Eurovision is one of the things I've always enjoyed since childhood. Many changes have ocurred over the years, not least the break up of the Soviet Bloc and Balkans, resulting in an expansion in the number of countries eligible to enter. This year was a first in that there was a semi-final "play-off" last Wednesday in order to qualify for 12(?) of the 24 places in last night's final. Now you could be forgiven for not being aware of that fact as the BBC failed to cover the semi either on terrestrial tv or radio but only on BBC3 (digital channel). Luckily for moi i found the Eurovision site which offered a broadband video feed! Yay! So I got to watch in reasonable quality stereo and audio AND the added bonus of no Terry-fucking-Wogan jabbering over the songs.
How i wish I had done te same last night.... Instead I had the tv on but with Radio2 for the sound. Only problem is I got the 'Scottish Wogan' Ken Bruce jabbering on with his subjective, supercillious twaddle. I actually ended up shouting at the radio to shut the fuck up!
I don't subscribe to the vacuous, chattering classes non-opinion that it's ironic and that Wogan is "the best thing about it". Bollocks is he! Ok, I know it's not high culture, but then it's not supposed to be is it? It's fucking pop music!!! Hearing ill-informed criticism of songs made me slightly miffed; one guy on FiveLive slagged off the lyrics to the songs. No excuse me, but has he listened to Lost Prophets? (Only one example, but I happened to catch them on World Service last night). What about Bernie Taupin? Ever bothered to read the lyrics he writes for Elton John? Oasis anyone? bleeding awful lyrics!!!
As for all the blarting about our poor showing? Ok it was catchy. Ok he performed it pretty well. However we have no divine right to do better than 16th place with a formulaic, light-weight, vacuous lighter-waver. The truth is that Europe's musical tastes have moved on since Ireland won with those insipid ballads over a decade ago (perhaps we would have more success if the songs weren't chosen by bleeding Terry-fucking-Wogan's breakfast show listeners? Just a thought...)
Dance culture is pretty big in Europe these days, anyone else noticed that??? (sarcasm). One slight difference is the style of dance music. Often in Europe, particularly in the Balkans and Soviet Bloc countries the dance music is mixed with traditional elements e.g. Serbian brass bands. If you care to visit this great site you can listen to European music stations and then maybe last night's results will make more sense.
Political voting? Bollocks! There is very little of that going on these days and I'm unconvinced that it was ever a huge problem. Think about it. People have slagged of the Balkan countries for voting for each other... well excuse me, but several of them have been at war over the last decade and anyway, the voting is almost exclusively by telephone these days so it's the public's choice. In any case if anyone took time to look at the actual votes cast you can see that these countries just weren't giving 12 points to their mates, except maybe Monaco and Latvia, lol.
What's more likely to my mind is that musical tastes are often similar in neighbouring countries, as is the food and other aspects of culture.
If UK want to do better in Eurovision (oh, didn't we win less than a decade ago, lol?) We need to stop peddling out-dated lighter wavers like last night (Love Shine A Light wouldn't have cut it last night either) and get back to being British rather than imitating America, Ireland or 80's/90's Aussie soap star pop. IMHO because we no longer have a distinct pop-music identity in this country it's unlikely we'll have a huge success in the near future. But then why should we? There are now 36 countries in the contest! 36! 24 in the final! We no more have a divine right to do well in Eurovision than the World Cup.
There endeth the rant.

2004 snogs

posted by Andy 07:17