This round was an even split between melodramatic ballads
(7) and slick club jams (7), with only a few anomalies.The most distinctive of the bunch:
Belarus: This hyperslick Europop featured several
questionable haircuts and when they sang the chorus that goes “we are the
winners!” they pronounced the last word like “wieners” (so they could make it
rhyme with “believers”). Bless them.
Turkey: A weird, nautical-themed Turkish shanty made
interesting because at one point the dancers extended their arms and turned
their costumes into a boat. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that a Eurovision
audience loves a costume trick.
Sweden: This round was all about Loreen. Hers began a moody
sort of club number but before long the beat dropped, her vocals lifting like a hip
Celine Dion, as she chopped the air and bent to the floor, Capoeira meets rave
meets pop transcendence. Easily got my vote for this round.
Those of you who know me will know that this is one of my
favorite weeks of the year.
(last place 1980 Belgian entry)
You don’t even need to ask: yes, I will be watching from the
first shout of “GOOOOD eveninnnnnnng, Europe!” until goodbye kisses are being
blown at the camera.
In case you missed the first Eurovision semi-final on Tuesday, or you’re of the
American contingent who haven’t yet had the pleasure, here’s a run down of what
you missed in Round 1:
The Best of the Worst
Montenegro: A stocky middle-aged man who calls himself Rambo Amadeus lurched his way through a Balkan funk-rap fusion, dropping lines like
“I don’t like snow peas” and “always stay cool, like a swimming pool.”
San Marino: This one’s called “The Social Network Song”
because they found out late in the game that they were breaking the EV rule
that bans brand names and had to remove all references to “facebook” from the
song. The most delightful absurdity came thanks to the staging: a doctor, a
cheerleader, and a pilot danced in the background while the blue pleather-bedecked
vocalist sang things like “if you wanna come to my house, click it with your
mouse.”
Austria: The group is called Trackshittaz. The song is called “Woki Mit Deim Popo,”
which loosely translates to “Shake Your Bum,” though they made it sound dirtier.
It was no “I Like Big Butts,” but it did feature pole dancers, name-checked
Nuddel Suppen (noodle soup), and a nifty online translator also helped me
understand the lines that meant: “Your bum has feelings, your bum is part of
you / Don’t put it on chairs, your bum has an opinion, yeah.”
The Best of the Best
Iceland: As a rule, entries from Nordic countries are
usually classy and usually involve orchestral string instruments. This one
featured a fellow named Jónsi (not to be confused with the one from Sigur Ros, his
Eurovision profile boasts that he starred as Danny Zuko in Grease a few years
ago) and violin. About as classy as Eurovision power ballads get.
Romania: Drums! Bagpipes! Accordion! A scantily clad pop
princess! Excessive pyrotechnics! It was like Romanian folk goes club and had a
tongue-twister of a chorus that goes “zah li la li la lee.”
Cyprus: Not terribly different from Romania’s tune in terms
of its catchiness, but this favors a sort of Ace of Base beat and has a chorus
that goes “How I’ve been waiting for this la la la la la la la la la la la la
la la la la love.”
Ireland: Say what you want about Jedward the rest of the
year, but they are made for Eurovision. Their “Waterline” is no “Waterloo” or
“Borderline” but watching them bound around the stage dressed as cyberknights
to the tune, I was reminded of “We Built This City” and “Footloose.” If either
of those were sung by hyperactive albino Irish twins, that is.
Russia: I believe in these Babuski, and I would love to see
them beat all the young, naked divas. They began by pretending to put something
in a stage prop oven, all baking and looking adorable. Then the beat dropped
and it became a “party for everybody.” The littlest grannie is such a star she
gets her own solo dance with the camera. (Their previous entry “Very long birch bark and how to
turn it into a turban" may have been a better tune, but “Party for
Everybody” seems more appropriate for the Eurovision agenda.) They get my vote:
A few weeks ago, my friend Matt asked if I had heard of Gentleman Jesse. Then he used the magic words--"Power Pop"--to describe him as he let the needle drop. Truthfully, that (that someone who knows what I like would use that phrase to describe what he was about to play me) was all I needed to be convinced, and when this came out of the speakers, I wasn't surprised he got it so right:
I was surprised when a few weeks later, The Husband came home from playing ping-pong at our neighborhood bar with news that that Gentleman Jesse would be playing there in a few days.
And I was surprised to discover at that show that his music was so precisely what I wanted at just that moment: to walk out of the ladies room across the scuffed parquet floor and feel like I was in a bygone decade. To hear the warm organ and the kitschy background vocals and that particular drum beat that begs for handclaps (the one that always reminds me of the Ronettes's "Be My Baby"). To witness someone so efficiently utilizing the songwriting formulae of Elvis Costello or Springsteen or early Beatles or Eddie and the Hotrods and coming up with this bundle of desperate verve and melody:
It was Jesse's birthday to boot and it wasn't long before birthday cake was flying, people were dancing with a for-real sort of arms and legs a-go-go abandon, a woman walked on her hands across the dancefloor with her feet kicking the air, all to the sound of Johnny B Goode riffs a'ripping.
According to hisrecord label's blog, the narrative of how Gentleman Jesse's latest output came to be goes something like this: he's been frustrated with some of the problems befalling his hometown of Atlanta as of late and been dealing with some tragedies that recently affected the Atlanta music scene. Rather than giving up, he wrote these songs. To quoth Douchemaster Records directly, "The record kicks off with 'Eat Me Alive,' an anthem of perseverance that Jesse undoubtedly used as a demon-exercising tool. The album is bookended by another mover titled 'We Got To Get Out of Here,' a song that turns out to be less about getting out of an actual location and more about getting out of a state of mind that makes you afraid of it. Stylistically, Jesse never strays from his bread and butter, which is short, hook driven, and delicately patterned rock n roll songs."
Power pop, rock n roll, damn catchy--whatever you want to call it, sometimes an old formula can be just the right way for dealing with now. I don't know why it still surprises me when pop songs prove they can really do something, have power.
(Update: the clips originally posted expired so I had to change them.)
Sometimes I wake-up on a Tuesday morning so jealous of people who got to live in a time when music I love was first made, I start bargaining with history. "History, I'd give up all the trappings of 2012, if you'd just let me, you know..." See Johnny Marr pick out the melody to "This Charming Man". Or watch Guided by Voices in a dive bar in Milwaukee. Or be close enough in the crowd to feel Adam & the Ants's two drummers pounding out the beats on "Kings of the Wild Frontier". Sure, I've been to a few reunion tours and I've enjoyed myself, but it's never quite the same as witnessing something the first time around, when the songs haven't lost a bit of their necessity and aren't yet burdened by nostalgia.
Oddly enough, the band I most regret not being around to see in their heyday is Dexys Midnight Runners. I put on Too-Rye-Ay and I dance and--I'll be honest--I ache a little.
This clip, from their appearance on The Young Ones, takes place in the communal bathroom (spot the drummer sitting on the toilet and a fiddler in the tub) and begins with handclaps and is jiberrishy, light-flashing, nonsensical joy. A couple English friends went to see Dexys in a tiny theatre in Wales a few nights ago. They're touring their new album and they still played plenty of old hits, though they didn't appease the very drunk Welshmen who were yelling out "duh duh duh duh-DUH, duh duh duh duh-duh"even before the curtain went up.
Dexys had plenty of incarnations, and so the window for this line-up and particular strings and brass-heavy sound wasn't even very big, but logic doesn't work on this brand of musical regret. This little Youtube clip from a performance that happened a year before I was born helps more than a little, though. Even in the moment when it might be as good as it gets, they're striving, striving, striving, striving up a hill toward the next thing. Thank goodness there were cameras rolling.
(The handclap breakdown is at 4:10, and I'm sure glad the crowd gets off their rears in exultation by the end of the song)
