2017 Membership Update – please note we will not be opening for new or renewing members until 1 June. As with previous years there will be updates to both the membership and ticket policies and we will release these prior to membership openings on 1 June. Please refer back to this website www.esccovers.com for updates. Thank you for your patience.
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A lot has happened the past few days and I am still in a very emotional stage and will wait with some announcements until I am more clear about what to do. It is, however, important to announce a new addition to the R O W structure with immediate effect.
MICHAEL DE LANGE has been appointed to the R O W board.
He is one of the few South African members who is NOT a recording artist but he has years of experience in the SA music business. He is a tough business person and unlike me, who is ruled by sentiment when it comes to Eurovision, he takes rational decisions.
This has been necessary in the light of various incidents especially some recent ones.
Obviously given the situation with the 60th anniversary compilation, it is not possible to put more than 60 covers onto it since EUROVISION is 60 years old and with over 400 covers, it is obvious several covers will just not make their way onto the compilations.
I had taken into account several factors, male/female artists, groups, duo’s, also new versus old recordings, big hits, lesser known songs, fan favourites and Eurovision winners in selecting the 60 songs. I made it clear no artist can have more than one song in a solo capacity even if such a person has recorded 15 covers. I also tried to make sure there is at least one song from each EUROVISION country, although some just were not possible, for example the Czech republic. they have had only 3 entries and none of them were good enough for any artist to want to cover.
Once the 60 songs were selected, I gave the list to 10 people who each had a chance to ELIMINATE one and add something new given the criteria and then we approached singers and say we want this or that recorded and I carry the cost. Well, this is where things went wrong. Cole and I attended a show of a totally unknown singer and there were less than a handful of people attending but he sang a EUROVISION cover and I got excited and offered him a chance to record a duet with Cole for both her duet CD and the compilation. Well, after 4 weeks, he had not even taken the time to respond to this offer – probably thinking he is so important already. This is when Michael came into the picture and told me he knows almost all artists and had come across this guy and he just thinks the world owes him. He then offered that in future he will take over all such requests and make the artists give a business plan etc before we spend money on just covering a song.
Then two record companies last week both approached me for help to get approval for a certain song to be covered in AFRIKAANS but both had the same song in mind. Now obviously the market is too small to have two versions of the same song and it was difficult for me to decide which one has the best merit and Michael took it over and analyzed each application on merit – looking at who will sing it, there profile in the industry and importantly how it will be marketed.
So as of today, I will not help ANY SA artist with a cover unless I get the go-ahead from Michael with a detailed report on the application and with recommendations that this is a viable project.
His involvement in the club matters will purely be focused on the SA side of the club and he won’t have any say in other club matters.
I thank Michael already in advance for taking this on his shoulders because YES,I react emotionally to any suggestion of a EURO cover and then sit with people who have yet to give me the finish product 2 years after they got clearance for the song – the big one is UK 2009 – it is almost 6 years in the making and still NOTHING!
