Eurovision Song Contest: Bosnia & Herzegovina

While I was 'researching' these Eurovision songs (for a given definition of research involving popcorn, pop tarts and sonic hangovers) - I kept bumping into Bosnia & Herzegovina. For the last few years, I've enjoyed their songs, but every year their rather quiet, self-effacing, self-AWARE performances are drowned out by the louder, showier numbers.
Call it the ascendency of the mediocre. Any genuinely good entries cancel themselves out in the international open telephone vote. These performances just aren't quite enough - not quite nutty enough, sparkly enough, or bombastic enough and they tend to slip through the cracks in the voting blocs.

Start simple -
Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2006 - Rijeka bez imena:



Get funky -
Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2008 - Pokusaj:



And then at last, it's Les Miserables with Drums!
In 2009, Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to go down fighting with kettle drums, tactical stubble on the boy toys, and wind machines! This is Eurovision with the lot - the Lot and a tune you can hum along with!


Bosnia & Herzegovina - 2009, Bistra Voda:

Eurovision Song Contest: Spain - the One with the Gate-crasher.

Sometimes - and it's a mystery how it happens - a number with real interest and chops sneaks through into the Eurovision Final. The music is clever, the singer has real talent, the choreography and costumes are spot-on NAIL-IT-fabulous, and you wonder how on earth this number made it through the semis, until you spot the calculated lunatic fringe that the average booze-on-a-couch voter will mistake for butterflies and power-chords.

This song is a a perfect amalgam of 'Eurovision-what the hell?' and some seriously icy professionalism- when a man crashes the stage and joins in the act, you don't even know he doesn't belong up there until the security heavies show up.

Spain, 2010 - Algo Pequinito:



Editor's Note: Spain likes a little avant-garde quirkiness.
Here's their 2008 offering, Bala el Chiki Chiki:

Eurovision Song Contest: England - the One with the Crash Carts

Oh, honey, NO.

England's little Eurovision problem is that it takes the competition seriously. While the countries of eastern and southern Europe toss back their hair and strut forth in sparkly tutus and merrily let the pyrotechnics blow where they may, England really really really wants to win.
            Two years ago the English rolled out the big guns and commissioned Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (he of Power Chords on Pipe Organs fame) to compose a power ballad called My Turn. The production featured a passionate soprano singing clever subliminal lyrics like "It's MY TURN/ It's MY TURN/ It's MY TURN to SHINE!" in a voice that started tearful and wound up full-on frantic - like the drunken upper class hysteric who wonders why he still won't sleep with her, even after she bought him the watch and the cufflinks and the Rolls.
            The poor darlings. They even rolled out Sir Andrew himself to play the piano.
            Most years England offers up overly-cute pop tunes, performed with frantic desperation oozing from every pore - eyes too wide, smile too sharp, teeth too big- and that's just the commentator on the British telecast. 
            This little number was broadcast live from Helsinki in 2007.
            The Poor Darlings.

England, 2007 - Flying the Flag:

Eurovision Song Contest: the Power Ballad.

With all the over-deep and over-powerful emoting, Eurovision ballads often come across as rather thinly stretched, but for Eurovision watchers, that's generally a feature, not a bug. What with the music being so pedestrian, the singers have to add a little something SPECIAL to get their act across:

The Lady in the Shadows:

By most objective standards, this first offering isn't quite a power-ballad. Don't let the amateur ballerinas or kettle-drums fool you; the cheese, the toneless lyrics, the directorial restraint (yes, I said restraint) and above all, the shenanigans happening not quite backstage all qualify this number for this post: it's a Power Ballad, Eurovision style.
            Count your blessings.  At least there weren't any Lisa Frank dolphins this year.
            To clarify: Eurovision rules require that if you're on stage, it had better be for real. If there's a violin or a kettle drum or a musical chainsaw up there - that's where the sound of it must be coming from.  And all singing happens live, on stage. No exceptions.
            But it doesn't say that the lady up front in the short sparkly cleavage has to be the one doing the singing.
            Keep your eyes open for the woman in in the shadows at the back of the stage.

(The Balkan Girls have refused to comment.)

Romania, 2009 - The Balkan Girls:




For a change of pace, I offer you:

Sparkle Tutu Fairies:

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep. I won't say when the magic happens, because you'd simply skip to that moment in the song, and without living through everything that comes before it, the moment will mean nothing!
I will say only this: If you're watching this video alongside a female under the age of nine, there will be glitter paint in your future. Approximately six square meters of the stuff. In pink.

Belarus, 2010 - We Are Butterflies:

Eurovision Song Contest: To Start us Off - The One with the fake Blood

Most years, the Balkan states tend to take the stage-effects very seriously.

Azerbaijan, 2008 - Day after Day:



But when they keep the lid on the karo syrup, they have more fun than anybody else up there.

Moldova, 2009 - Hora Din Moldova:




Bulgaria, 2007 - Water:



And when the Balkan states get it really right - what's not to love? This quietly JOYOUS:

Romania, 2007 - Liubi, Liubi I Love You:

It's almost time - for the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest!

In just over a week - on the 14th of May, the whole UNIVERSE will be torn open to receive the telecast of the planet's most Vivacious, most Bodastic, most NOISY and SPARKLY and LED-clogged Pop Music Contest!  Yes!!  It's the Eurovision 2011!!!!

And this is a good thing - a very good thing - if you like a) pink flamingos and b) really big frocks and c) aren't terribly picky about music as long as it's d) loud and e) overproduced and f) has fireworks going off during the noisy bits -

If you like all that, you'll LOVE Eurovision.

Here's how it works: 

Once a year almost every country in Europe (see boring fine print) abandons taste, sense and musicality and offers up a Eurovision entry - mostly by throwing glitter and a treble clef at a wall and seeing what sticks.

Occasionally this happens at a level of  national policy (in which case the classic trope 'designed by committee' generally comes out to play and live up to its dishonorable reputation.  See: Great Britain, almost every year.)

Other times bands stump up the money themselves and make up the difference with dogged determination and extra spangles and duke it out with each other for the dubious honor of the national title.  Occasionally there are a couple of musical instruments involved as well.  

These national winners are sent to the Europe-wide semifinals - and then, we have the (glitterbombed) FINALS.  Last year's winning country hosts this year's event and opens the show with last year's winning song (generally tarted up with bungee dancers and showers of ticker tape).

And it's BIG.

It's SPANGLED.

It's FROTHY.

As a F'erinstance, here's 2008's Dimla Bilan, opening the 2009 Russian Eurovision tournament:

The Eurovision Finals last for HOURS.  The hosts are vapid and follow the teleprompter like they're mainlining novocaine.  The Mediterranean contestants run on treadmills and the eastern Europeans spill fake blood down their bare backs and the Finns dishonor rap music AND chainsaws (often simultaneously) and power ballads lean heavily on the over-use of epileptic LED backdrop animations and cleavage-  but the cleavage comes covered in sequins and you can always hope for a Balkan singer to do something wonderful with a tambourine or a kettle drum and shout "Oupa!" and seven billion people sit in front of their televisions drinking cocktails with little umbrellas on sticks (as a prelude to the heavy liquor - THAT comes out later, during the voting marathon).  And then, sometimes, once or twice in a show, something magic happens - and in between the teleprompters and the big billowing frocks, there's actual music going on.

In honor of the 2011 Eurovision Song contest, I have exhaustively trolled the past 4 years (I had to establish a cutoff SOMEWHERE or we'd be here all month) for the trashiest, tartiest, splendid-est, rip-roar-rousing-est, most generally-FANTASTIC-est Eurovision numbers of all time!*

*What?  Empty hyperbole is de-rigueur!  It's not ABOUT the music, people!!  It's one vast delirious explosion of pink plastic flamingos!!!

See?
Ukraine, 2007, Dancing Lasha Tumbai:

A plug: The Biggest Morning Tea

Jenny, a friend of mine who runs the quilting store Rose Hall Quilts, is hosting a Biggest Morning Tea this Saturday - May 11 - to benefit the Australian Cancer Council.
Jenny has spent a whole year planning this event, and it is going to be one heck of a shindig. Originally it was intended simply as a get-together-with-a-cause for the quilters of the gulf region, with a silent auction of pretty cups and saucers and old fashioned silverware (culled from estate sales and thrift stores by her quilting minions over the past months) to raise money for the council.

And then, eight weeks ago, the morning tea exploded.

Arriving at her house for a sewing meet-up one Wednesday morning, I found her feverishly labeling books of raffle tickets, and looking seriously harassed.
            "Tabubilgirl!" She bellowed. "It's mastatized! It's gone CRITICAL! The Biggest Morning Tea is now frigging ENORMOUS!"
I took the flyer that she thrust at me.
            "It started when Lucy told me I had to have a plant stall. 'A PLANT stall?' I said. 'This is a morning TEA!' Then she told me how much money you can make from a plant stall in this town, and then she told me she'd run it, so all right, we have a plant stall. With pink ribbons on the pots. Then Chrissy asked if she could be in charge of the catering. I said 'Great!' and asked her if I could still contribute my boxes of Pink Ribbon Tim Tams - I LOVE Tim Tams dunked in coffee - and she got really SHIRTY and said 'NO. I'm talking about the baked goods stall!'
'The Baked GOODS stall?' I said. And she said 'YES!' And she told me how much money you make from a baked good stall in Australia, so fine, we have a aked goods stall.  She can collect people to bake for her - so no worries. I said I'd do the coffee.
I asked her how much coffee and biscuits I should provide - I was thinking enough for 50 people - and she told me to cater for TWO HUNDRED!!  Or THREE HUNDRED even!!!
 And now we've got trading tables, with ladies sewing purses and knitting baby clothes like they're on fire, and we've got a quilt exhibition, which means I now have a pile of quilts insured for ten thousand dollars EACH sitting in my spare room, which makes me uncomfortable, I can tell you, and there's a raffle for a quilt and travel vouchers on the bus to Adelaide and, Oh, My God, I don't even know what else, with an ARMY of ticket sellers fanning out across the peninsula and my wholesale suppliers have been sending me the most amazing and expensive quilting supplies as donations to the cause and the whole thing is getting out of hand and I'm starting to panic.
I mean, it's only being held in my back yard!! Do you reckon we can get the pool hall and the BBQ shed and the shop shed and the granny flat cleared out in time? (editors note: in the Gulf region, people LOVE their sheds. You need at least three in your backyard to be taken seriously by anyone.) I've got 150 folding chairs and six portable gazebos on order, but maybe we need more space?
D'you think we can move the quilting exhibition out of the house and onto the verandah?! What if it rains?!?! Where will we plug in the pie-warmer?!?!?!?"

In summation, I will be baking. Lots of 'American style, please" cookies for the baked goods stall.

Cancer is the one really democratic charity. There's nothing political or geopolitical or squeam-inducing about it. It's as inoffensive and feel-good as the Make a Wish Foundation, without the faint overlay of 'this is not exactly a life-or-death donation' that keeps the Make a Wish Foundation out of the Really Serious leagues. (Although it does just fine financially - those same qualifications are what make it the PERFECT charity for university rush activism. There's not one prickly 18 year old activist who's going to make a fuss about raising money for dying kids.)
Everyone can get behind cancer, and my god, they certainly have. Jenny's suppliers are sending her hundreds of dollars worth of fabrics and threads and quilting templates as raffle prizes and local retailers and travel agencies have been getting into the act -

Saturday, May 7, 11 am, at 5 Woods Terrace, Whyalla, South Australia.
It's going to be quite the shindig.
If you're in town, please do drop by.