by Big Bill, summer 2020, update to Storyworth Book

Being in the Wrong Place at the Right Time

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is not a major source of interest in the United States, but it is in Europe. The competition has been going on yearly since 1956, with 66 winners including the Swedish group ABBA and Celine Dion (who is Canadian but competed for Switzerland). Twenty-seven countries’ entries have won, including a four-way tie in 1969. It being European, songs in fifteen languages have been winners: half have been in English and a quarter more in French—no surprise there—but Hebrew is third on the winners list, which also includes Crimean Tatar and Serbian.

Arguably one of the most exciting contests occurred in 1994. The contest format has the  winning country host the next year’s event. Ireland had won in 1992 and 1993, so it had hosted the 1993 contest in Millstreet, County Cork. As they were to host it again in 1994, they wanted a larger arena and chose Point Theatre in Dublin, which had a stage four times larger than the prior year. Because the theater is located on the River Liffey, they went with a river theme for the event, complete with a changing sky backdrop and the floor painted with dark blue reflective paint to suggest a river.

 It was filled with firsts.

1994 was the first year that the voting was broadcast via satellite, allowing everyone to see the various delegations cast their votes, giving twelve points to the country they had in first place, ten for second and on down. (A country could not vote for themselves.) The first three countries cast their first-place vote for Hungry, giving them a big lead and the appearance of a runaway. Alas, they only got one more first place and only two seconds out of the twenty-five total countries. In an exciting tally, slowly Ireland and then first-time contestant Poland moved past Hungary, giving Ireland a record six total wins in the ESC and the only time one country has had a threepeat. (They now have a leading seven total wins.)

The winning song was Rock ‘N Roll Kids, performed by Paul Harrington on piano and Charlie McGettigan on guitar, the first ever performance without an orchestra. They were the first song to score over 200 points and won by what was then the largest margin ever. (The scoring has since been changed, so comparison is now of little value.) Their song has been named the best Irish entry of all time in any ESC.

 It was no doubt a big night for them and they could not have done any better, but just seven months later, at the Royal Variety Performance in London, the emcee, when introducing one of the performances, referenced that year’s ESC and said, “Does anyone remember the song [which won that night]?” The audience was quiet. The reason few remembered the winner was a classic example of their being in the right place at the wrong time.

Despite all the firsts in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, it will be remembered not by the songs of the night, but by the “interval” in the middle of the event. It is unclear to me what the interval is. At seven minutes it is too short to get food or visit the loo. It is not even like the seventh inning stretch at a baseball game where everyone stands up and, well, stretches. At the ESC everyone stays seated for the interval, and there is a performance. In 1994 Ireland sent a dance team to a song contest. It was the first performance of RIVERDANCE.

The three thousand in the live audience erupted in a standing ovation for a performance that few people have not now seen live or at least on DVD or YouTube. There were 300 million viewers at home in front of TVs, and Irish dance was on the map.

Before that night Irish dance had been a local affair. There were no professional Irish dancers. The dances were done mostly in buildings with clay floors which afforded poor acoustics for the hard shoe dances, so they danced on the tops of barrels or maybe a door laid down on the floor, either of which would increase the sound but decrease linear movement. Two Irish dancing champions changed all that with a choreography that got the dancers off the barrel head and into the heads of millions of viewers. The demonstration was soon expanded into a full show and soon multiple troupes were touring the world year-round, including “small venue” troupes.

 Jean Butler and Michael Flatley have become household names around the globe. Do you remember names of the singers who won the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest?