I’ve received a letter from a Mrs Trellis of North Wales, asking me if my reference to heading off to the virtual gym at lunchtime was some kind of a running gag. Well, Mrs Trellis, it wasn’t, as I don’t think it’s really got the legs for that. Or the upper body. Honestly, you’ve seen bigger muscles in a bowl of clam chowder, and you don’t even want to know about the cockles.
Anyway, suitably fortified, on we go with what passed for entertainment in Rotterdam on this fine Day 4 Afternoon 1.
I do need to bear in mind that when Finland’s Blind Channel take to the stage on Day 6 next week, they’ll be breaking a run of rather slow, introverted songs and will automatically provide a welcome shot of energy into proceedings. The reason why I need to bear that in mind is that watching them this afternoon, I was… bored? Is heavy rock supposed to be boring? All that fierce energy poured into something that could easily have been sputted out of the punched paper slot of one of those Thrashmaster 7000 Rock Computers they used to sell in Argos 40 years ago. At least those went ‘ding’. It will find its audience. It isn’t me. This is fine.
Similarly, I had expectations of Samanta Tina from Latvia, and none of those expectations involved the word ‘bored’ either. Somehow the whole showing managed to blend an attempt at overblown madness with an attempt at minimalist cool and, as so often happens with Performance Maths, what popped out was something absolutely bang average. Dull. Mediocre. And green. Oh, it’s not easy being green.
Switzerland’s Gjon’s Tears is very good. He’s a cracking technical singer, it’s a lovely song, well staged. There’s just SOMETHING about him, though, that faintly hints that underneath the mask his ultimate ambition – what he really wants to do with his life – is just once to appear on The Good Old Days, balancing atop an impossibly ramshackle pile of 30 chairs and juggling 25 tennis balls with staggering aplomb when suddenly – POOFF!! – they transform into a giant cuddly toy rabbit, to the sound of awed oooohhhs from an impressed audience sitting in their crinolines and bonnets alongside their wives. No reason why this shouldn’t end up winning, but it would probably have to be a 2019-esque compromise winner if so.
Denmark have made many contributions to the world’s cultural landscape over the years; the entire concept of treading on a Lego brick; a world-famous statue of a mermaid that’s only 3 centimetres tall; a prodigiously dull chapter in an O-Level guide to European Geography about cooperative dairy farming (which even in the 1980s seemed far less entertaining than perhaps having a pop at uncooperative dairy farming); and now Fyr & Flamme. Y’know… I mean… what’s to say? They’re divisive, and I’m definitely on the wrong side of the divide, and it might just possibly conceivably be the wrong year to be delivering an 80s throwback on a pink and blue neon stage, but I know it’s got its constituency out there. Better to satisfy the wants of one person and irritate the heck out of nine than to go unnoticed by all ten. I guess.
Oh, that’s all tied up for the day nice and promptly, and gives me time to go to a virtual delegation party in my living room this evening, assuming virtual Johnny Logan hasn’t got there first and eaten all the virtual sausage rolls. Back for another trip around the loop again tomorrow, perhaps?
De belangrijke eend heeft wat kaas nodig!