FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
40 years today since ABBA swept Eurovision Song Contest with their song Waterloo, becoming first Swedes to win: http://t.co/aLNQJtziq3
— Sweden.se (@swedense) April 6, 2014
TheSpringOf74 YouTube Channel video: ABBA - Dancing Queen - LIVE at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm, June 18, 1976, at the gala tribute to Sweden's King Carl XV1 Gustaf and future wife and Queen, Silvia Sommerlath, the night before their wedding.
This was the first time the song had ever been performed in public in Sweden.
eurovision YouTube Channel video: Emmelie de Forest - Only Teardrops (Denmark) - LIVE - 2013 Grand Final, Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Grand Final. Mälmo, Sweden Uploaded May 18, 2013. http://youtu.be/p3f9v8ebuD4
Denmark's earnest Emmelie De Forest wins the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Mälmo, but Anouk & The Netherlands gets 12 first-place points from Hallandale Beach Blog, and around here, that's the only vote that really matters. And yes, we vote early and we vote often.
eurovision YouTube Channel video: Anouk - Birds (The Netherlands) - LIVE - 2013 Grand Final, Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Grand Final. Mälmo, Sweden
I'll have a post in the coming days on the singing hits and misses of the show and an overview of what I thought worked and didn't work production-wise, so this will be my quick recap.
But I did want to mention that I thought that the "Stockholm smorgasbord" skit was the best of the interval bits, with host Petra Mede singing and dancing and acquiting herself quite well and showing why she was the surprise choice to host the show, even if as Karl at the Scandipop blog tweeted Monday, she overdoes the accent when speaking English.
Petra Mede's English accent is just too much. Too much. It's like a parody that doesn't stop. Tone it down love. #Eurovision — scandipop (@scandipop) May 13, 2013
The skit also had the advantage of not just being funny, but also true. I hope to be able to find a clip of it and post it here soon so you can all see for yourself. I watched the show from beginning-to-end, and then the after-show interviews as well, and only had about 3-4 times when the SVT Play feed seemed to stall or there was a momentary blip, and all but one of those came during the judging. That's always the deadly-dullest part of the show, as viewers are forced to listen to people from 39 countries stall for time with their little amusing anecdotes instead of simply reporting their own countries results via the awarding of 8 points for 3rd place, 10 for second and 12 for first-place.
As it happens, this year, Emmelie De Forest's status as winner was already perfectly obvious when they still had about 4-5 counties to poll, as we could see in the background while host Petra Mede was forced to continue asking a question that was already moot.
Norway's Margaret Berger finished fourth.
All my incoming blog-related emails from readers on Saturday were from people who just LOVE the song, some of whom even wrote that they'll now consider purchasing the new 10-song CD of this wonderfully-talented Dutch singer most said they'd never heard of until today.
That's the power of blogging.
'Sad Singalong Songs' now available in stores and at iTunes, probably for about 8,99 € or about $11.50 USD.
That's a very good deal, indeed.
I also suggested they tale a close look at the official video for "Birds" as seen below on her VEVO YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/AnoukVEVO
and consider subscribing to it, as I already was.
AnoukVEVO YouTube channel: Anouk - Birds, from her new CD titled 'Sad Singalong Songs'. Uploaded May 15, 2013.http://youtu.be/xPDYbuaXlA8
If yours truly was involved with a major Hollywood studio and I had an upcoming drama project involving someone like Cate Blanchett or Rachel McAdams or a similar genuine acting talent, especially a period piece pre-1960's, I'd figure out some way to get this song in the movie before somebody beat me to the punch. With Anouk singing, nobody else.
#Euro2012 - Meanwhile, in part because of history and karma, Irelandpsyches itself up for Euro 2012 in ways that are slightly different than most other countries...
Sunday's matches on ESPN, DirecTV Channel 206: 11:45 a.m Eastern Spain vs. Italy 2:30 p.m. Croatia vs. Ireland
Summer 2012 is officially here as Timoteij's new album, Tabu, drops today. And they also celebrate a new-and-improved website that's delightfully more-colorful, engaging and pleasing to the eye -and more intuitive!
The top of the new website, which changed slightly from the original template a few weeks before their participation in the 2012 Melodifestivalen two months ago, now sports new photos for both the website and the blog, and I must say that in the week since I first saw the photo of the new album over at Swedish Stereo blog in Damian's description of the songs and their order, http://swedishstereo.blogspot.com/2012/05/timoteij-tabu.htmlwhich seems to be fresher, more upbeat and dance-friendly but with all of the Timoteij folk and authenticity trademarks we love, I've been eager to see what it looks like in a new and improved online environment.
Well, in my opinion, the new features and photos really POP off your computer screen in a way that the old pinkish/purple ones really didn't after awhile because... well, we just got so used to them. http://www.timoteij.se/
The new group photo for the website now is, left-to-right: Elina Thorsell, Johanna Pettersson, Cecilia Kallin and Bodil Bergström, and the photo is the same as the album but in the header photo, you don't see their instruments, while the header above the blog text http://www.timoteij.se/category/timoteij/is a variation of that: Cecilia, Elina, Johanna and Bodil.
I also saw that last week's news also had this great teaser: Buy the new album and enter a contest to have Timoteij perform at your home/place of work -in Sweden: http://www.ginza.se/product/timoteij/tabu-2012/11863/
Correct, it's remarkably similar to what the amazing Full of Keys (Anni Bernhard) did on her tour in February for her winning fan, Victor: http://fullofkeys.com/blog/?p=228 I was so envious!
On Monday, the girls were still busy promoting the new album and swung by the Sveriges Radio (SR)studio in Skovde, and fortunately for us, the folks at P4recorded a bit of what happened, which is how I can share it with you here now:
Not to give away too many teasers about some future posts you'll be seeing here soon, but as some of you reading this particular post already know, I actually have hopes of seeing these talented ladies perform -as well as the fabulous Florrie, whose new album drops next week- in a few months in their native habitats, though I'm still working on exact dates and logistics.
My original killer post about Timoteij and Melodifestivalen 2012, scheduled to run the morning of the Second Chance competition, with a complete recap about what happened to them and other acts like Molly Sandén during the competition, was actually killed by a freak power outage one night when my electricity didn't come back on for quite a few minutes, and Blogger lost what I'd written.
Hours of work down the drain! I was so beyond frustrated!
Below are some odds and ends from that the draft of that post which I'd thought to save to an email draft before I started trying to finish up and the electricity went kaput, my post going adios! Obviously, there were lots of what I thought at the time were some well-chosen words, photos and videos that ought to be below but which aren't.
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Today is D-day for Timoteij and its fans: Clear sailing to next week's Melodifestivalen Finals in Stockholm, or, Stormy Seas? (Stormande Hav)
It's the day we've all been waiting for... "Andra chansen." The second chance. One last chance to make the grade for the chance to represent Sweden at Eurovision.
Yesterday the band posted this short acapella version of them singing an excerpt of Stormande Hav in one of their hotel rooms onto their official YouTube Channel.
Like many of you out there, I've wondered, too, why they and the record company still hadn't posted a HQ copy of their performance at the Second Heat as good as the one that uris1 posted two weeks ago, or done a series of occasional updates on their YouTube Channel since then on their preparations the past few weeks, a variation of what they've been writing on the blog. But now at least, somebody finally decided to do something positive.
uris1 video: Timoteij - Stormande Hav. Second Heat of Melodifestivalen 2012 in Göteborg, Sweden. February 11, 2012. http://youtu.be/Nw73WHckdNY
Fans of the band may want to start looking at this page to see what's also being written about them on Social Media: http://whotalking.com/flickr/Timoteij
Sweden's nationally-televised WTF (musical) car crash moment of Saturday night during Melodifestivalen -Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li., performing "Mirakel"
Proof that, at least in Sweden, some people love a (musical) car crash as long as they are not in it...
No, it's NOT your imagination.
I really HAVE been avoiding mentioning what's been going on thus far at this year's installment of Melodifestivalen, the iconic and nationally-televised song selection contest over five weeks that annually leads to Sweden's choice for the Eurovision Song Contest, this year, taking place in Azerbijan in a few months.
I could get into the reasons why I've NOT mentioned what's doing with familiar Hallandale Beach Blog favorites like Molly Sandénand Timoteij so far, but it's easier to say why I've broken that silence -Sweden's nationally-televised WTF (musical) car crash moment of Saturday night -Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li.
As always, seeing is believing!
*All screen grabs on this page are from SVT by South Beach Hoosier
To say the least, the reviews of Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li are in and they are so angry, scathing and unmerciless in their pummeling, that it's a wonder that many of my friends and folks I know, like Sofie and Pernilla -who keep coming back to the blog!- who watched the show LIVE Saturday night didn't, well, blow a gasket.
Or make like Elvis and shoot their TV set!
Though now that I think about it, maybe some of them did, since as of early Monday morning, I have NOT heard from some of them after Saturday night's deltävling 3 -Third heat-of this year's competition in Leksand, like I did after the two previous weeks the past two Saturday nights in Växjö and Göteborg, respectively.
I urge you to watch this video ASAP because this video will probably be yanked-off YouTube very soon by SVT for copyright reasons, but it's the only one I've seen that shows how truly horrendous the act was.
Oops! Too late.
They already hit it and removed it since I saw it a few hours ago.
Since that's the case, watch their performance here on SVT Play's website, which will have the entire show online for viewing until MIDNIGHT Tuesday morning Stockholm/Central European Time (CET), which is one hour ahead of GMT and six hours ahead of yours truly in Miami, in U.S. Eastern. So the deadline for seeing this is 6 p.m. Eastern.
Get moving, because the clock is ticking!
Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li appearance starts at 0:45:58 on the vid, ends at 0:50:05.
I watched the show in its entirety on Sunday afternoon, taking notes.
So, did I mention that people were angry?!!!!
Apparently, more than I thought, there were thousands of people watching TV in Sweden on Saturday night who thought they'd say a big f-ck you to the Swedish music industry, and do it by spending what amounts to about two bucks to text this "car crash" -the favorite metaphor being used among Swedish bloggers to describe this performance the first 36 hours afterward- and send them directly to the Finals in Stockholm on March 10th, at Globen.
Hmm-m... imagine if a participating country's national Eurovision song selection competition was hijacked by the country's usually-friendly folket in order to send the worst possible act to Baku, Azerbijan for the actual European competition...
Hmm-m... now that's a question so preposterous and diabolical that even Stieg Larsson never thought of it while toiling away in Gamla Stan thinking of things for Lisbeth Salander to get upset about!
Yes, it's sort like what the Florida Marlins did in November in announcing their new Miami Marlins logo and uniforms for their new stadium in Little Havana... which was, itself, a rainbow-colored WTF moment as far as most fans were concerned! Yet typically, the condescending Marlins owners and management act like this finished product is what they always wanted, and don't much care what fans really think. They're so in love with the idea of being "bold," of marketing themselves in Latin America in pastel colors, that they've lost sight of what the real fans who actually attend their games think.
For those of you reading this outside of South Florida, I honestly DON'T see anyone wearing this stuff around the area, that is, except for the sort of person at the shopping mall who does so clearly to bring attention to themselves. Like the sort of woman who purchases a new expensive purse or accessory and takes it with them to Sunday brunch and tried to appear blase about it, even while craning her neck to see who notices it.
...it certainly got people talking, as well as voting – “Björn Ranelid” and then “Ranelid” both became wordwide trending topics on twitter last night after his performance.
At the ESC Xtra, which LIVE blogged the show, when it was finally announced that Ranelid & Li had qualified to go directly to the Finals in Stockholm, along with Molly, they wrote simply,
I am lost for words Sweden. See ya next week…
At the more action-oriented Schlagerblog, which was not so crazy about Molly's song, either, they wrote
The big surprise for the Schlagerboys was how excited we got about Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li. Who'd have thought a bonkers orange bloke wandering around the stage rambling on in Swedish while his granddaughter prances around for the chorus in a glittery frock would be so fab! The best bit was near the end where the key change should have been, when he clearly forgot his microphone was live and started mumbling the words to the chorus. Love it!
I'll have my updates on Molly Sandén and Timoteij and what else is going on in the competition later in the week before Saturday's competition from Malmö.
Madcon - Glow - 2009 Eurovision Song Contest Flashmob Dance Finale (HD), Oslo, Norway. May 2009. http://youtu.be/32lpdFS7rPM
It starts a little slow, I'll grant you, but at 2:19, as the cameras leave the arena, then, serendipity...
After watching this, I'm convinced that a televised singing and dancing flash mob across the U.S.A., during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show, would be MUCH MORE FUN to see than simply watching Madonna perform a medley of her well-known songs in Indy at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Or, perhaps more interesting than even that, would be to have it televised from the two cities which have teams playing, as people sing and dance wearing their -quite likely- Green Bay Packercheeseheads and Baltimore Ravens purple jerseys and gear.
Me,I never watch the Super Bowl pre-game programming anymore, as there are far too many 'human interest' stories with female reporters trying to look empathetic as they interview some special-team player's sister's husband's barber with cancer, or the like.
I usually mute the TV during Super Bowl halftime anyway, and flip on the radio telecast to hear their analysis, so this would actually be more fun and amusing to watch and see how each city tries to top the other somehow. And it would be easy to find a commercial sponsor, too!
Whatever happened to all the genuinely dangerous flash mobs, anyway?
Like the ones that terrorized Chicagoland and Philadelphia this spring and summer, which I wrote about here, along with some startling videos?
They seem to have stopped in their tracks once 'Occupy Wall Street' came on the scene. Hmm-m...
Then again, maybe it's just a spring and summer phenomena...
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In case you forgot why the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest-above- was being held in the Oslo area in the first place, it was because Norway's Alexander Rybak had won the 2009 competition in Moscow with"Fairytale", and the next competition is always hosted by the winner's home country.
2Shaymcn YouTube Channel: ABBA - Dancing Queen (HQ) - LIVE at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm, June 18, 1976. http://youtu.be/qk_Vu6AcbWg
Above, in my humble opinion, the single best version of this song ever recorded on film.
Thirty-five ago today, one of the most popular songs of the late 20th-Century got the definitive visual look it needed to go supernova, and there it stays, frozen in our collective memories.
Well, at least among those of us with a yen for genius lyrics and power-pop harmonies.
The day before the 1976 Royal Wedding in Stockholm of King Carl XVI Gustaf and his fiancee, commoner Silvia Sommerlath, the present Queen Silvia, during a variety program celebrating the nuptials, ABBA performed a never-to-be forgotten costumed version of Dancing Queen at the Royal Swedish Operafor them and their invited guests.
As you watch the video, you can see the almost bewildered look of many of the officials and other musicians seated behind them on the stage, who, the story goes, because of their unfamiliarity with the song, had no genuine idea whether or not the song was supposed to be about the future queen -or not.
And yes, it does remind all of us again of the group's marketing genius, since two years prior, at the 1974Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton that made them famous, they wore early 19th-Century costumes when they performed Waterloo, which earned them first place.
As of today this video has received 9,355,415 views.
The current population estimate of Sweden by the CIA is 9,088,728.
Benny sliding his fingers across the piano keys at the beginning -so very, very simple and yet so genius!
Fox-TV's multi-national hit Glee featured a performance of Dancing Queen in their May 10th episode titled Prom Queen, with Amber Riley and Naya Rivera doing the duet.
You can watch the entire episode on Fox's website until this coming Thursday at
When I saw last Tuesday that ABC News Nightline would be doing a segment that night on teen singer Justin Bieber, I must admit that I was of two minds about actually watching it.
The first was the old default attitude that I grew-up with as a guy coming of age in the 1970's, one that had usually proven so accurate, which was that if 95% of a singer's fan base consisted of young teenage girls, with posters in their bedrooms of unicorns, or, if they were REALLY wild, posters of unicorns AND whomever the singer/group was -Bay City Rollers, perhaps?- chances were pretty good that most self-respecting teenage guys wouldNOT respect them as an artist.
History is replete with examples proving this music & social theorem so there's no point in my kicking that can all over again. And certainly every news video I've seen of Bieber over the past year prior to last Tuesday, if I even paid attention to it, showed that his fan base was... well, about as expected, albeit perhaps with less unicorn posters these days, and in the U.K., probably also including posters of girl group, The Saturdays. http://www.thesaturdays.co.uk/
On the other hand, for all of Bieber's apparent popularity, and knowing who he was, I'd never actually listened to one of Bieber's songs, since I don't actually listen to Miami's FM radio stations and couldn't name one of his songs to save my life, though I could, to save my life, name the entire Dolphins' or Orioles' 1972 roster, or recount key plays, good and bad, from closely following the Dolphins since 1970 and the Hurricanes from 1973, in-person at the Orange Bowl, complete with commentary on the sights and sounds around me.
Yeah, if my life depended on it, I could even tell you which teams baseball Hall-of-Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched for and why the legacy of his greatness and toughness can never be challenged. Or tell you that the semi-fictionalized biopic on him, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, was much better and more accurate than 75% of the sports-themed films made in the past thirty years. http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=319902&titleId=12906
(Or more honest and heartfelt than anything Alex Rodriguez will ever say or do.)
But Justin Bieber, well, he might as well have been the 2010 Slovakian contestant for the Eurovision Song Contest. Except, of course, that I might've actually heard of THEM, for reasons that I've previously discussed here in discussing my music interests and education, such as it is. --------- In fact, in a March 7th post aboutTimoteij, I even included the original version Kristina Pelakova didof Horehronie,this catchy song that I was humming to myself over-and-over after first seeing the national entry video.
I found myself humming it while stuck at red lights or in check-out lines at stores, which, living around here, means that I was doing a LOT of humming. And once it's in your head, that's it -it's there forever. But then who doesn't love great singing with flutes and drums? http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/look-out-world-here-comes-timoteij.html That post of mine five months ago also included an interesting fan video of the song that featured a scenic travelogue of that part of central Slovakia, with its verdant hills and beautiful mountains, which, then as now, seems so very, very far from here and our gridlocked traffic next to oh-so ugly buildings. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0CaeDo-wEY Here's Kristina Pelakova performing Horehronieat Eurovision in Oslo back in May with her dancers and musicians.
(I mentioned in March that a former housemate of mine now work for the U.S. State Dept. in Slovakia, so I'm a little more conscious of things going on there than I was before.) --------
On the other hand, any thirteen-year old kid who has the self-confidence to pull a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey when he meets and auditions for one of his idols, Usher, can't be all bad. I will give him props for that!
And at sixteen, for better or worse, he seems intent on ignoring YES Men and is going to do things his way, however that winds up in the end years from now. Kudos to the kid.
Among the many hopeful performers last month in Göteborg (Gothenberg) at the thirdSemifinal of Sweden's extremelypopularMelodifestivalen singing competition -telecastLIVE bySVT- http://svt.se/2.120908/melodifestivalen_2010 for the chance to represent Sweden at the 2010 Eurovision Song Contestin late May in Oslo, http://www.eurovision.tv/page/home was a very intriguing four-womanpop group known as Timoteij, singing whatI'd call a folk-inspired pop song titled Kom. ("Come" as in a plaintive plea.) The band only formed in the Fall of 2008, from some music students in the Skaraborg area of central Sweden: Cecilia Kallin, Bodil Bergstrom, Elina Thorsell and Johanna Pettersson. Despite how talented each woman was known to be individually, nobody could've honestly predicted that Sweden as a whole would be so knocked-out by themensemble, but appealing they are, and this has caused some pop culture watchers to say that maybe the fog has lifted, and that Swedish power pop has -finally- returned to its roots, by doing what it always did so well when it really mattered and was actually popular outside of the country: well-crafted songs with catchy hooks and great harmonies that linger in your head long after the song has ended.
Some Swedish music industry types have even gone so far as to publicly say that this overdue return to fun power pop is not just a very welcome breath of fresh air, after an era where Sweden, quite frankly, had really become a bit of a tired afterthought musically, continually sending performers to Eurovision that were clearly too obscure or overtly theatrical than musical -and sure to get hammered by judges and millions of European TV viewers at home for these very reasons- but an opportunity for the entire Swedish music industry to regain its balance.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that, but certainly there's a palpable sense of new confidence there that a certain degree of competitiveness and interest has returned.
The group's tremendous performance last month before a nation-wide TV audience has earned them a spot in the Finals next Saturday night at the Ericsson Globe Arena a.k.a. Globen, in Stockholm, where they will be one of ten acts vying to perform at this year's Eurovision competition being held in Oslo, because it is the home of last year's winner, Alexander Rybak, whose Fairytale captured so many people's attention last year, for both good and bad reasons.
Timoteijhas created quite a buzz for themselves all over Sweden and one reason for that, though hardly the most important one, is that they sing in Swedish and not in English, as so many other acts have chosen to do over the years for all sorts of practical marketing and voting reasons.
Not that there's any consensus about the issue, per se, since people clearly understand why a Swedish singer or group hoping to make it big would choose to go the Englishroute for the contest, but from reading comments in different forums over the past few weeks, people definitely seem pleased that sucha talented and immensely appealing group has consciously chosen to perform inSwedish, not Engelska.
Their harmonies are tight and heavenly, as you'll hear for yourself when you watch the video.
Melodifestivalen's homepage for Timoteij is at http://svt.se/2.121002/timoteij?lid=puff_1786706&lpos=lasMer Hanna intervjuar vinnarna i Göteborg Längd: 03:10
An SVT promo from December 21st, 2009Timoteij utklassade alla -----
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grThquUDlKs ---- Interview on SVT'sGomorron Sverige with Cecilia Kallin and Johanna Pettersson of Timoteij.
The groups's website is at http://www.timoteij.se/
And just when you counted them out, Slovakia, yes, Slovakia, goes "Solid Gold" in its entry, almost like they could get votes from South Florida precincts,with the lovely Kristina singing her heart outabout Horehronie, a beautiful region of Slovakia. http://www.horehronie.com/
You know what they say, after the country girl has seen the bright lights of Bratislava, there's just no going back tothe farm!
FYI: One of my former housemates from Arlington is a member of the Foreign Service stationedin Slovakia. Slovakia shoots and it scores!Here's the travelogue version of the song
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