Sunday, May 8, 2011

Only in Sweden, my friends! Drag act 'After Dark,' Timoteij, et al perform on dynamic kids show 'Den Flygande Mattan'; Nothing like it in U.S.!



Christer Lindarw (After Dark) - La Dolce Vita/Mamma Mia from SVT
Barnkanalen's "Den Flygande Mattan" March 2011. (With lyrics)http://youtu.be/boVS7_XETBA
Only in Sweden, my friends, only in Sweden!



Ever-vigilant Darin over at popular music blog Scandipop got it right a few months ago regarding fashion designer Christer Lindarw's alter ego musical drag act, 'After Dark' performing on SVT's Children Channel's dynamic show, 'Den Flygande Mattan' -The Flying Carpet, just a few weeks after the talented women of Timotiej performed there, too.


Don’t mind doing it for the kids…
by scandipop on February 14, 2011
http://www.scandipop.co.uk/?p=4862


I was laughing, smiling and crying at the same time at the image of the whole thing, above, whether the young boys in suits and fedoras dancing like they were a Vegas act during La Dolce Vita, http://svt.se/content/1/c8/02/35/27/57/dfm_after_dark.jpg
or the eager little girls doing their best
Agnetha and Anni-Frid impression during Dancing Queen, when Christer was walking into the audience and they sang along without any coaxing.

It was fabulous!


FYI: The dancers are students at BASE23 Stockholm Dance Academy


I actually started a blog post about SVT's wry, whimsical and pop music-heavy kids show 'Den Flygande Mattan' back in January after I came across a particularly cute clip while looking for something else from the SVT Play website.

Here's the show's animated intro:



http://youtu.be/HAzAMpUvjOY

(The name of the show's band -with a cute female drummer no less- is The Flying Carpets.)


I added a little here and there as various artists I know and have followed performed their songs on this popular show, which is hosted by the talented and vivacious Sara Edwardsson.


She is a DYNAMO and has the perfect personality for the show, upbeat like a favorite aunt who knows lots of interesting things she wants to share and impart and never talks down to you just because you are a kid.
Not that I had an aunt like that, but I sure wanted one.


(Slight digression: When I was in high school, a popular and otherwise smart girl I knew somehow, on her own, mistakenly got it into her head that actress Jaclyn Smith was my aunt, since my mother and I were both born in Texas, my mother's hair looked very similar and we had the same last name. Really.
I let that confusion play itself out over a few weeks, but it was a nice thought and certainly a 'fact' that I could've happily lived with!)


Then, in early March, Timoteij performed some songs and I took some notes about that:
http://www.timoteij.se/2011/02/03/den-flygande-mattan-2/
http://svt.se/content/1/c8/02/35/27/57/dfm_timotej.jpg

Timoteij - Kom
-
from SVT Barnkanalen's "Den Flygande Mattan" February 2011. (With lyrics)
. http://youtu.be/zj4B2BEvRks



Then, almost as if on cue, everything about that post I'd spent time on disappeared when the power in the neighborhood suddenly went out.


Oh, and that fail-safe automatic Save function on
Blogger that's supposed to automatically keep my stuff here from disappearing entirely into the ether by accident or screw-up, well, not so much. It did save the title, but, of course, that was the least important part of the effort.



A few weeks later, I noticed that Darin at Scandipop had written on March 14th about Christer Lindarw performing his drag act on the show -after I'd already seen it for myself via the SVT Play website.

After Dark, but pre-watershed!
by scandipop on March 14, 2011
http://www.scandipop.co.uk/?p=5227



I decided that I'd needed to re-write my original post as best I could remember, so that those of you who have never seen it, 100% of you, can get some sense about how truly cute and amusing it is. But I'd already forgotten a lot so...


The 'one-of-these-days' post about why South Florida currently seems to have about ZERO original LIVE English-language programming for children in what is supposed to be such a "creative community" -go ahead, just ask them over at LIV on South Beach and they'll tell you how clever they are!- will have to wait for another time.

Until then, I will just throw out a small south Florida shout-out into the blogosphere for:

a.) Chuck Zink and The Skipper Chuck Show on the old Channel 4 when it was WTVJ, which I was at a few times as an audience member when that was a very tough ticket to score;

b.) Banjo Billy's Fun Boat on Channel 10,
WLBW, not WPLG-TV, in the late '60's, where the hook was amiable host Dave Herbert playing Dixieland music, not exactly that hip then -or now- but definitely outside-the-box thinking.


c.)
Sunday Funnies, the Sunday morning staple of the then-WCKT, wherein actual Channel 7 news reporter Wayne Chandler -when it was an NBC-affilate during the Dolphins' heyday- read the Herald's Sunday comics along with a robot named Toby, that for all the world looked to be in a very large plastic garbage can.
http://www.theparklander.com/previous/july04/Toby.htm
Yes, what a potpourri: New Orleans Dixieland music, a dark blue Captain's cap and the Sunday comics and a robot when Charles Schultz's Peanuts was still the most popular newspaper comic strip in the country.
And now on local TV we have... what?

ZERO!

-----
Speaking of children's television, tell me where the local equivalent in South Florida was this past week for this story I found on SVT's Lilla Aktuellt, about a Swedish girl named Anna that was born on September 11th, 2001, about what it's like to have your birthday be a day that most people think of in such a negative way, or what she thinks about what happened to Osama bin Laden?
http://svt.se/2.62895/hem


In the South Florida media market of today, kids under 13 get on TV because they are cute or fat or stupid or are shot dead in drive-bys or graduate from high school when they are 11 or have rich parents who book a big-name music act for their bar mitzvah or call 911 when their mother falls asleep in a drug-fueled haze and their baby sister has wandered out of the apt. or fallen into the pool or...
But mostly, when they are on TV, they are shown in a store buying something.

It's so predictable!


But where's the Miami TV stations' attempt to serve that particular demographic?



SVT's Lilla Aktuellt video: Anna föddes samma dag som terrordåden
(Anna was born on the same day as the 9/11 attacks)

Video available for watching on website until May 3, 2012.

http://svtplay.se/v/2415038/anna_foddes_samma_dag_som_terrordaden


Lilla Aktuellt homepage/hemsida: http://svt.se/2.62895/hem


-----
See also:
http://swedishstereo.blogspot.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment