Dimivision

With the dawn of a new decade we can’t seem to shake the ghost of the old one and we’ve mainly got Massiel to blame – although many tried to universal language of sheer nothingness before her. The lalala’s and papapa’s were present aplenty that spring evening in Ireland, but luckily they got balanced out occasionally by some genuine poetry. Who’d have thought?!Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1971: A bit of poetry and a lot of lala’s”

After the disaster that turned out to be 1969 the Contest found itself in a crisis situation. Things needed to be turned around and measures had to be taken.The number of participating countries fell back dramatically and with a bit of bad luck this would be the last edition. Somebody call the fire department, this thing’s about to explode!Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1970: Make or break”

We’re slightly crawling towards the modern age and it’s reflected in this flowery powery version of the Contest. Although the opening organ version of the traditional Te Deum almost had us fooled, resembling the wedding scene from The Sound Of Music. Thank Goddess it wasn’t an omen.Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1969: Four for the price of one”

Hallelujah! Not the future winner, sillies, but the sigh of relief! I’ve got colour on screen, life is good! Gone are the days that everything looks alike. But does everything still sound alike?Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1968: Life in technicolor”

With Udo Jürgens winning with a traditional chanson the landscape of Eurovision turned back into its old self. The ratio men-women was evened out and the influence of pop was put on pause. The fact that the 1967 edition was held in a ballroom of a palace (how posh, how Viennese!) didn’t help to shake the dusty feeling. Or am I wearing my sunglasses in a candle lit room?Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1967: Mirror mirror on the stage”

In full flower power force one expects to see some radical changes on the Eurovision stage and 1966 seems to open the door for more than one extreme make over. The ratio men-women isn’t entirely how it used to be, but other and more important things will never be the same again. Exciting, eller hur?!Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1966: A year of important firsts”

The victory of squeeky little Gigliola brought the contest for the first time to Italy, thankfully in an era were nobody had yet heard of Toto Cutugno and so the evening went along smoothly. Pop music had started to surface and being a platform for contemporary music ESC would soon start to see the first symptoms of the future of music. Thank. God.Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1965: An invasion of women”

It took me a couple of minutes and a quick read in one of my Eurovision books to realise that there doesn’t seem to exist a visual record of the 1964 contest. Booh! Quite difficult to judge this one without some images to distract me from the frompy old styles to be heard, how old skool. Quite easy to find the winner however!Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1964: Euro without Vision”

As all of the top three countries from 1962 kindly declined (rude!) the organisation of the 1963 contest it fell into the lap of Auntie Beeb who was all too keen to show off her new television studios at Shepherd’s Bush. She did it in a most peculiar way, which resulted in what is likely to be the most bizarre ESC in history. Accompanied by the most talked about voting scandal in the age before Malta.Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1963: Probably the weirdest one of all”

The curve of Eurovision seems to hold a lot of ups and downs, because after the up that was 1961 we were sadly disappointed by the 1962 contest. Even though a couple of trademark Eurovision trends start to pop up to never leave again there is very little to set our spirits on fire. Except for a couple of delightfully crazy women from the dark, cold north that is.Continue reading “Eurovision Review – 1962: Ringelingdingeling the tipi”