Euro-Entertainment?
Feeling down? Go to google an type "Who won the eurovision Song Contest". Take a look at the heavy metal band from Finland that won the competion. What a bunch of freaks! KISS have a lot to answer for. When you listen to them talk I can imagine that they take off their costumes and make up at the end of the day, put on a smoking jacket and with their pipe and slippers sit and watch crap Finnish TV all evening.
I dont watch the eurovision song contest, I stopped watching it when I was 11 years old. It stopped being funny in the sixties when the UK entered for the first time and Sandy Shaw won with "Puppet on a string". Later that year I went to Belgium on holiday with my folks and their friends. We went into a cafe full of burly lorry drivers who were, and I kid you not, dancing in a wierd puppet fashion to what was probably the worst piece of music ever produced by this country.
While Belguim could be the subject of a separate rant, the dancing lorry driver episode made me think that Europe must be an awful place. A place so starved of "proper" entertainment that a below average 60's pop song could suceed where the other 6 countries (the european community was much smaller back then) failed.
Of course what I couldn't appreciate at the time was that the 60's happened in Britain and not throughout Europe. Until quite recently the UK has been leading European youth culture by the nose. Since I was 11 years old I have travelled over much of western Europe and found that their TV, radio and music output have been crap. To be fair the UK oputput during the same period wasn't brilliant but we did have some quality entertainment.
Nowadys our TV output is a mixture of American crap, Australian crap and good old home made crap. Our radio isn't much better. There's talk of privatising Radio 1 & 2. Our music scene is a little better and it is streets ahead of Europe. The English Channel isn't very wide (20 miles) but there is an ocean between English and European youth culture.
I dont watch the eurovision song contest, I stopped watching it when I was 11 years old. It stopped being funny in the sixties when the UK entered for the first time and Sandy Shaw won with "Puppet on a string". Later that year I went to Belgium on holiday with my folks and their friends. We went into a cafe full of burly lorry drivers who were, and I kid you not, dancing in a wierd puppet fashion to what was probably the worst piece of music ever produced by this country.
While Belguim could be the subject of a separate rant, the dancing lorry driver episode made me think that Europe must be an awful place. A place so starved of "proper" entertainment that a below average 60's pop song could suceed where the other 6 countries (the european community was much smaller back then) failed.
Of course what I couldn't appreciate at the time was that the 60's happened in Britain and not throughout Europe. Until quite recently the UK has been leading European youth culture by the nose. Since I was 11 years old I have travelled over much of western Europe and found that their TV, radio and music output have been crap. To be fair the UK oputput during the same period wasn't brilliant but we did have some quality entertainment.
Nowadys our TV output is a mixture of American crap, Australian crap and good old home made crap. Our radio isn't much better. There's talk of privatising Radio 1 & 2. Our music scene is a little better and it is streets ahead of Europe. The English Channel isn't very wide (20 miles) but there is an ocean between English and European youth culture.
posted by danceswithwolves | 10:53 AM
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