[LMBTO] The first 2018 Eurovision Pre-Party - as usual, it's Riga...

A shout out to @euroian on Twitter for having this picture on his timeline - this, in one scene, showed all the 2018 participants at the Eurovision Pre-Party Riga on Saturday 24th March (plus Philip Kirkorov and Amber).   More than double the number of the inaugural show in 2014, where we saw Cleo and Conchita attend, but a little bit down number wise on the heady heights of 2016, where nine of the year's artists were in Latvia.  Maybe the earliness of the Pre-Party put off others being there but we at least had the opportunity to see four 2018 acts sing live:
Of course, before all that, we had the traditional press conference, covered expertly by ESCKAZ (as were all the videos of the artists' contributions to the gig itself) - what we found out was that:

• Philip Kirkorov is highly skilled at PR and appeared to be speaking a lot, possibly to minimise the amount of time that Marina from DoReDos had to answer questions, she being the only one from the Moldovan group who can speak English, the two guys just sitting there apparently for decoration;
• Amber appears to be part of the Eurovision 'guest circuit' now;
• Mikolas was the perfect gentleman and gave Ieva his jacket during the conference - maybe she was sitting under the air con;
• Latvia now considers Laura to be 'our Laura';
• It is really difficult to ask a single question that elicits an interesting answer from ALL participants in a press conference!

So on with the show - I was able to watch this streamed live but I suspect that a lot of the audience's attention was quite distracted, as was mine, given that thirty minutes before the show started, the news that Lys Assia had died was breaking.  Markus Riva and Amber were singing as special guests but as they are not going to be in Lisbon contending for the Eurovision Crown, I am not going to review them here - you want to see their songs (and everyone's interviews, for that matter), here is the link.  As for the four important people on the playlist, here is how they got on...


Ieva Zasimauskaitė



I have yet to 'officially' review "When We're Old" in my blog yet, given it was one of the last songs to be confirmed for Lisbon but on first listen (which was during the Final of Eurovizijos) I was truly blown away, much as I was when listening to this again here.  This is such a beautifully poignant song - it is so quiet, so peaceful and yet so wonderfully emotionally genuine.  It is a song that really tugs on the heartstrings, mainly due to those lovely lyrics that tell of a long term relationship and how much in love the storyteller still is after many years.


"When We're Old" is such a romantic passage that Ieva can't belt out the first third of the song due to the journey you have to be taken on and it was obvious here that although the audience were listening quietly, the random background noise was still noticeable.  I don't think that we will have any issues in Lisbon as I suspect that it will all be very close camera angles, lots of crowd noise dampening and microphone sound enhancement - as for the pre-Parties, I think that we will have to get used to a lot of audience noise during her presentation.  I loved this though and it showed her consistency of delivery...


Mikolas Josef



First thing to point out (that you had probably already spotted if you were really listening) is that these are the original lyrics without actually singing the words 'MotherF**ker" and "F**k".  Second thing to point out is that this proves that Mikolas can sing this live in a way that matches the studio version exactly - there was some mutterings amongst the more sceptical Eurovision fans that he was lip syncing at the Ukrainian NF.  He is most definitely singing live and him explaining how he was a street singer for years before getting his break in the business always suggested to me that he would always sing that way as it was more natural for him.


I saw him sing in Ukraine and he cranked up the performance levels up to eleven, as the crowd are always hyper there - Riga was slightly smaller in numbers and volume, so I got the impression that he was having to expend energy to get them excited, rather than feeding off their reaction.  Hopefully he'll get bigger responses elsewhere in the warm-ups, although he might not get the chance to perform with his guitar again, as he did with 'Free'.  I'm still really amazed by the impact that this entry has and I am still confident that Czechia will reach the Final and get a chance of this year's win...


DoReDos



You watch these guys at the Moldovan Final?  In Romania?  At any of the Philip Kirkorov gigs?  There is one thing that is consistent across all of those performances - "My Lucky Day" is rehearsed to within an inch of its life!


Marina, Eugeniu and Sergiu provide a note perfect vocal showing every time and they have their dance routine off pat.  No mirrors or sparkly short dress this time but their set in Riga was super fun and really entertaining, it didn't matter than I barely understood any of it - 'Constantine' and 'Bella Ciao' perhaps allowed the three of them to let loose a bit more, add a bit more spontaneity to their performances and go mad with the dancing!  It is a massive pity that there was issues with their visas that prevent them from attending London - hopefully they will do the business yet again in Amsterdam with this slick, incredibly catchy number...


Laura Rizzotto



You knew that I was going to save my favourite this year until last, didn't you?  Laura was the headliner too, being Latvia's representative this year, and therefore had the privilege of the biggest set ("Funny Girl", three other self composed songs plus a cover).  As ever, she sounded truly amazing singing her Eurovision entry and gave the same totally professional performance that she always does, once the sound team had sorted out her introduction!


I really can't come up with any more superlatives for "Funny Girl", as Laura showed that it is now second (or more) nature to deliver this song perfectly time after time on stage.  What I hadn't seen before live was the rest of her set that she presented in Riga - "The High" (where she seemed to have some ear feed issues for the first verse), "Red Flags" (where Laura used her trademark hair flicks to devastating effect) and then onto "Teardrops" (a favourite of mine from her back catalogue and a song that showed off her keyboard playing skills):



When you watch and listen to that track, you can see why Laura is representing Latvia at the Riga Jazz Stage 2018:
Unfortunately it means that she can't attend the London Eurovision Party as the dates clash - lucky I am going to Eurovision In Concert the week after!  A cover of Ed Sheeran's "Shape Of You" was the final song of her set, again showing off what a superb all-round entertainer and multi-instrumentalist she is:



I have to say that I could have listened to her all night and hopefully she will be doing a set somewhere in Lisbon - a tip for the Latvian delegation, just in case they haven't already thought about it.  You know something?  You see some Eurovision artists at the pre-Parties and you watch them do their ESC song and off they go, never to give anything else live - this was a real delight for me to watch Laura's set this weekend and it compounded my belief that she is one of THE artists at Eurovision this year, someone I look forward to watching at the Altice Arena in Lisbon.


In previous years, the Riga pre-Party has sometimes thrown up a surprise or two, normally in a 'wow, they can sing live' sort of way.  We didn't really get any of that because we already KNEW that all four artists could sing live - three because they had won a NF and had to sing their tracks several times (Laura, Ieva and DoReDos) and one because they had taken advantage of an early 'studio only NF' by singing at another NF as the interval act (Mikolas).  All showed that they are strong vocalists but none of them really could show off much as far as staging was concerned, the Riga stage always being so limited in size.


Riga provided a good warm up as far as meeting the press was concerned and a nice intimate gathering of fans led to a settling of any Eurovision nerves they might have had - these four now have a slight advantage over the other 39 on that score.  They have also had the focus of eurovision.tv on them too - to any interviewers or bloggers out there whose question was going to be "Do you speak any Portuguese?", you have the answer now from all four acts:



And chances are if you ask Laura, she'll blitz anyone with her fluency, being Brazilian born!  12 points from Portugal this year for Latvia?  So that was Riga - where next?
The London Eurovision Party on Thursday 4th April...and I'll be there, definitely as a VIP, hopefully as part of the press pack...