{"id":151,"date":"2005-05-22T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-22T17:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/wordpress\/?p=151"},"modified":"2010-01-09T16:54:35","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T16:54:35","slug":"she-bangs-the-drums-eurovision-review-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2005\/05\/she-bangs-the-drums-eurovision-review-part-1.html","title":{"rendered":"She Bangs the Drums: Eurovision review (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Thanks to the Eurovision drinking game<\/a> I was too hung over on Sunday to write anything meaningful about the event until now. Other, more complete analyses can be found here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>. For what it\u2019s worth, the cloudy impressions of the night from the bunker were as follows. Quotes are from the performers themselves, taken from the official website<\/a>.<\/div>\n
Hungary<\/strong>
“Unfortunately, musical education in Hungary isn\u2019t as important as it should be.”<\/em>
They wear black and some red: I\u2019m predicting we\u2019ll see lots of dark colours after last year\u2019s Night Of The Long White Suits. Let\u2019s see, it\u2019s a fake Turkish sounding song, with lots of banging on drums like the winning Ukranian song last year. In the middle they zorba around for a while and try to make it look a bit like Riverdance too. Tonight\u2019s theme will be cultural appropriation, specifically of imitating recent winners. Are we seeing the end of the Eurovision we know and love, with batshit-insane ideas coming at us left right and centre? We might be entering an era of bland homogeneity: this song is neither good nor bad, in either a good way or a bad way, and I fear we have seen the future of Eurovision. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
UK<\/strong>
“Obviously after \u2018Popstars: The Rivals\u2019 I was gutted”<\/em>
Wow, red outfits and fake Turkish gyrating: there\u2019s thinking outside the box! Three minutes later and Laplanders huddled round their candle-powered TV are thinking “Geez, that Holly Valance thing is so over!”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Malta<\/strong>
“The rehearsal went alright. We tested the stage and we tested the shoes and both were fine.”<\/em>
The first ballad of the night, sung by the Maltese answer to Casey Donovan; and of course the ballad means we\u2019re in for the first Dramatic Key Change of the night. For the DKC she gets excited enough to throw her arms out and slowly wobble from side to side. My god, she has seriously scary talons! Luckily, the ballad was more of an old-school Jennifer Rush dirge than the Celine Dion psychic torture. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Romania<\/strong>
“I must admit that we are very disappointed.”<\/em>
A bi-curious lady wearing high heels for the first time in her life totters unsteadily around the shiny glass stage-floor with her Iron Curtain boob job almost falling out of her silver bodice. She is joined by the Carpathian touring production of Stomp banging on oil drums. The song descends into a tuneless mess, not helped by the struggling singer, who spends the last minute or so with her back to the audience pretending to bang on an oil drum. It\u2019s hard to sound convincingly passionate when you\u2019re standing next to a guy with hubcaps strapped to his feet. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Norway<\/strong>
\u201cIt\u2019s been five days since we last played a gig. Normally we do two a day. We usually have enough explosive equipment for a couple of armies which we use to blow up the stage.” If they could invite any other country to join the Eurovision Song Contest, it would be Australia. \u201cThen AC\/DC could come over.”<\/em>
Sheer genius: who\u2019d have thought Norwegians had both a dead-on grip of pop culture and a sense of the ridiculous? Every guilty-pleasure rock cliche thrown piled on top of each other, it almost makes up for David Lee Roth leaving Van Halen. The best thing to happen to Eurovision since Alf Poier pogoing around yapping about bunny rabbits and his website in 2003. Should win, but probably won\u2019t because rock never does so well at Eurovision. Much better than The Darkness. Of course there is a DKC, and don’t you want to pump your fist in the air and shout along?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Turkey<\/strong>
“It\u2019s a Turkish drum and it\u2019s my favourite instrument. I love all forms of percussion \u2013 it\u2019s like a heartbeat.” She and her band gave a demonstration of their drumming.<\/em>
We\u2019re told this is the third Turkish Eurovision entry written by this guy and as They Might Be Giants once sang, he\u2019s got two songs in him. Still, let\u2019s have them banging drums too, that\u2019ll make \u2018em stand out from the crowd! The performers are left twirling around aimlessly in traditional-looking clothes singing “Rimi Limi Ley” or something over and over again ad nauseam, and by the end it sounds like even they\u2019re getting jack of it. Anyone willing to bet there\u2019ll be a single fake Turkish song next year? <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Moldova<\/strong>
“She\u2019s now a big star in Moldova,\u201d said Roman. So what are Grandma Boonika\u2019s favourite memories of Eurovision? \u201cWe don\u2019t really watch television in our village,\u201d she said.<\/em>
More chicks banging drums, dammit! Is Sheila E. a superstar in Eastern Europe and if so, has she just died? For a change, this Eurochick is about 110 years old and spends most of the song happily sitting in a rocking chair to one side of the stage, like Yoko Ono on Top of the Pops. Given all the drumming going on tonight it\u2019s a bit of a disappointment that she actually stands up at the end and pretends to start banging while looking very pleased with herself, like those Bulgarian singers in the 1980s around the time their fifteen minutes were up. Everyone agrees the band looks like the Red Hot Chili Peppers after a night of exquisitely expensive drugs, and for novelty value they will rob votes from Norway\u2019s righteous rock cheese gods, but they will forever be referred to as That Band With The Granny. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Albania<\/strong>
“We thought it was important to sing in English because we want people to understand it.”<\/em>
More @&*#$ drumming! At least it\u2019s a bloke this time: he hops around in cricles tapping his drum, then every now and then he puts it down, jumps in the air, stops to catch his breath for a bit then picks up the drum and starts over. That\u2019s his big dance routine. Is there a Eurovision rule that everyone has to do their own choreography? Everyone zorbas around unconvincingly for a bit in the middle, then goes back to waving their fake violins. This is the first song of the night to use scarves, which worked so well for Turkey in 2003. Here, they do not. Stretching out and spinning multicoloured scarves around the stage is impressive; wrapping yourself up in one at the end is not. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Cyprus<\/strong>
“I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll surprise a few people.”<\/em>
First Ricky Martin wannabe of the night. And the first white outfits of the night. At first you think you\u2019re safe, until you notice some oil drums sitting up the back of the set. But you reassure yourself it\u2019s OK because there\u2019s nothing they can hit them with. Then they produce these big white stick things from nowhere and suddenly it\u2019s clobbering time again! No wonder this sounds like “She Bangs” run through Babelfish. And they fake-zorba for a while, just to add an extra layer of varnish to this turd. At least Eurovision can still present wildly uncoordinated backing dancers.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Spain <\/strong>
Son de Sol are three sisters: Lola, Espe and Sole. They think that Lola is the most responsible one.<\/em>
Three mad chicks from a TV spinoff of an Almodovar movie gyrate around singing their bosoms out. This unshakeably reminds me of the Globos and I keep expecting to see Bob Downe prance onstage shaking maracas. Or banging a drum. Instead their bouncer ambles up and grunts a few lines, then wanders around cluelessly for the rest of the song. It was all OK but not enough oomph to go off the way it should have. The best I can say is that despite wearing sleeveless dresses there was no San Remo moment. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Israel<\/strong>
“I have to admit, I am impressed with the professional behaviour of the director and the crew because they were really straight.”<\/em>
This is the traditional boring-as-shit song they stick somewhere in the middle so you can go stock up on more booze. Apparently she was the runner up on last year\u2019s Jewish Pop Idol, so no surprise it\u2019s underwhelming. I\u2019ll go out on a limb and guess there was a DKC. <\/div>\n
I need another drink…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Eurovision drinking game I was too hung over on Sunday to write anything meaningful about the event until now. Other, more complete analyses can be found here, here, here and here. For what it\u2019s worth, the cloudy impressions of the night from the bunker were as follows. Quotes are from the performers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3460,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/3460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}