The Black-Market Eurovision

The German television network ARD is reporting further irregularities in the sale of tickets to the Final of Eurovision 2009 in Moscow - see www.eurovision.de (unofficial translation here ).

On the first day of ticket sales long queues formed at the ticket booths. However black-market ticket dealers were overtly avoiding the eight tickets per person rule by purchasing one allotment of eight tickets and then joining the queue again near the front thanks to "friends" of theirs conveniently waiting in line.

This led to the rear parts of the queue hardly moving at all before tickets were sold out altogether, with many reminded of shortages during the darkest Soviet times. The official Eurovision website www.eurovision.tv is still advertising tickets, but clicking on the link leads to a website where all the events are listed in Cyrillic but no tickets to the final are available.

Here at the Eurovision Minute office we were successful in ordering tickets for the Eurovision via the website, or so we thought, even receiving a confirmation by email from the uniscom.ru website with the seat numbers. However this was followed shortly afterwards by another email from an anonymous gmail account informing us that our ticket booking had been cancelled as "by Company conditions we realize delivery within Europe only".

For many fans in Australia the only way to get to the 2009 Eurovision will be via the black market, however the high number of forged tickets in circulation makes this a particularly risky proposition. Given the additional visa problems of arranging a visit to Moscow, this may be a contest to watch back home on SBS.

Australian Radio Eurovision Televote now open

The annual Australian Radio Eurovision Televote has now started. Listeners can participate by visiting www.eurovisionminute.com to preview all the entries and then award 12, 10 and 8 points to their three favourite songs. There is also a special "Nul Points" vote for the song least liked down under.

Voting stays open until Friday 15th May, closing just before the broadcast of the first Semi-Final on Australian Television. The results are not included in the official Eurovision results, however the winning artist will receive a special Australian Radio Listeners' Choice trophy.

Previous winners of the Australian Radio Listeners Choice award include Germany's Roger Cicero in 2007 and Bosnia Herzegovina's Laka in 2008.

Elvis is back and he’s heading for Moscow

“Le Chat” (the cat) is a Belgian institution who has been offering his social observations and critique of the human condition daily in the main Brussels newspaper Le Soir since 1983. It was therefore only natural that he be entered into the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 for Belgium - with one difficulty.

Le Chat appears in a comic strip – with grey fur, pointed ears, a large nose and generally indiscernible mouth; he wears clothing like a human and has not particularly cat-like habits such as driving a car and visiting a bistro.

The popularity of the comic strip by artist Philippe Geluck is based on Le Chat’s humour which mixes Belgian surrealism with clever wordplay. Sayings of Le Chat include:

La mort c'est un peu comme la connerie. Le mort il ne sait pas qu'il est mort, ce sont les autres qui sont tristes. Pour le con c'est pareil…
(Death is a bit like stupidity. The dead person doesn’t know he is dead, it’s everyone else who is sad. And the same applies to stupid people…)

On prétend que l'être humain n'emploierait son cerveau qu'à 50% de ses capacités. Personnellement, je n'y crois qu'à moitié.
(They say that humans only use 50% of capacity of their brain. Personally I only believe the half of it).

The difficulties of taking a comic-strip character without physical form who has never spoken a word let alone sung a complete song, and entering him into the world’s largest song contest are not to be underestimated. Belgian Television needed some help from on high, which they received from the King, Elvis Presley, or rather from Elvis impersonator Patrick Ouchène, and “Copycat” his tribute song to Le Chat.

The song is a great rockabilly number bringing the mood and style of 50s music to a modern-day audience. watch Belgian TV has ambitious plans to make Le Chat appear on stage during the live Eurovision broadcast, and we will see how successful they have been in May.

Some of the lyrics to the song proved too controversial to Elvis Presley fan clubs in Belgium and Holland, including:

He’s a copycat, trying to steal my soul,
but he’s too fat to rock ‘n’ roll
…
He’s too dead
To rock ‘n’ roll,

The fan clubs lodged official complaints with the organizers of the competition, claiming the lyrics of the song were disrespectful to the memory of their idol. A former songwriter for Elvis Presley, 71-year old Michael Jarret, even went as far as offering to write new lyrics for Patrick’s song.

Read the full lyrics here

Unlike Georgia, Belgium was not excluded from the competition, but the legions of Elvis fans across Europe may affect Belgium’s place in the Eurovision voting.

Preview the 2009 Eurovision

We have trawled the depths of the Internet to bring you the music videos and stage shows of all the entrants to the 2009 Eurovision, where available. Of these the stage show videos are probably more important as they give you a better idea of what to expect from each country in Moscow. Many of the songs are available with high-definition picture and sound for those with faster internet connections, however there are some with only limited picture and sound quality, and we will be replacing these as we get better versions. To start click on "Launch Player" link to the right on www.eurovisionminute.com .

Sloppy Seconds for Russia

It was a case of second time lucky for singer Anastasia Prykhodko when she won the Russian Eurovision national finals with her song Mamo, the same song that had just been rejected by the national broadcaster of her native Ukraine. The music to the song Mamo was written by a Georgian and the song is performed partially in Russian, Ukrainian and Estonian.

Any country participating in the Eurovision is free to send nationals of any country they choose, most notable examples being Canada's Celine Dion who once represented Switzerland and Australian-born Johnny Logan who won for Ireland three times.

However the fact that the host country Russia chose a foreigner to represent them in Moscow has raised eyebrows and caused storms of protest in the Russian press, particularly because Georgia, Estonia and Ukraine have not had the warmest relationships with Russia in recent years.

Some have even gone as far to speculate the vote was rigged, with the many interconnections and cross-ownerships of the Russia's television, telecom and music industries being held up as a possible motive.

A more positive interpretation is that citizens of Russia are demonstrating that their country is more multicultural and accepting of diversity than their newspapers believe and the recent actions of their Government might show.

Prykhodko who won the Russian TV equivalent of Australian Idol, Star Factory, is already well known in Russia. She sings a medium tempo song let down by repetitive lyrics with a very basic stage show.
Watch


As host country, Russia does not need to quality through the Semi-Finals as it has an automatic place in the Finals.

Swedish Red Stars and Red Faces

The 2009 Eurovision was almost all over for Sweden before it began, and all because of a song which was not even in the competition.

Tingeling was the interval act in the Swedish national finals and featured everything the winning swedish group might look forward to in their visit to Moscow including a Russian Army choir, giant Matryoshka dolls, a breakdancing Russian bear, and pink-clad Cossack dancers - so far nothing too out of the ordinary for the Eurovision. But then out came the Russian Gangsters, Lenin and even scantily clad Communist whores with strategically placed red stars and things started going downhill rapidly.
Watch


Sources at the Russian Embassy in Stockholm expressed their outrage, referring to outbdated stereotypes of Russian life. This was taken up by the the Swedish newspapers with leading tabloid Aftonbladet running the story on their front page. Swedish Politicians then got involved, so by way apology Swedish Television SVT sent flowers to the Russian embassy. Nevertheless it is likely that Sweden will be allowed to take part in Moscow this year, which is great news because their actual entry is likely to be one of the strongest contendors in the contest.

Opera singer Malena Ernman was chosen for her song La Voix (the voice) - and there was plenty of opportunity to demonstrate that voice in the song. Startly slowly and sounding rather like a 1980s airline tv advert before veering dangerously closely to bland Europop, the song soon takes off into an explosion of mezzo soprano pop rock.
Watch


This is a song with a stunning dance number and a high-octane beat and glass-splintering high notes that are sure to drive the pet dog crazy. One to watch.

Peace didn’t come

The 2008 Georgian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest could not have got it more wrong – “Peace Will Come” sang Diana Gurtskaya, reaching a creditable 11th place for Georgia in the competition, but Russia won the overall competition and the rights to host this year’s competition in Moscow.

In the Months following the 2008 contest, border tensions flared between the two countries culminating in a 5-day war when Russian troops helped the two break-away Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to independence – an independence recognized to date by almost no one except Russia.

So it always was unlikely that Georgia would take part in a Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Moscow. However instead of withdrawing outright, the Georgians entered a song “We don’t wanna Put in” by disco funk quartett Stefane and 3G making a barely concealed dig at Russian Prime Minister Putin. Watch


Political or commercial messages of any kind are strictly taboo in the competition; a quiet word from the competition steering committee is normally enough for countries to tweak their entries – but in this case the Georgian artist refused to change the lyrics, the Georgian state broadcaster refused to enter a different song, so Georgia has been excluded from this year’s competition.

In the drawn-out week-long process Georgia earned more than worldwide headlines; it earned the sympathy of a worldwide audience for its predicament, and that was probably the point. As for the competition entry fee rumoured to be around €30k which Georgia will have forfeited in the process – for them certainly money well spent.

Organisational problems plague Eurovision Ticket Sales

The Russian Organizers of the 2009 Eurovision are struggling with the first day of ticket sales today.

The website http://www.eurovision.1tv.ru/ requires prospective ticket purchasers to be registered before placing their order, but initially the registration part of the website was not working. The system is now accepting registrations, but anyone who tried to register earlier is still unable to login unless they re-register using a different e-mail address.

Once finally registered, the system allows seat selection, however the checkout procedure is not working correctly in English - users need to switch to the Russian version of the site to complete their order.

The system appears only to accept delivery addresses in Moscow and the system does not accept credit cards, so it is unclear how the tickets can be paid for.

The Call Center setup by Channel One Moscow to handle telephone sales is also not able to process orders, and is referring callers to the website.

The official EBU website only belatedly admitted that ticket sales have commenced, adding a banner link after the tickets had been on sale for several hours.

Norway early Favourite for Eurovision 2009

Norway is the early favourite to win the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow 2009 according to UK-based betting site (spoiler-free). Norway will be presented by Minsk-born violinist Alexander Rybok singing Fairytail. Watch

Norway's odds to win are around 2:1 followed by Greece and Turkey at around 5:1 and 10:1 respectively. Russia and United Kingdom are competing for sixth and seventh place with FYR Macedonia most unlikely to win at around 200:1 .

The position of early favourite is not necessarily a good indication of the eventual winner. Switzerland's DJ Bobo and Ireland's Dustin The Turkey were early favourites to win in 2007 and 2008 respectively, but both were knocked out at the Semi-Final stage.