again be crowned champions of Europe, so the Eurovision title can’t keep ending up in Riga or Tallinn — as of this year Britain, Spain, France and Germany are all automatic qualifiers, the self-declared “Big Four”.
There’s no point in feeling too indignant about this. The rules of Eurovision change pretty much every year, and there will always be quirky entries. Last year it was Greece and its stab at electroclash, four silver-clad Numanoids giving it their all.
At least this groundbreaking work had made it through the qualifiers. In 1978, A Song for Europe gave us Croydon’s Fruit Eating Bears and their punk entry, Door in My Face. It may well have won if phone voting had existed then, but Katie Boyle and her oompah-loving cronies turned it down.
The ramshackle charm of the contest (“Sorry Valetta, you will have to repeat that”) hasn’t really changed in spite of technology. There’s a rumour that Tatu would have won last year if the Irish phone system hadn’t crashed — the Irish public placed them third, but their shadowy “emergency panel” gave them nought and the title went to Turkey. The Turks once took their votes from their taxi drivers, who were thought to represent national taste. Spain’s entry this year has been chosen via something called Operation Trifuno, which suggests military precision but turns out to be their version of Pop Idol.
Whoever makes it through the play-off stage — it’s a closed vote in a hall in Istanbul but trusty BBC Three is televising it — Terry Wogan will be in Turkey to chuckle at the pre-match entertainment, then be rendered puce by the votes Bosnia gives to Croatia, Cyprus gives to Greece, and vice versa. Oddly, he never notices how the UK always seems to give maximum points to Ireland and receives a resounding raspberry in exchange. But hey, it’s only a song contest.
Unless we are talking about the Portuguese entry in 1974. When Paulo de Cavalho appeared in his blue satin suit to sing E Depois Do Adeus on stage in Brighton, it was the signal for the start of a military coup in Lisbon. The government was toppled. De Cavalho came joint fourteenth.
link (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,585-1016350,00.html)
Now it's just a game of 38 halves
By Bob Stanley
Stitch-ups, shenanigans and skulduggery - now Eurovision is just like football
MANY THINGS that were crucial to my young world have sadly fallen from grace in the past few years: the singles chart, the FA Cup, the BBC, and (go ahead, point and laugh) A Song for Europe and the mighty Eurovision.
Dennis Wise, Andrew Gilligan and Jemini have conspired to chip away at the cornerstones, so it is neatly appropriate that this year BBC One is making a big deal of the Cup and our Eurovision entry.
There is no doubt that the UK has always felt itself to be intrinsically superior to the rest of Europe when it comes to pop. Even when it’s pap. The old folks still tut about the conspiracy that allowed Cliff Richard’s Congratulations to be pipped to the 1968 Eurovision title by Spain’s Massiel and her deathless La La La La. So the indignation of Jemini’s big fat zero in Latvia last year could never be allowed to happen again.
This year’s six Song for Europe entries are all written by “professionals” and performed by a motley collection of Pop Idol and Fame Academy veterans. One of the writers, to give you an idea of the standard, is Gary Barlow. I can’t tell you which song he wrote because the organisers are keeping it a secret, but With You I Believe (the clumsy title is a giveaway) is sung by Haydon Eshun, the former singer with Ultimate Kaos — who once toured with Take That. It pays to do your Euro homework. Eshun has trenchantly described A Song for Europe as “fantastic and frightening”, so he’s getting my vote.
An evening split between BBC One and BBC Three may seem like a lot of airtime for an ailing pop contest, but things are far more intense abroad. The Netherlands went through four programmes, all televised, before they even got to this stage. The eventual winner was a close cousin to Extreme’s More Than Words, pipping a song written by the two-time Irish winner Johnny Logan and another by the unsubtly named Camp Girls.
Indeed, there are 38 countries entering this year, so some people are taking it very seriously indeed, whether sponsors and record companies care or not. Even Andorra had nine aspirants in its national showdown, which left only about six voters in the country who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
There is always a dash of intrigue when a new country sits at the Eurovision table. What song will Andorra choose to represent the soul of their nation? How will Belarus try to explain that there is more to it than top-quality Olympic weightlifting? It seems sad but inevitable that almost every entry this year will be sung in English. When the former Eastern Bloc countries entered for the first time, it felt like a great cultural leap forward. Ukraine will show us the way, I thought. The romance of the east was encapsulated by the 1994 Hungarian entry, a melancholy gem by a girl called Fridirika, all gypsy flourishes and minor chords. It turned out to have been written by one Mathew Delius, singer with the Hands to Heaven hit-makers Breathe, more East Cheam than eastern promise.
What the influx of East European entries did bring us was the closest correlation yet between pop music and football — and the promise of nirvana. Relegation and play-off systems had to be introduced to keep the contest trim for TV companies and, realistically, our sanity.
You may think that finishing bottom last year means the UK has gone into some nail-biting qualifier with Israel (who says last year’s voting wasn’t political?) and 2003’s other big losers. But, as with the Champions League, everything is for sale to the highest bidder. As Steaua Bucharest will never again be crowned champions of Europe, so the Eurovision title can’t keep ending up in Riga or Tallinn — as of this year Britain, Spain, France and Germany are all automatic qualifiers, the self-declared “Big Four”.
There’s no point in feeling too indignant about this. The rules of Eurovision change pretty much every year, and there will always be quirky entries. Last year it was Greece and its stab at electroclash, four silver-clad Numanoids giving it their all.
At least this groundbreaking work had made it through the qualifiers. In 1978, A Song for Europe gave us Croydon’s Fruit Eating Bears and their punk entry, Door in My Face. It may well have won if phone voting had existed then, but Katie Boyle and her oompah-loving cronies turned it down.
The ramshackle charm of the contest (“Sorry Valetta, you will have to repeat that”) hasn’t really changed in spite of technology. There’s a rumour that Tatu would have won last year if the Irish phone system hadn’t crashed — the Irish public placed them third, but their shadowy “emergency panel” gave them nought and the title went to Turkey. The Turks once took their votes from their taxi drivers, who were thought to represent national taste. Spain’s entry this year has been chosen via something called Operation Trifuno, which suggests military precision but turns out to be their version of Pop Idol.
Whoever makes it through the play-off stage — it’s a closed vote in a hall in Istanbul but trusty BBC Three is televising it — Terry Wogan will be in Turkey to chuckle at the pre-match entertainment, then be rendered puce by the votes Bosnia gives to Croatia, Cyprus gives to Greece, and vice versa. Oddly, he never notices how the UK always seems to give maximum points to Ireland and receives a resounding raspberry in exchange. But hey, it’s only a song contest.
Unless we are talking about the Portuguese entry in 1974. When Paulo de Cavalho appeared in his blue satin suit to sing E Depois Do Adeus on stage in Brighton, it was the signal for the start of a military coup in Lisbon. The government was toppled. De Cavalho came joint fourteenth.
link (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,585-1016350,00.html)