The lyf so short

Soooo! Welcome to the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 not-entirely-live blog. I'll take it that all my gentle readers are familiar with the delightful, over-the-top insanity that's the ESC, but just in case anyone isn't, last year's hosts kindly provided a performance to explain how to produce the perfect winner song, which explains... well, not everything, but a lot:

Peace Peace Love Love (And A Burning Fake Piano)

It is worth noting that all of the things on that stage have been done in past years - yes, including the hamster wheel, the butter-churning, the Russian guy on skates and the Finnish monster rockers - although not all of them have actually won. (Quite a few of them have, though!)

It is also worth nothing that there are actually several winner songs that were not about Love Love Peace Peace, including last year's (and also including Måns' own song "Heroes", which was more about... fighting your inner demons? Something like that, anyway). But on the whole, this is pretty appropriate.

( And this is where we apply a cut for length )

Because time-honoured traditions have to be, um, honoured... here be Lyra's annual Eurovision liveblog. All in one post for the sake of your f-lists. Slight time-lag because we're watching it on timeshift. OK! All set?
Here we go! (TBC as proceedings... proceed. I need a thesaurus?)

Preliminaries

Who I hope will win: Iceland. I dunno, that song is just pleasant and calm without being boring?

Who I expect to win: Denmark.

Who I fear might win: The Netherlands. I love you, Netherlands, but I hate your song. I'm sorry.

( More under the cut! )

PS: You can see all the performances from the grand final on YouTube, Eurovision has kindly put up a playlist!

Okay, by now we've all seen the Hobbit trailer and squeed at the Dwarf song, right?

Recently, fileg linked to a video where a lady sings the whole 27-stanza thing to the tune from the trailer.

This should, in principle, be a wonderful thing, but somehow I can't enjoy it.

One issue is probably the recording software or otherwise the sound system of my computer - either way, it sounds kind of overdone and overdriven, particularly the pseudo-ethereal background vocal.

Which brings us to issue #2: The vocals. I don't know enough about singing to be able to judge the quality of her singing as such, so I'll leave that judgement to more able minds and ears. Suffice it to say that they just don't fit the song. I'm unsure about the lead vocals, but I'm damn sure I don't like the background wail. (In this context, mind you. There surely are contexts where it would fit, but it is not Far over the Misty Mountains cold.)

I mean, everything about this lovely lady - from the dress to the voice - screams Elf/Faery. (1990s Elf/Faery, what's more, but that's a different kettle of fish.) This is a dwarf song. It should not sound pseudo-Elvish/Elfin.

At which point I must realise that I'm being kind of sexist, here, because of course Dwarves come in two sexes, too (although, at least if you take the Pterry view of them, they traditionally only come in one gender...). As Gimli so kindly reminds us in the movie adaptation, they don't crawl out of the earth. Neither should the Uruk-haî, technically, but that's yet another topic...
However, even granting that Dwarf-women might sing this song, as likely they would, I can't hear it sounding like that.
Which brings us to the question of: What do Dwarf-women sound like, really? Considering that they have beards, I've kind of been assuming that they'd also show other signs of heightened testosterone levels - such as deep voices. Even if we assume that this is fantasy and doesn't do the whole RL hormone thing, I'd just instinctively assume that Dwarf-women are Altoes at the very least.
And that's where, for me, the linked video goes wrong. Because even if I'm ok with the lead vocals (about which, as I said, I am uncertain), that high-pitched background vocal ruins it. Maybe a Dwarf-child might have such a high voice, but this is not a childish voice singing (don't ask me to explain, as I said, I have no idea about the technique, but you DO hear it).
Which brings us to yet another question, namely, the question of sharing things. I mean, I like to sing, for instance. I like to sing songs that were never written for my (pathetic) vocal range. Many of the songs I sing to Felix aren't meant to be sung by an unschooled mezzo-soprano. Shanties, for instance. That's ok, because Felix is not (yet) particularly picky and doesn't know the originals, anyway.

I would NOT, however, record myself and share it on a large scale, even if I thought I could sing well enough to pull that off, if my voice just doesn't fit the song. Because even if a gap exists - as in the case of this song - that just doesn't fill the gap. To my mind.

Does this post have a point? I dunno. I guess so. What do you think? Am I just being weird here? Or would you, too, prefer to have a recording of this song sung by a couple of Altos or guys? What do Dwarf-women sound like in your head? Talk to me!

(brought to you by Work Replacement Activity #24601)

ETA: Just to make that clear, I don't mean to bash the good lady. I'm just analysing and discussing my reaction to her video and her musical choices. Completely subjective. Mind you, my subjective reaction to people's music is very often weird. For instance, I still don't get what's supposed to be great about Adele: I listen to her and think "Ok, yeah, I guess she's got a powerful voice, but... what else?". Clearly I'm clueless!

I never cared much about Michael Jackson.

That is, of course I liked a few of his songs, and listened to them and sang (along to) them, in my youth. And of course like everybody else I made jokes about him, and understood the jokes others made. And of course I read about his scandals and breakdowns with a certain mild bemusement. And when, at last year’s RingStars show, Voldemort was styled as some kind of Michael Jackson caricature, I certainly laughed my share.

But I was never a fan and never a hater, never bought a tape or CD (though I copied a few songs from friends’ mixtapes as we did in those days), never went to a concert or watched one on TV, and never bashed those who were fans, either.

Still, somehow he was a constant in the cultural background of my lifetime. I had nothing to do with him, he had nothing to do with my life, but somewhere on the planet he existed, and as everybody knew about him, it seemed that he kind of belonged there. Like the pope, or the Chancellor (when I was younger, I thought it was natural that Helmut Kohl should be chancellor; for the first 15 years of my life, “Chancellor” and “Kohl” were inseperable terms. Just like it felt somehow weird when John Paul II died - I'm not even Catholic, but there'd always been John Paul II somewhere in the cultural set-up of the world!). Or maybe a “real” king, for those living (or roleplaying) in monarchies: It’s an almost abstract figure, it has nothing to do with oneself, but it exists, and is somehow taken for granted. Doesn’t matter whether one likes or hates them, doesn’t matter whether one doesn’t hear about them for years: They’re there, and if they weren’t, there’d be some kind of pope-shaped hole in the world that had to be filled (and fast) before there was chaos. They don’t even have to do anything, as long as everybody knows they’re there somewhere.

And thus, because now suddenly there’s a Michael Jackson-shaped hole in the universe and I doubt it’s the kind of job that gets handed on to some other poor creature (habemus regem musicae popularis?), you see me writing about Michael Jackson. Which is rather ironic, because these my three LJ entries (as the Hebrew saying goes) on Michael Jackson - the first, the only and the last – were triggered by, of all things, the end of his life. I never thought about Michael Jackson so much before! (But then you rarely think about money either unless you've got none...)

I expect in a few years’ time he’ll have been placed away among the aliens, where the King of Rock’n’Roll and the King of Pop will lead an epic musical battle in a far-off galaxy. Or something.

Rest in Peace.
…
‘nuff weirdness. Back to work.

I have been productive!

Motivated by a discussion/ some planning for the next Rohan LARP I finally managed to tune my lyre. It doesn't have as many strings as I'd like - only one octave + two strings - but technically I can now produce tunes in C major/ A minor and F major/ D minor. With a lot of transposing, bah, but still.

Promptly spent two hours playing around. Incredible how addictive musical instruments can be when you no longer have to play them ;) And as I'd already dug out my recorder (I needed something to give me the pitch after all) I played around with that, too. Badly, but it begins to come back to me, so I figure by April I'll be able to play one or two dancing tunes without too many mistakes.

Problem is I now have another project I want to do. Namely: A handbook on historic dances, Middle-earth style. Rohan LARP compatible. The Gondorian Dancing Master, so to say.
Like I don't have enough to do...

Weeded another plot in the garden - it's incredible how fast the stuff I don't want to grow there comes back while the plants I want are so slooow. The mangetouts are already bearing the first pods, though, and the zucchini and pumpkin plants are coming along nicely, and the strawberries are still producing new fruits even though I've been plucking strawberries for weeks now, and the turnips are doing very well too! The onions are rather unhappy because the kittens keep playing among the stalks, there were nasty larvae in the chives, and the potatoes are taking disturbingly long this year. But, on the whole, all on the green side!

And now I am cooking macalla_'s lentil-rice-cakes, except we're out of rice so I used millet. Will see whether the result will be edible.

EDIT: Not just edible, delicious. Henceforth, will always use millet.

-- How can THREE MEN fail at penalty kicks? Of course it can happen that the goaly holds the ball three times, but THREE PLAYERS not even shooting in the general direction of the box?!

So it's going to be Germany : Turkey in the semifinals. Kinslaying. KINSLAYING I SAY.

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( Musisches )
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Way late, but it has to be said.

Dear Miss Guðmundsdóttir,

I am baffled. I really like that song, you know, but why are you turning all those dental fricatives into alveolars? You, whose native language abounds with dental fricatives? It is "Earth Intruders", for Eru's sake, "earth", not "urs"! It is the and through and thumping! Oh Iceland, thou proud bastion of thorn and eth, what hath happened to thy daughter? Hath she fallen prey to the Fingolfinian agenda?

No love for making the little Noldo cry,
Lyra

Ok. This is completely silly. And pointless. And - well.

So I was listening to my Medieval Dancing CD on the way to work. And because my brain is fandom-infested and I didn't have anything better to do, I started assigning the different dances to the different Elvish peoples. (Well, one or two didn't fit at all, but you'll see that.) And it was good.

And because it amused me to no end and I want to pin it down somewhere, you must all suffer to take part in the outcome of my considerations. Well, if you click the cut.

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( Which you may not want to do if you don't give a damn about a) Elves or b) medieval music. )
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... yes, I am insane. What else is not new?

This Sunday saw the staging of the LOTR Symphony in the Kölnarena, which is, naturally, the reason for my "absence" from LJ. (If three days' silence counts as absence, that is.)
Not because Cologne is far away from my home - as we know, it isn't - but because I had guests from further-away Stuttgart.

Melanie and Frank arrived Saturday evening. We arranged some last details with the Freiburgians whom we'd meet on Sunday, printed our choir music, made Chili and then invaded the Tom Bombadil, our local pub, which I had never visited yet (yes, in spite of the charming name - I neglect my fannish duties, I know). It's a lovely little old Bergian-style house, dark but hung with random little lamps all over and decorated with all sorts of funny random stuff. Lots of wood, too. And very cozy. We didn't stay too long, though; after all, we had to be more or less in shape for the concert...

We got up at 9 in the morning - Frank complained that it was much too early, but with a Hobbit breakfast and lengthy getting-into-garb and the drive to Cologne, it was 12:20 until we were at the Kölnarena. We were to meet up with Arwen and Cye at 12:45. So we circled around the arena, looking for the main entrance where we meant to meet them, learned that there was no main entrance, decided that the West entrance was the main one (For Gondor!) and circled the arena some more. We met Círdan preparing the pre-show party, and Olwë trying to help the musicians find the artists's entrance, and some random journalist who asked us whether we were going to sing that night. (On the stage? YOU DON'T WANT US TO DO THAT.) We took some photos of Mel's and my Éowyn-inspired dresses being whipped around by the very ambientic gusts of wind, and then Arwen and Cye showed up. We went to a little Turkish bar-and-grill where we had lunch (specialties from Far Harad!) and when we were done eating, it was almost time for the party. By now, there were many people in garb up there, and we saw many familiar faces (you know most people in the fandom after a while, at least by sight), including nefantoiel, tzaaihta, Varda, Nim and Bilbo, Ench and Pala, and, of course, a good part of last Ring*Con's Elven choir.

When we were finally allowed in, we first gravitated towards the stall of the German Tolkien Society to get our helping at the traditional evil quiz. We broke the tradition by not winning anything this time, but they broke the tradition of handing the prizes out buffet-wise, too. (On Tolkien days, there's a big table of prizes, and all quiz participants get something - but of course, more questions answered correctly will get you an earlier pick, so you can take something really nifty. But then, there were around 6000 people expected for the evening, so you can't have prizes for everybody...) There was an Irish folk band who tried to fight the drab stadium atmosphere with their music. All the dressed-up fans helped a lot with that. Apparently, the Express newspaper's resident superman-wannabe, Zik (with the sort of ridiculously sharpy-painted backpack that High School freshmen think "cool"), thought so as well. He expected us to strike poses so he could take a stupid photo. Well, we are no Trekkers, idiot, we don't have one big symbolic hand signal. Sod off.

I managed to drag some more people (Pala, nefantoiel and our token orc (or token drow, depending on the day) tzaaihta) along to the Elven choir meeting (hey, we have a token Haradan, too). It began with all of us playing pearl-divers because one of the many pearl-strings on the dress of a girl beautifully dressed up as Elwing tore and send tiny pearls spinning all over the floor.
We practiced Twilight and Shadow, the Drinking Song and the Rohan canon they'd invented for this spring's Tolkienfest (with an additional stanza, because the Rohan group's Théoden look-alike, Herugrim, was born on May 28th - guess what day it was!). There were many annoying gapers. They probably thought we were the "real" choir.

When the Irish folk band had finished, Círdan announced us, the Green Hell Elven Choir... I'm afraid one didn't hear all that much of Twilight and Shadow, as it's very slow and quiet and probably got lost somewhere in the staircase, but the Rohan song went better, and for the Drinking Song, people were clapping along happily. We were also filmed for the ARD Morgenmagazin (the early morning program of Germany's "respectable" TV channels that still think that Trekkies are fans of Star Wars, bloody idiots). (Eventually, we weren't shown in the two-minute bit they screened about the concert at 5:45 this morning, anyway.)
We were invited to an Elvish harvest festival LARP in October. I'm very tempted to go.

Oh, and we got better seats! We had bought tickets for the second-cheapest category, but when we arrived at the party, we were told to go to the sale desk after 4 pm to get new tickets - and so we ended up in the € 53,60 category even though we'd "only" paid 33,30. Hah! The atmosphere of the Kölnarena for an almost classical concert is, of course, horrible. It was not improved by the random guys running around to sell popcorn, ice cream and programs. I know these guys need to earn money, but can they please not do that when the choir is already marching in?

Although it took about ten minutes until all the little Ainur had finally risen up - I mean, marched in - and another two until the conductor saw fit to appear on stage as well. To make up for his belated appearance, he seemed to rush through the whole symphony a bit - everything was played a lot quicker than you know it from the soundtrack CDs. Also, it was noticeable that the people who had studied the whole thing with the respective choirs didn't know too much about the subject matter. (Avaru, Círdan's girlfriend, who actually sang in the choir, told us about all the things that went wrong even in the very last week...) They mangled the poor Elvish. Especially the bass (!) singing Aragorn's lines in The Return of the King was horrible. "teru Umbra-meyta"? I don't know where you learned reading, but that's not how "tenn' Ambar-metta" should be pronounced. Seriously. And the sound-mixing was horrible in places, although it got better towards the end.

All in all, it was still very nice, but it wasn't nearly as excellent as last year's symphony in Neumünster was. Alas. The conductor they had there had worked with the actual soundtrack recordings, though, so he was a lot closer to the whole thing...

At first we had pondered watching the "Creating the LOTR Symphony" DVD back home (it was only 9:30 pm), but then we decided that it probably wouln't benefit the evening's experience, so we decided for the RingStars instead. Good choice; we had a lot of fun. For those who don't know the RingStars: A bunch of wonderful crazy fans created a LOTR movies parody musical, with modern music chosen to fit the scenes of the three movies. BTW, I only noticed yesterday that Boromir somehow ended up with all his songs being by Queen. Coincidence?

Today, we went to Cologne again. First we went to the Schatzkammer, a LARP store, where I bought mead for the coming weekend; afterwards, we had lunch and then went window-shopping, although we couldn't resist the lure of Lush...

And now I'm home to type this before taking off to the airport to pick up malicedl, who is returning from her teaching assistant year in England. Yay!

Stolen from zorn and laurenia:

Do you trust my taste in music? Pick a number between 1 and 3592 and I'll find the corresponding song in my playlist. I'll upload it for you (and everyone else reading this entry) to grab.

Have at!

I have to study.
You know what that means: It's même time.

So, that random lyrics guessing même. Snatched from madame_enjolras.

1) On your current playlist, hit shuffle and pick the first 20-40 on the list.
2) Write down a random lyric.
3) Let everyone guess what song (and artist!) the lines come from.
4) Cross out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

I have no playlist that contains enough non-instrumental, non-soundtrack songs, so I had to use the whole library. Found some embarassing stuff there. *cough* And had to skip all the instrumental, soundtrack and Musical stuff. Aaanyway, have fun. I apologize for the overly easy stuff, but there's insanely absurd stuff there too, so it balances. And if you guess them all, I may upload them later on. ;)

( 25 random songs. Gotta guess them all... )

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In other news, I found three grave mistakes in my Anthropology textbook already, and I'm only in chapter four. And those were only the topics I'm well-versed in - there are probably more mistake in other chapters that I won't notice because I don't know the topic as well. My trust, at any rate, is shaken. Gnah.