Eurovision 2015 - 2018....

[vinteuil]

As we head for inevitable failure again in this year's contest, my spirits are buoyed by the thought that, yet again, the FA Cup will be won by an English team...

... yup, and the 'blue' team will win the Boat Race - yet again!


.

[LMcD]

... yup, and the 'blue' team will win the Boat Race - yet again!


.

I think we can hold our heads up high ...I mean, come on - we scored points, we didn't come last, we didn't even come last-but-one.

[MrGongGong]

It's always a perfect demonstration of what Christopher Small means by Musicking

To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing. We might at times even extend its meaning to what the person is doing who takes the tickets at the door or the hefty men who shift the piano and the drums or the roadies who set up the instruments and carry out the sound checks or the cleaners who clean up after everyone else has gone. They, too, are all contributing to the nature of the event that is a musical performance

and

The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are conventionally thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand as metaphor for, ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine them to be: relationships between person and person, between individual and society, between humanity and the natural world and even perhaps the supernatural world.

[John Wright]

....... my spirits are buoyed by the thought that, yet again, the FA Cup will be won by an English team.

But with how many English players?

.

[LMcD]

The danger is surely that, were both teams comprised largely or exclusively of English players, we might have to wait ages for a goal...the replays could carry on into Wimbledon fortnight, where at least we can hope for something from young Kyle.

[teamsaint]

The danger is surely that, were both teams comprised largely or exclusively of English players, we might have to wait ages for a goal...the replays could carry on into Wimbledon fortnight, where at least we can hope for something from young Kyle.

3 of the top 5 goal scorers in the PL this season are English, perhaps somewhat surprisingly.

And if Charlie had been fit all season......

[Lat-Literal]

Without wishing to be unkind, I now find this competition totally alien. Amidst all of the frivolity, It seems cold to the point of hard. I stuck with it until the start of the third when I could see which way it was going and the rapid photography and strobe lighting became unbearable. I also dipped in to a bit of the scoring. It has long been obvious that Europe doesn't like us. While in some ways I can understand it - I'm not keen on us either - I can't say in this day and age that I am keen on it . As for the winner, with all of its madabaka, revoltingly trite.

Switch to:

Gigliola Cinquetti - Si - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTwzcMDevm0

(my choice in 1974)

[teamsaint]

Without wishing to be unkind, I now find this competition totally alien. Amidst all of the frivolity, It seems cold to the point of hard. I stuck with it until the start of the third when I could see which way it was going and the rapid photography and strobe lighting became unbearable. I also dipped in to a bit of the scoring. It has long been obvious that Europe doesn't like us. While in some ways I can understand it - I'm not keen on us either - I can't say that I am keen on it in this day and age. As for the winner, with all of its madabaka, revoltingly trite.

Gigliola Cinquetti - Si - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTwzcMDevm0

Until the English get to grips with their issues over national identity, we are going to be a country ill at ease with itself.
FWIW,and incidentally, I think this reflects in out national football team, which seems never to know how it is supposed to play.

[LMcD]

3 of the top 5 goal scorers in the PL this season are English, perhaps somewhat surprisingly.

And if Charlie had been fit all season......

How many of them are playing in the 2018 Cup Final? Who's Charlie, by the way?
As for Eurovision...I don't think Lat-Literal is being at all unkind. I did go through a phase of watching the scores without having watched the 'acts' - I use the word advisedly - but now I'm happy to wait until the following morning to discover who badly the UK did.
Insofar as I was bothered, I rather hoped that Australia would win if only to prove how ridiculously bloated the whole thing has become.

[teamsaint]

Without wishing to be unkind, I now find this competition totally alien. Amidst all of the frivolity, It seems cold to the point of hard. I stuck with it until the start of the third when I could see which way it was going and the rapid photography and strobe lighting became unbearable. I also dipped in to a bit of the scoring. It has long been obvious that Europe doesn't like us. While in some ways I can understand it - I'm not keen on us either - I can't say in this day and age that I am keen on it . As for the winner, with all of its madabaka, revoltingly trite.

Switch to:

Gigliola Cinquetti - Si - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTwzcMDevm0

(my choice in 1974)

For Lat only, nobody else will be interested.....

The shame of the whole thing is that the Fruit Eating Bears got eliminated in the preliminaries in 1978 or whenever.

Something I didn’t know before yesterday was that they wrote the rather excellent “1.30 2.30 3.35 “which Lew Lewis recorded a year or two later.
A really excellent single that ought to have been a hit, but apparently Lew fell out with Stiff ,the promotional work stopped, and Lew decided( as you probably know) he had to make up his income gap by robbing post offices.

[Lat-Literal]

The shame of the whole thing is that the Fruit Eating Bears got eliminated in the preliminaries in 1978 or whenever.

Something I didn’t know before yesterday was that they wrote the rather excellent “1.30 2.30 3.35 “which Lew Lewis recorded a year or two later.
A really excellemt single that ought to have been a hit, but apparently Lew fell out with Stiff ,the promotional work stopped, and Lew decided he had to make up his income gap by robbing post offices.

I don't know anything about that but it is the sort of fact I love.

That was the year that Israel won it first - and the Israeli entry was my second choice back in 1974. Sweden were third. I just find it a different universe now. It was always light - and originally old fashioned - but it could produce the odd proper song or two. Then it was camped up which, I guess, is fair enough but that was not how it was originally. It was probably Abba who were responsible, albeit with a delayed effect, not that I would criticise them for SOS onwards if you like that sort of thing. Musically they were undoubtedly very pop strong.

Anyhow, it was more of a Song of Montreux way into the 1980s in which we were intended to get to know our European neighbours at a time when we wanted to. Now I sense that the average IQ in the hall is exceedingly low. It certainly is culturally. There was just one plus point. The extent of alleged anti-Semitism across mainstream Europe is clearly over-stated.

Poogy - Natati la Khaiai - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViNVNuizijM

(A very interesting band, probably the best from Israel in the 1970s - they were, as Kavaret, a bit like Peter Gabriel's Genesis in their rock moments with elements of performance art)

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't know anything about that but it is the sort of fact I love.

That was the year that Israel won it first - and the Israeli entry was my second choice back in 1974. Sweden were third. I just find it a different universe now. It was always light - and originally old fashioned - but it could produce the odd proper song or two. Then it was camped up which, I guess, is fair enough but that was not how it was originally. It was probably Abba who were responsible, albeit with a delayed effect, not that I would criticise them for SOS onwards if you like that sort of thing. Musically they were undoubtedly very pop strong.

Anyhow, it was more of a Song of Montreux way into the 1980s in which we were intended to get to know our European neighbours at a time when we wanted to. Now I sense that the average IQ in the hall is exceedingly low. It certainly is culturally. There was just one plus point. The extent of alleged anti-Semitism across mainstream Europe is clearly over-stated.

Poogy - Natati la Khaiai - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViNVNuizijM

(A very interesting band, probably the best from Israel in the 1970s - they were, as Kavaret, a bit like Peter Gabriel's Genesis in their rock moments with elements of performance art)

People are, in general one hopes, more sophisticated than media pundits give them credit for; they don't automatically assume that Jewish pop musicians are responsible for their governments' appalling records, and have used their voting to make that very point over and above whatever qualities the winning song displayed.

[LHC]

Without wishing to be unkind, I now find this competition totally alien. Amidst all of the frivolity, It seems cold to the point of hard. I stuck with it until the start of the third when I could see which way it was going and the rapid photography and strobe lighting became unbearable. I also dipped in to a bit of the scoring. It has long been obvious that Europe doesn't like us. While in some ways I can understand it - I'm not keen on us either - I can't say in this day and age that I am keen on it . As for the winner, with all of its madabaka, revoltingly trite.

Switch to:

Gigliola Cinquetti - Si - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTwzcMDevm0

(my choice in 1974)

I think rather too much is made of the supposed political dimension. I think it is far more likely that the type of music we produce for Eurovision doesn't chime with the musical tastes of the rest of Europe.

I also think this is the reason that the voting often falls into geographic blocks, and that groups of countries with a similar cultural background are more likely to vote for each others' songs regardless of their political similarities or differences. The reason that Greece and Cyprus invariably award each other 12 points is just as likely to be because of their shared culture and tastes, as their political allegiance.

Finally, the countries that do best in the public vote will be those with a large and dispersed diaspora. For example, if Poland had got to the final, its citizens based in other European countries would have been able to vote for their own country's song. After the contest, the BBC showed a graphic of how the UK public voted, and this showed pretty clearly that there was a likely to be a sizeable proportion of immigrants voting for their home countries in the UK popular vote.

All of this means that other countries are likely to do better than the UK, even before you get to the quality of the actual songs chosen.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think politics does some into it. The whole thing is a bit of a disaster anyway, with the songs now being so widely publicised before the contest. When we were represented by Sandy Shaw, Cliff Richard, Mary Hopkin and Lulu, the songs were "new" on the day. Now that judges already know the songs long beforehand, I don't really see the point.

[MrGongGong]

I think politics does some into it. The whole thing is a bit of a disaster anyway, with the songs now being so widely publicised before the contest. When we were represented by Sandy Shaw, Cliff Richard, Mary Hopkin and Lulu, the songs were "new" on the day. Now that judges already know the songs long beforehand, I don't really see the point.

You mean music has something to do with things other than melody, harmony and rhythm?
NSS

I was talking about Eurovision to someone today who expressed the view that the country of the winner uses these kinds of things to project the idea that they can't be all that bad (just like everyone else really). Which, given some of today's events is a bit difficult. I does remind me of Suharto's use of culture in Indonesian forreign policy.
BUT, that's a whole place we really shouldn't go at the moment IMV