Silver Convention — Telegram

MAY 15 1977 · 12:05

Silver Convention · "Telegram" · West Germany · 1977 Placement: 8th · Language: English · Composers: Sylvester Levay, Stephan Prager · Venue: Wembley Conference Centre · Host: London, United Kingdom · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: color crt Silver Convention arrive at Wembley Conference Centre in 1977 as the closest thing Eurovision had yet seen to an actual international chart act sent by a major country. 'Fly, Robin, Fly' had already gone to number one in America; 'Get Up and Boogie' had been inescapable on European radio; Munich's disco laboratory under Sylvester Levay and Michael Kunze had fed the group a pair of singles that belonged to the same axis as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder. For Eurovision they bring 'Telegram,' a tighter, more staccato piece of Euro-disco with the group's trademark three-voice unison chorus punching out the title in a staccato chant. The staging is minimal — three women in matching outfits, one bassline, one handclap. Eighth of eighteen with fifty-five points: a mid-table finish for a group that was, commercially, one of the biggest names in the room. Context Eurovision 1977 was held at Wembley Conference Centre after a postponement forced by a BBC technical strike. West Germany's selection of Silver Convention was a quiet statement — the country sending a genuine international hit act rather than a purely domestic schlager entry. Legacy 'Telegram' is mostly remembered today as the Eurovision footnote to a very non-Eurovision career. Silver Convention's legacy lives in the Munich disco canon — the bassline vocabulary that would feed Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' later the same year. Mythology The disco hit-makers at Wembley. Silver Convention as the Munich sound's brief, oblique visit.