Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Eurovision Song Contest.

This is topic The Eurovision Song Contest. in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-31-2003, 05:14 AM:

For those of you who may not be familar with this musical event, it is a means of filling up several hours of television time in just about every European country each year.

Each competing country, some of which I'm sure aren't in Europe, enters a song, and person or persons to perform it; this takes about half of the total time. There then follows a lengthly and complicated voting process, which takes the other half. Each country has a jury which can vote for any country except its own. They award 12 points to their favourite entry, 11 to the next, and so on down to 1. There are about twenty something countries, so each jury will not award any points to some countries. The spokesman for each jury can anounce the points given in either English or French, and the host person then repeats them in both languages. It takes hours! The recent events in central Europe now mean that there are many more countries participating than there used to be of course, so it drags on for even longer.

My mother was a keen fan of both this and 'Miss World'; both of whch I would do almost anything to avoid watching; I haven't seen either for many years.

I have just discovered something that makes me regret not seeing this years contest a week or so ago however. This year the United Kingdom entry managed to gain that rare distinction which very few contestants manage to achieve, Norway did it some years ago, of being awarded a grand total of zero points.

Was it a dreadful song, or untalented performers? This seems unlikely; both of these seem to be an positive advantage in this event. Was it opposition to the war? Were the stage monitor speakers sabotaged during the UKs entry? I don't know; both have been alleged by the newspapers.

Maybe it was a really good song, and therefore totally unsuitable for this contest; since I didn't hear it I shall never know.

Here's to the very worst in musical entertainment. [beer]

Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 05-31-2003, 05:45 AM:

I did not follow the battle this year either, but i have read in newspapers, that those countries, You are more or less suggesting, should not be in the game at all, not beeing situated in what we call Europe of the good old days, were backing each other up, so that the points vere placed far, far east: Turkey won, Russia was # 3. -Something that would never had happened 10-20 years ago. There is some kind of cultural barrier between east and west, also in this matter: Songs are so different from each other, that it seems as right, having them to compete against each other, as asking which is best: Kodak Tri-X or mothers milk. And if i go just a little further in this, we will have to move to "political", and i will have a small "racist" stamp on my back, which i don't want to.
It is great, that people find together across the world, but in this situation the mix of cultures does not work.

p.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-31-2003, 06:32 AM:

Stephen: she can't sing, it really is as simple as that.

I didn't watch the 'event' either, but on Broadcasting House the following morning the two singers were interviewed. A clip was played in the performance, and even allowing for the fact that this isn't really my type of music, boy was it painful.

The lead singer of this group complained that she was out of tune because the monitor speakers on stage did not work, which she implied was anti-British sabotage. She gave a lengthy explanation of how, without these speakers, she couldn't hear herself and therefore was unable to sing in tune.

This is [bs]

. She should try (as I have) singing Mahler's ressurection symphony in a five-part choir with a large orchestra. Someone who has perfect or even relative pitch can easily sing in tune without being able to hear a thing. Give me some sheet music, stick plugs in my ear and a microphone in front of my mouth and (as long as the part is within my vocal range - I'm a bass baritone) I guarantee you it will be in tune.

Therefore she can't sing and she deserved to lose. End of story.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-31-2003, 06:59 AM:

Per,

I wasn't objecting to them being in it, most of the 'new' countries, Estonia, etc., are in Europe, but I remember the last time I saw it there beeing places which I'm sure were not, I can't remember which they were now. Maybe it should be a world song contest, but then that voting process would probably take days. Or maybe make it a musical festival rather than a competition, as you say, it's difficult to judge one entry against another.

Leo,

You're discrininating against musicians who can't sing, that's not fair [Smile]

Maybe we should require all countries to submit entrants who can't sing, so they don't disadvantage the others. Or maybe we should find the worst possible song, have it performed by the worst possible singers, accompanied by the worst possible musicians we can find; then we would probably win; a bit like that film 'The Producers'.

Come to think of it, I can't sing a note, Johnny Rotten would have been proud to have a voice as bad as mine, maybe I could put myself forward as next years entry!

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-31-2003, 09:16 AM:

This is the contest that gave the world ABBA. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Although in fairness I'll gladly take ABBA over anything the US "American Idol" program will foist on the world.

Oh, and mother's milk is better than Tri-X but Kodachrome 25, heck, any slow 'chrome, is better than m.m. and and ABBA combined.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-31-2003, 02:01 PM:

Steve wrote:

quote:

This is the contest that gave the world ABBA.

That's right, it was a long time ago, but the contest goes back much further, I think it started in the late'50s, or very early '60s. In those days most people did not have television, and for those that did, to be able to watch live pictures from another country was quite something. The pictures were black and white of course, we didn't get colour until 1967, and the quality was pretty poor, not made any better by the primative standards conversion which it had to go through to get a 405 line British version. Kinescope recordings were made, and clips have been shown from time to time, but I'm not sure if these were made from the converted version, or the 625 line original.

In those days the contest did serve a useful function, in both technical and cultural terms; it gave the engineers the chance to demonstrate thier skills in actually getting the pictures on the screen, and it gave us the opportunity to see 'foreign' material. It's hard to believe now how isolated Britain was from the rest of Europe in those days.

Of course, for many years we have taken for granted being able to watch live events from all parts of the world, and beyond. (Was it really a third of a century ago that I stayed up all night for the first time in my life, to watch the first moon landing?)

Pop music from all over Europe sounds much the same now, it would be difficult to tell by listening to it where an entry came from.

I am generally in favour of international arts festivals, but this is one event which really should have been put out of its misery years ago. When I last saw it, it was getting quite Embarrassingly bad, in terms of some of the comments which were made between the acts, and the whole presentation of the show. Then there's poor old Terry Wogan, he's expected to make interesting and useful comments for hours on end, about an event which is neither; he usually ends up just talking rubbish most of the time.

I just wish I had seen the last few minutes of the voting this year. Some years ago a book was written entitled 'The Book of Heroic Failures', about people who set out to do well at something, but ending up doing spectacularly badly. I think the Author was Stephen Pile. One of the people featured in this book was the zero scoring entry from Norway a few years previously. I think his name was Jan Tigen, though my spelling of the name may well be wrong. A television programme was made, based on the book, and Jan was interviewed on it, he didn't seem too upset about getting the lowest score ever. Mr. Pile commented on how he had watched the contest, and had beed guite excited when, towards the end of the voting, he realised that there was a real possibility of an entry scoring zero, As the last few countries cast their votes, he was hoping that somebody wouldn't spoil it by giving Norway a vote. I remember thinking the same thing when I saw the program.

Leo, somebody e-mailed me a few seconds of the song as a MP3 file; I think your assessment of it was correct.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-31-2003, 02:55 PM:

Johnny Rotten made a selling point of not being able to sing: it was part of the act/joke/political point he was trying to make. This person was trying and failing. It made pretty gruesome listening. [Eek!]

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 05-31-2003, 04:12 PM:

I'm surprised someone hasn't picked up on this in the good old USA. It could be called "America's Song", and feature a contest in each state to pick the best song. Then, each of these gets submitted to a national competition where the public would pick the song that best represents America.

All you would need would be some attractive woman to be nice, and some grouchy guy to insult people...you'd have the hit of the century.

Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 05-31-2003, 07:08 PM:

It started mid-fifties - and one of the first years, Denmark was thrown out - or was it just woted out - by catholic country juries, because our two singers ended up their love song with a kiss, almost as long as the song. [Razz]