#Mike Connaris

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2008 - Number 37 - Eleni Skarpari - "Moments of Madness"

Eleni Skarpari is back at the Cypriot national final with another song by Mike Connaris and this time there's video of the occasion! Though if you've already heard their previous collaboration, this song is going to sound awfully familiar to you in parts.

This is Eleni's final attempt to represent Cyprus at Eurovision and like last time, the mood runs counter to everything else in the national final. Moments of Madness starts off pretty much where their previous song left off - it's effectively Don't Crack Now part 2, including the same melodic line from the song as well as the structure.

That is until the song shifts gear half way through, when it all goes a little more Gloria Gaynor. Briefly. Eleni gets to show that she can do power vocals as well as the more intimate ballad based. Then it all falls back to an assertion that she's not going to break, but assert herself.

The overall impression was that Mike and Eleni thought the Cypriot public had made a huge mistake rejecting them in 2006 and wanted to give them a second opportunity to make the right choice. To do that they slightly altered the previous song, gave it a different title and a slightly more upbeat mood.

It didn't work. Eleni finished seventh of the ten songs in the final and that was that. There's no further recorded output from her collaboration with Mike so I would assume that the partnership broke up. Mike did write one more song for the Cypriot national final in 2015, but that was it for his Eurovision endeavours too.

Despite reheating of older material and failure to impress the televoters, I do love Eleni's voice and Mike's song-writing. It's a great combination that was just not right for Cyprus, as the nation moved away from the successes of the past and onto something new. It still has a place here in my list of the top songs of the year from the national finals.

Eleni did have a second chance at fame though. After moving to London and singing there, she started to perform under the name Echo Wants Her Voice Back and is increasingly successful as a smaller independent artist. Some of her music has ended up on the soundtrack of Netflix series and she's also now acting as well.

As EWHVB, she's recorded an impressive number of varied covers as well as writing and recording her own music. However she's mainly a live act in her own 'Folk-Noir' genre largely on the London music scene. This is her own song Bad performed live at The Bedford in London in 2022.

[kansascityhappenings]

Kobach’s brand still sells with Republicans in Senate race in Kansas

WICHITA, Kan. — Kris Kobach isn’t fazed that fellow Republicans worry he’s unpopular or too brash in pushing his hard-right views to keep Kansas’ open Senate seat in GOP hands next year.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others are so concerned that they’ve spent months urging Mike Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, to step down as U.S. secretary of state and run for the seat Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is leaving. Pompeo in the race would make it far more difficult for Kobach to win the GOP primary in August.

But Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, isn’t softening his rhetoric or putting less focus on the tough immigration policies that built his national profile. He’s tripling down — and deriding critics as “weak Republicans” seeking a “malleable” senator.

“One main reason Republican voters have supported me in the past is that I haven’t waffled,” Kobach said during an interview.

Republican leaders worry about red-state losses that include the Kentucky and Louisiana governors’ races this year. Setbacks in 2018 included Kobach’s loss to Democrat Laura Kelly in the Kansas governor’s race.

Still, Kobach appeals to many conservative GOP voters, and the speculation about Pompeo is a sign that Kobach has a good chance of winning the Senate primary if Pompeo doesn’t jump in. If Kobach had no political base, top Republicans in Washington would not be wooing Pompeo, said Kelly Arnold, a former Kansas GOP chairman.

“This seat would no longer be a priority on their list because they’d know it’s in good hands here in Kansas,” Arnold said.

All the major GOP candidates for Roberts’ seat support Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, defend the president, and oppose abortion and gun control. What makes Kobach different is how aggressive he is about poking his critics.

“It’s likability and then, touching-third-rail, caustic comments that drive controversy and nothing else,” said Doug Heye, a GOP consultant in Washington. “Yeah, Donald Trump can do it, but not everybody’s Donald Trump.”

Yet for all the GOP concerns, Kobach’s brand still sells on the right — where the party’s primary races are waged.

“I like a fighter, someone like Donald Trump,” said Sandy Connary, a 66-year-old retired county clerk who attended a Kobach fundraiser in Wichita last week. “He is a known quantity. I know him. I trust him.”

Critics of Kobach’s aggressiveness often reference an iconic jeep he used in the governor’s race for summer and fall parades with a replica machine gun on back. Kobach called criticism of it a “snowflake meltdown.”

“He knew that, that bothered people,” said Tim Shallenburger, another former Kansas GOP chairman and an ex-state treasurer. “He kind of flaunted it.”

The Wichita fundraiser last week featured David Clarke, the cowboy-hat-wearing ex-Milwaukee sheriff who has likened the Black Lives Matter movement to terrorism. Clarke urged the audience of 60 or so people to recapture their anger from 2016.

Kobach has also had fundraisers with ex-White House aide Steve Bannon and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. A 2018 event’s headliner was gun-rights rocker Ted Nugent.

Kobach is a board member and lawyer for a group collecting funds for the border wall and attempting to build parts of it on its own. He upped the ante on border security with a recent column arguing for American military strikes on drug cartels inside Mexico.

He rouses Democrats and liberal activists like no other Republican in Kansas. An online fundraising site for Democrats’ top Senate candidate, state Sen. Barbara Bollier, features Kobach’s picture and says, “we can beat him again in 2020.”

Kobach’s GOP rivals include U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall of western Kansas, Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, and Dave Lindstrom, a Kansas City-area businessman and former Kansas City Chiefs player.

Wagle took her own fact-finding trip to the border this summer and argues that private wall-building isn’t the proper way to handle border security. Complaints filed by watchdog group Common Cause accuse Kobach of illegally mixing fundraising for the group and his campaign, something he denies.

Kobach has lagged Marshall, Wagle and Lindstrom in campaign cash. He didn’t fill the room at his Wichita event because some of the 100 people who RSVP’d stayed away in the chilly weather.

And Scott Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief political strategist, called Kobach “a stone-cold loser.”

“It’s not his positions,” said Reed, who managed Kansas Republican icon Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. “It’s his history as a candidate and the fact that he came up way short.”

Some Republicans worry Kobach can’t win over moderate GOP voters in a general election after spending two decades focusing on illegal immigration as his core issue.

In the governor’s race, Kobach made a migrant caravan moving through Mexico an issue during a late October debate and ran an ad featuring footage from Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. Bob Beatty, a Washburn University of Topeka political scientist, doubted other Republicans would go as far in playing to fears about illegal immigration.

Yet support for a tough stance on illegal immigration is widespread within the GOP. A September AP-NORC poll showed about 8 in 10 Republicans nationally expressed approval of Trump’s job handling immigration.

“Kobach almost owns the immigration issue in a way that nobody else can,” said Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas political scientist.

Strong criticism of Kobach helps him with some voters. Glen Burdue, a 73-year-old machine shop worker in a small town south of Wichita, said he likes Kobach partly because Kobach “has taken the most flack” for conservative views.

Vaughn Fox, a 72-year-old retired Wichita automobile dealer, doesn’t see Kobach as too strident.

“Not for true conservative Republicans,” he said.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/11/19/kobachs-brand-still-sells-with-republicans-in-senate-race-in-kansas/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/11/19/kobachs-brand-still-sells-with-republicans-in-senate-race-in-kansas/

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2004 - Number 25 - Lisa Andreas - "Stronger Every Minute"

How Lisa Andreas, a 16-year old singer in the pubs and clubs of Gillingham, Kent, England, managed to become the selection for Cyprus's entry to Eurovision 2004 is an unlikely tale. Although she was born in Gillingham, her mother is Greek Cypriot and song-writer Mike Connaris (who we've met before) had selected Cyprus as the venue for his next venture into song-writing for national finals. He has a ballad and he needed someone to sing it in the Cypriot national final.

I don't know if he knew Lisa and her mother from a history in the pubs of Kent, but he got them out to Nicosia to have a go. Unlike his previous entries, Stronger Every Minute won. Whether that was his song or Lisa's talent for ballad singing I'm unsure, but even in a vote that had 60% televoting - she won. Just.

That took her to Istanbul to represent Cyprus. Carrying all the political weight of that on her young shoulders, she was responsible for three remarkable things in the space of three minutes.

First there's the song - in a year of outstanding female ballads, this is the one that made it and perhaps that's got something to do with the start. In auditorium filled with thousands of fans she sings the first two lines completely acapella. Perfectly on pitch. You can hear some of the less well behaved audience members' audible rowdiness, but there are very few of them and when the music kicks in, everyone is suddenly awed.

Second, she's got the full vocal fry happening by the end. Her emotional connection to the song is intense and that truly comes across both on the screen and in the Abdi İpekçi Arena. Even if the song is a truly old-school ballad that could be from almost any era, her crumbling yet secretly strong voice melts hearts everywhere. It's a performance that demands full attention and maybe even a little tear.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in the long shot towards the end of the song, there are Cypriot and Turkish flags. And Greek flags. In Istanbul. Speaking from the future of 2024, this what the EBU dream of when they say they're non-political. They mean that people come together regardless of nations and disputes. Calling it non-political is a misnomer. This is highly political and a 16-year old from Kent is responsible for three minutes of unity between people who in the 1970s were at war and boycotting Eurovision because the other party was competing. Eurovision doesn't fix political problems, but shows that it's possible for the political problems to be overcome. Those moments of peace arise spontaneously rather than get forced.

On the night, Lisa's magnificent, magnetic performance took her to fifth on the scoreboard, a result that Cyprus would not equal or exceed until 2018.

As is often the case with young performers, her success didn't lead to a singing career. She tried out for the 4th series of the UK X Factor, but only made the second round. Much more successful was her career in dance. She's an accomplished hip-hop dancer and has performed in the London Palladium and His Majesty's Theatre as a dancer. She later taught dance and now lives in the USA with her family.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2006 - Number 2 - Eleni Skarpari - "Don't Crack Now"

What's this doing here? Well, going back through my picks, one thing that will become apparent is that I like Mike Connaris's songs and this is one of the two he had in the 2006 Cypriot national final. The thing that's a little bit different is that in 2006, Mike has found his muse. Eleni Skarpari.

She'd already appeared in one Cypriot final, in 2004 with her own song Come to Me and that also made it into my top lists (sort of - it was in the extras). That's a very different song, but if I had to guess that it was 2004 when Eleni met Mike and the seeds of future collaborations were sown.

Those seeds have grown into Don't Crack Now. It sounds like the main soundtrack song from a lost Paul Thomas Anderson film. Starting with a music box accompaniment, an accordion joins in as Eleni sings about life falling apart. The music box plinks and reedy accordion wheezes combine to set the stage with a melancholy that may never lift.

The chorus doesn't help. The mood doesn't rise and instead Eleni piles on the responsibility. Not only are things shit, but you've got to keep going because others are relying on you. Crap. It's enough to break nearly all hearts. An ode to resilience supported only by the love of those who need you. It's beautiful, fragile and totally not what Eurovision expects - and certainly not from Cyprus. There is a plucked bouzouki in there at about the halfway point, but that's the only Hellenic thing about it.

I adore this song and Eleni's voice. They're paired so well together and I can see why she fits Mike's slower songs. It's a continuation of the path he was travelling down in 2005 with Constantinos Christoforou and If You Go. Heartbreak set to music, depression, catastrophe. It all makes me wonder what was going on in his life at this point.

Of course this didn't do well. Cyprus had enough entries to organise two semi-finals this year and Eleni did not progress from them. Cyprus was travelling away from Mike's output - since 2004 he'd been on a downward trajectory. That didn't put him or Eleni off though as they came back in 2008 with another song (that sounds suspiciously similar to this one, but more of that in the future possibly).

Eleni has continued to have a music career outside of national finals. She moved to London and now works under the name Echo Wants Her Voice Back. She describes her music as Folk Noir. Mostly performing live sets and publishing music via YouTube, she seems to have quite the following in the UK.

I suspect her 2008 song will end up appearing in that year's top 64 and and I'll post some of her current music then, but for now, here she is in 2007 singing a medley of Mike Connaris's songs including If You Go and Stronger Every Minute. Cyprus has really missed out on her voice at Eurovision.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2005 - Number 10 - Constantinos Christoforou - "If You Go"

He's back already. Constantinos with his second appearance this year and third overall. Again, this isn't the song he took to Eurovision in 2005, it's the other song by Mike Connaris that was in the four song Cypriot song selection.

If You Go is slow. If I were to guess what song Mike had been listening to when he was writing this, it would The Korgi's Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime. It's got a sparse, gloomy verse filled with synth noodles and artificial strings being all legato and romantic. It takes a while for the drums and fuzzy guitars to kick in. After a couple verses of this slow build, the chorus threatens to kick in with some violence.

But it peters out before it ever really gets going - becoming something more like a bridge. Then there are flutes? The instruments begin to drop away again as Constantinos ruefully contemplates a life without the one. And then it's over. What was that?

That is the sound of composer and performer playing with structure and attempting to do something rarely seen at Eurovision: Give us a mood piece. This is all about conveying gloom, despondency and a heart-shattering, stomach-sinking, dawning of reality. The brief moment of anger doesn't last long before the leaden plummet into the abyss recommences. This is a bottom dropping out of your world song.

It certainly isn't for everyone. It's definitely not very Cypriot. You won't be surprised to hear that it came last of the four songs presented in the Monte Caputo Nightclub, Limassol at the national final. I however have put in at number ten. There was a point in going through the 2005 songs when I thought this was going to win - I like it that much. If I'm going to be critical, it needs an orchestra to do all the synth parts, but this is a national final on a budget so I'll make do.

Constantinos, of course, did go to Eurovision for the final time this year and finished seventeenth for Cyprus. He didn't have to go through the semi-final (thanks, in part to Mike Connaris's successful song the previous year) and perhaps that's a good thing. I'm not convinced he'd have been successful. Constantinos did try to represent Cyprus one more time, entering the national final in 2010, and has done his shift as the Cypriot spokesperson for the scoring three times.

He continued writing and recording music for some years after this although his peak successful years were behind him. He will always be one of Cyprus's (and Greece's) favourite entries.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2005 - Number 13 - Constantinos Christoforou - "She's No Fool"

Third time's a charm, Constantinos is back and Cyprus loves him. In fact he's got a song selection final all to himself so the country can pick which song he's taking to Kyiv. Four songs in total, two written by him and two written by Mike Connaris, who so successfully wrote Cyprus's 2004 entry.

For those unaware of who Constantinos is, he represented Cyprus in 1996 finishing ninth and was part of the boy band One who opened Eurovision 2002 in Tallinn, that time taking Cyprus to a sixth place finish. Cyprus are getting used to top ten finishes, having done even better in 2004 ending up in fifth place. This combination of country and singer seemed like a safe bet for a good result. You can understand why CyBC approached him with this format in mind.

She's No Fool is one of Mike Connaris's two entries and displays some of the song-writer's UK influences. It's a straight British guitar rock-pop track with low-key guitar propelled verses for Constantinos to brood in. That sultriness picks up an intoxicating string-loop every time the chorus hoves into sight. When it hits, Constantinos's vocal explodes into a high-pitched one note, repetition of the title. Yes, she's definitely no fool.

The bridge comes out of nowhere, as the strings and guitar all drop away allowing a Bowie adjacent vocal line to be heard. Then there's a rising chord progression that builds ecstatically as the lightshow projects the ripples of Constantinos's mind on a screen behind him. He's hypnotising us, although his charms don't appear to have worked on the independent-minded subject of the song.

The British 1990s pop sensibilities of this feel out of place in Cyprus, and maybe this was a conscious choice, but it didn't appeal to the jury and televote. It ended up third of the four songs on offer, however it's those pop sensibilities that appeal to me here. Constantinos and Mike Connaris are doing something here that the UK themselves rarely do in their own national finals. Putting what the UK music industry has been sending successfully around the world for decades into a Eurovision context. The BBC had tried Mike Connaris songs before, most notably with Alberta, the UK Eurovision star who never quite made it, but again - they lost out to other, perhaps lesser songs.

Will any of Contantinos's other three songs make it into my top 64? You'll have to wait and see.

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 8 - Alberta - "So Strange"

At the end of the 1990s, the BBC had found its particular groove. It held small national finals in TV studios. There were radio-only elimination semis leaving only four songs to be presented to the nation live on screen. It was talking to the music industry and from what they sent, they picked a wide variety of genres and styles all of which had something different.

Then the UK public would vote for the most conventional and blandest one on offer.

1999 was absolutely no exception. Take Alberta Sheriff here. Native Sierra Leonean, Londoner, naturally fun and full of commercial ska. Two years in a row she partnered with Mike Connaris and Paul Brown to enter a song. Two years in a row she qualified for the TV final and finished second.

Eurovision national finals can be cruel. Especially in the UK - there's little history of acts coming back to try again over several years. Alberta appearing twice is a major exception and her appearance in 1999 probably demonstrates that the BBC wanted her.

The UK has strong affection for this style of music having had several big ska-flavoured hits in the charts in the late seventies and early eighties in the Two Tone ska revival era. This is very much from the bubblier end of the ska spectrum. It's party music (mostly), a fresh sound for Europe and utterly fun. So Strange is nothing out of the ordinary here. It's a delightfully addictive confection of positivity and fun. There's even a verse in heavily accented French. This would have been different, plus on stage the girl clearly has it.

In 1999 she lost out to the name band who went on to perform poorly for the UK at the time. This was Alberta's last throw of the dice, although the songwriters had another go in 2000. Her lasting legacy are the two singles of the songs she competed with, one of which got used in a yoghurt advert.

If you're out there Alberta, I hope you're submitting entries to TaP or their successor!