Eurovision

[NotAllThere]

Anyone watch it? My (nearly) home town. All kinds of live music for free all over the city. On Wednesday we watched Azerbaijan and Italy do some songs. With actual instruments. And live. They were really good performers.

Friday had dinner on a balcony overlooking "Eurovision Square". More live music, all hip-hop. The first band were quite good, the second... bland.

And yesterday my daughter and daughter-in-law were in the stadium to watch it live on 10m high screens. 36,000 of them. Apparently mostly Swiss.

Maybe I'm biased, but it seems so much better than last year's sleazy tawdry stuff.

I want Estonia to win. Silly song, but fun.

[sadkingbilly]

Anyone watch it? My (nearly) home town. All kinds of live music for free all over the city. On Wednesday we watched Azerbaijan and Italy do some songs. With actual instruments. And live. They were really good performers.

Friday had dinner on a balcony overlooking "Eurovision Square". More live music, all hip-hop. The first band were quite good, the second... bland.

And yesterday my daughter and daughter-in-law were in the stadium to watch it live on 10m high screens. 36,000 of them. Apparently mostly Swiss.

Maybe I'm biased, but it seems so much better than last year's sleazy tawdry stuff.

I want Estonia to win. Silly song, but fun.

a bloody basler guggi band has more musical literacy than the whole contest.
utter crap. all of it.
YMHOO.

[Paddy]

It's all a bit of a fun event. There are many professional singers who will rightly so not participate as to lose will have an adverse effect. That said, there was some good music this year especially from the Greek Nana Mouskouri Mk 2.

[WTFH]

a bloody basler guggi band has more musical literacy than the whole contest.
utter crap. all of it.
YMHOO.

Musically it’s terrible, I’m not going to argue that.
As a piece of entertainment, that’s a different question, and frankly I think it’s one of the best/worst programs of the year. If I hadn’t been on a delayed flight, I would have been watching.

[WTFH]

It's all a bit of a fun event. There are many professional singers who will rightly so not participate as to lose will have an adverse effect. That said, there was some good music this year especially from the Greek Nana Mouskouri Mk 2.

What about the big scandi lass screaming “I’m coming arriving ”? Something you’ve never heard before?

[NotAllThere]

a bloody basler guggi band has more musical literacy than the whole contest.
YMHOO.

Er.yes. What's your point?

Anyway. We saw the Italian and Azerbaijanis demonstrating that they're actually musicians.

[NotAllThere]

What about the big scandi lass screaming “I’m coming arriving ”? Something you’ve never heard before?

Going for the Harry Met Sally vote?

[ladymuck]

I watched some of it as we were out at the cinema yesterday. Watched Dr Who during the filler between the last song and the start of the results. Missed a few early jury votes but didn't really miss anything.

I think the UK doesn't participate properly - there's been very little promotion of our entry, whereas other countries' songs that have charted high in their home charts indicating they have good support. We have excellent musicians but Eurovision seems to have an air of embarrassment about it because we expect to do well but put forward poor songs performed by people no-one has heard of, written by committee. If we want to do well, it should be taken more seriously. Use the talent that we have, engage the public, promote it, create noise about it. Or just stop funding it, and take our chances in the semi finals like most of the other countries have to.

[NigelJK]

I think things would improve if the BBC stopped paying the 'automatic qualification' fee. That, of course, pre-supposes that the rampant Anglophobia is not present at that point.