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Lucia Perez visits London.....

And www.esckaz.com were on the spot to meet with her........

The Spanish singer, Lucia Perez arrived in London yesterday for a 3 day visit. Your very tired city hopping esckaz die-hards Mike and Daniel came speeding across London straight from Amsterdam to meet with her......

The evening was put together by representatives of the Galician Community in London, having been contacted by the Spanish Government to see if they would like Lucia to visit. The event too place at Palmers Lodge in the very leafy expensive part of Willesden in North London. This is a community hall and so the acoustics are not great but check the videos anyway, I think she sings very well......

Out of all the promo tours these last few weeks this is probably the least publicised and really for the ex-pat Spanish communities around Europe. We like this approach, she is talking to the citizens of Spain and their families which is refreshing. And not like some of the media hungry delegations that we could mention that switch on the smile just for the big TV crews!!!!

So the evening started with introducing ourselves to the organisers and we have to give a huge thank you to Ophelia and Nick. These guys worked very hard to put the evening together and you can see the clip of them on the front page of www.esckaz.com. After this we grabbed a quick beer and waited for Lucia to arrive. While waiting there was a warm up set from local girl, Silay Castillo, and again you can see the clip of her on the front page. Silay is very young and very nervous but hopes to make it big in the future......you can judge for yourselves.

Finally Lucia arrived. She had already been told that www.esckaz.com were here and the first thing she did was head straight for us two and give us a huge hug and kiss. She was very keen to talk to us first and start the interview, but we told her that she was here for the Galician community and that they were here priority. After a quick meet and greet she them came back out to us and we enjoyed a great chat with her outside. As she speaks only a small amount of English it was conducted in Spanish with the lovely Ophelia translating. We hope you enjoy what she has to say and you can see this on the front page of the web site too.

After chatting she then spoke to the community some more, and eventually took to the stage and gave a 30 minute performance of 7 or 8 songs, including her entry for Eurovision this year. We only filmed 3 of the songs as upload speeds to Russia are very slow but they can be found on the front of the site. Again sorry for the acoustics but we had no control over this so we hope the clips do her justice......Ophelia and Nick also presented Lucia with a crystal model of Big Ben (London landmark) and a Union Jack handbag.....see the pictures on the site.....

Once she had finished, Lucia and Chemo Puron (the guy playing guitar) mixed with the crowd and decided to stay on for the rest of the evening chatting with the Galicians.

Time for a sharp exit for M+D as we had been on the go all weekend, home to bed via a fast food outlet.......

Hugs

M+D

The Party Is Here;-)))))

So after the VERY short delay the party finally got under way.....

From 9p.m. last night 21 countries passed across the Club Air stage to give performances for the gathered fans......

First up was Armenia and then please don't ask us to remember the running order as we can't.....tooo much vodka and not enough food. We tried to get as many photos as possible and some video clips but it was a club and so the quality is not great....sorry about that.....

Highlight performances for us come from Armenia, Belarus, Malta (surprise), Ukraine (she is stunning), Austria, Serbia, UK, and Russia. the two acts that had lots of instruments on stage, Turkey and Bulgaria, made it feel like a proper gig and they both really got the crowd going.

The best audience reaction was for Belarus.....this is gonna be a big euroclub hit.....Russia and the United Kingdom. There were also a lot of Greek fans of Loucas inside so he got a big cheer too.....

The night passed quickly and after the show ended Daniel and I stayed on with our friends Lilian, JP, Alexander, Tom, Desiree and Fotis. Shame Andy Mikheev was not here too as I know he would have really enjoyed this.....

Finally a fab weekend, now we have to pack and return to London. Don't forget to check the website tomorrow for one more interview and some news on who we get to meet in London tonight......here's a clue she's from Spa.....;-))))

A note to the organisors of the Eurovision In Concert weekend....

Just wanted to say a few words about the organisation of the whole weekend. The team behind this weekend worked very very hard for the whole weekend. Everything was perfectly organised with no problems as far as the press were concerned, plenty of time for interviews, photoshoots, and all very very relaxed.

The one hitch was with the sound check last night......this was totally beyond their control, dealt with promptly and properly and only made a 30 minute delay to the evening starting. I have to say to those fans that were moaning in the queue that they really should be thanking the organisers for a great weekend!!!!

An very special thanks goes to Rene Romkes for all his help this weekend and for inviting us to the whole thing all those weeks ago.

We hope to return next year and keep all the www.esckaz.com readers up to date with all the sights, sounds and dramas form the weekend

Amsterdam, Volendam.....

I love Belarus!!!!

Or should that be The Netherlands?

The actual day arrived in Amsterdam where all the 21 delegations from every corner of Europe gathered together to meet the press and join them in a tour to the seaside town of Volendam, the home of 3JS.

The morning was spent meeting old friends from esctoday.com, oikotimes.com, escdaily.com and allkindsofeverything.com and radiointernational.com and escnation.com. I am sure there were many other web site present but it's hard to remember them all.....

Many many interviews were held and I have to say thanks you to the organisers for all their efforts in keeping everything running very smoothly with no long queues for interviews, plenty of time to conduct them and just generally being as helpful as they could be.....see another post later for more on this.....

After the interviews most of the press and all of the delegations travelled on coaches to the pretty town of Volendam, the red carpet was in full use and we all had a stunning lunch together while treated to a speech by the Mayors and a great performance by 3JS. You can see all the pictures from this on the front page of the www.esckaz.com site.

Lunch was over and we all left to have a family style photoshoot by the famous dyke. We are amazed that no one fell in the water but there were one or two moments when we felt like giving a few a gentle push;-))

At this time we were fortunate enough to interview some more delegations, and very lucky to get a one-to-one interview with Blue, the UKs performers this year. I have to say that getting close to then was difficult with the obvious press interest but back at the hotel we chatted to Lee Ryan and Simon Webbe. Very down to earth humble guys who are just looking to have a great time both here and in Dusseldorf and give their very best to entertain the Eurovision audience.....you can see the very quick interview at EurovisionKZ you tube channel.

We then left Volendam and travelled back to Amsterdam to prepare for the party that evening.

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