Monty: Rehearsals, live in my own living room

With a good chunk of the team in place in Malmö it’s day one of rehearsals. The assembled press of Europe are crammed into the Slag House screening room and bitching about the obligatory first day minor disorganisation. Not me, I’m on my sofa, lapping it all up from the comfort of my own home. But damn it I wish I was there. With the decision to close first rehearsals to the press this year I’m actually only marginally less enlightened than those already paying a fortune for beer so I’m going to attempt a perhaps ill-advised early opine on what I can see from here. You can see it with me, as what I have are the early ‘impression’ videos thanks to eurovision.tv, offering just a morsel of what’s to come.

Austria – by all accounts it’s a bit flat and static as a performance, though vocally very good indeed. She doesn’t seem to have boosted her chances a huge amount though.

Estonia – interesting to see this one go up in the estimation alongside the others, still a bit plain for me.

Slovenia – I like this so I hope she manages to sort out the tuning issues by the night.

Croatia – I still don’t rate this. Snazzy costumes and all, and vocally they were spot on in Amsterdam, but they look a bit clumsy looking at each other and I don’t think they’re going to have enough interaction with the camera.

Denmark – looking as polished as I’d have expected, I could still see this winning by virtue of its catchiness against the rest of the field.

Russia – also as polished as expected and thankfully less cheesy than the video (despite this blog’s love of the stuff).

Ukraine – I’ve yet to publish my Countdown review of this so I’ll not comment on the song but really, what is going on with the giant? I’ll wager they ditch that by second rehearsal...

Netherlands – I anticipated a simple and solid performance of this and that’s what we have. Whether I like it any better or not I can’t tell from the snippet.

Thanks to the team and others for keeping me informed today. Two days of work still for me ahead but I’ll try to round up the days in similar snippets.

Monty x