La la la
TELEVISION
STUART ROOD.
To get the most out of the Eurovision Song Omitest, whose finals' were celebrated laSt "$attirday, you have to be dedicated—as is Tcim -groan, head of BBC 'Light Entertainment and keautive prodticer of the show—to the propo- Midn'tliat *to watch'tlie Same thing at the same thine as 200 million other people (the potential `global audience brought together by Euro- vision ' and its East European counterpart, Interviiion) is 'an enriching experience.' A ftingian 'would no anibt 'agree with him, for flie proceedings 'were—dominated throughout by the Eurovision symbol which is un- mistakably a mandala, a rayed sun-wheel, and thus what the guru himself called 'the psycho- logical totality symbol:, Mass contemplation on stich.a universal scale of the symbol of order can only., have been beneficial; but this type of mystical communion was only a by- product of the proceedings televised from the ;Royal Albert Hall.
-Their aim, it must be supposed, was to cbobie the best, or if not the best, the most popular song that the melody-makers of Europe are capable of composing. It was a. satisfying if...marginal. pleasure to discover that the musicians- of the global village's Tin Pan Alley still have distinctive styles and traditions. They ranged from the chanson entered by rRante.-1-a literary piece called La Source—to 'llortuguese lyric on summer, which con- trived to retain _sortie vestiges of that melan- ',:citoly the. Portuguese, call saudades; from a sentimental Irish ballad to a neurotic piece from Norway called 'Stress% from half a. dozen regional variants on the sort of-number Bing Crosby used to sing to a folksy piece from Yugoslavia performed by a couple of boys in toUblets and hose., who appeared to have strayed Tiom the set of
.Their gear apart,. male dress was trendily .Con.yentional: - tight-buttoned jackets, turtle- necks. Our Cliff Richard, the liveliest of the male performers, frothed with jabot. Girls tended to be mini-skirted, in• which case they were badly served by the cameras 'for, being shot from a low angle, they all appeared to have legs like games mistresses; which seems stat- istically improbable. As the presenter of all this, Katie Boyle was impeccably polyglot— even her Finnish sounded convincing; but asso- ciations are strong and it would have been no surprise had the girls who provided vocal backing to the numbers, and who appeared to be wearing nighties, at a cue from Kate burst info praise of somebody's soapsuds.
. As usual the voting was the most compelling part of the transmission. We had to wait for it while Norrie Paramor and the orchestra played a palm-courtish medley of London tunes to accompany a film sequence on Lon- don which plugged the usual archaic delights 01' guards changing and keys being handed over and must have gladdened the heart of the British Travel and Holidays Association. Apart from the fascination of seeing the numbers come hirring up on the scoreboard, there was the interest of the way in which the votes were cast:- votes allotted for political reasons or be- cause of cultural affinities—Spain voting for Portugal,' the French-speaking countrieg:joy.11 to each other; spoiling votes dealt Out to the Weakest of entries; Yitgoslavia's 'Third 'World vote for Ireland which tipped the balance and made Spain the winner.
Why Spain should have won is fairly easy to determine: There was the stocky vigour of Massie!, whose voice'had the resonant timbre that marks the women•singers of Iberia. There was its chorus—a universally comprehensible and pronounceable phoneme: `La la la.' There was the fact that it was one of the most lively of the entries, which were in general tired .derivatives of a dying tradition. It was a middle-aged occasion. Most of the performers were very elderly 'teenagers. What they sang lacked the inventiveness and life of the best Music produced by the groups. Give me the Incredible String Band anyday.
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