I have not forgotten but with load shedding – 5 hours last night, it is difficult to get to everything. The latest question is quite simple – name one of the two countries who have TWO artists in the 60th anniversary show hosted by the BBC on 31 March.
All posts by Roy van der Merwe
NEW BLOOD AT ESC COVERS
As of today, Fred Medeiros joins us as an editor and he will concentrate on Melodifestivalen which starts this Saturday. He will report jointly for us and for ESC UNITED. During the semi finals he will report from home, but he and camera man Liam will be physically present at Andra chancen and the Stockholm final. We look forward to a lot of news. I have also more or less finished the library index for the SA covers of the Swedish selection songs and should have it 100% finished by Saturday.
ONE MORE TIME – HIGHLAND
ONE MORE TIME – VINYL SINGLE
With the 2015 Melodifestivalen starting this weekend, I have been listening to music by ONE MORE TIME, one of my favourite groups from Sweden. Pity they never had the same success as ABBA for example. Here is an vinyl single by them which they signed for me during EUROVISION 1996 in Oslo.
KATRINA AND THE WAVES IN SOUTH AFRICA
Often an artist from Eurovision visits South Africa but the media hardly give attention to it. The latest is KATRINA AND THE WAVES who are in South Africa and I did not even know it until yesterday. They are part of a show called BACK TO THE 80’s and it is on at several of the casino’s around South Africa. Cole van Dais was one of the backing singers at the show on 31 January at Carnival City and she informed me that Katrina and the waves were part of the show. Other people who are here are the likes of Billy Ocean, Hazel Dean, Nick Kershaw and M People.
SOUTH AFRICAN COVERS
The titles of over 400 covers of Eurovision songs by South African artists have been loaded in the library and this is more or less complete with there and there the original title of a song to be added once I have checked the spelling. That is the first part of the library – the covers are done alphabetical by original country and inside each country, by date order. The second part is the covers of melodifestivalen songs and this index is in date order and is about 40% complete. I hope to have it finished before the 2015 edition of melodifestivalen starts. I also got requests to do a third section – this is covers of songs by EUROVISION artists, for example not just Abba’s Waterloo but every ABBA song that has been covered in South Africa. This has never really been done and so I have no idea how many such covers exist but I have already loaded a lot – covers from Euro artists such as ABBA, Nicole, New Seekers, Celine Dion, Karel Gott, Nana Mouskouri, Vicky Leandros, Olivia Newton John, Mouth & Macneal etc. Hopefully some fans will see some interesting covers and go and search for them on Itunes or Youtube or wherever. 99% of the songs listed are in my own private collection- either on CD or vinyl single.
CYPRUS HAS CHOSEN! GIANNIS KARAGIANNIS FOR VIENNA
Last night, Cyprus held the Grand Final of their national selection show, The Eurovision Song Project in Nicosia. The final consisted of six contestants (whittled down from the original 60 entries vying to represent Cyprus) and votes consisted of both Jury Votes and the Public who finally announced the winner as Giannis Karagiannis with his entry One Thing I Should Have Done.
What do you think off the Cypriot entry for Vienna?
SECOND NICOLE CD – ONLY RELEASED IN SOUTH AFRICA
NICOLE CD – ONLY RELEASED IN SOUTH AFRICA
MORE WORK FOR THOMAS G:SON
We have heard that Thomas will be helping Nina in Georgia with her entry WARRIOR – doing a new arrangement. Hopefully this will give the song an even more international feel. If I remember correctly, he did the same in 2007 for Malta with the song Vertigo by Olivia Lewis