#11 THANK YOU!

Hi lovely Zibbzterz!

Where to start this final ESC blog? We all know how this story began and how it unfolded. We know the protagonists...we know the side characters and we know the locations of every step of the story. And we know what happened in the “end”. But the thing is…this is not the end. Simply the end of a chapter. A pretty good chapter at that.

The day of the show was incredible. Walking into the Arena felt different that day… there was something in the air. Tension? Maybe… Nerves? Maybe… but it felt mostly like a steaming hot pot of creativeness. We were in a big hall filled with ARTISTS getting ready to bare their souls in front of millions of people. It was magical. And a tad scary. Everything went pretty much as planned that day. We prepared the way we usually do and we got ready, with our amazing team right by our side and then…then it was time to go into the backstage area of the actual arena. Time to get wired with in-ears, to check the mics one last time, to check the mic stands one last time…and then we walked on stage.

We had rehearsed the full show about 8 times at this point but this time was completely different. So many years of work, perfecting ourselves, our craft and our music came down to this moment. Being aware that anyone we had ever known along with over 50 Million people who will be watching and any future career possibilites might be defined by this moment, we looked at eachother, smiled and decided - lets just enjoy the hell out of it! 

At that second the nerves left and we really just soaked it all in, looked (really looked) at the audience, felt the lights, the fire within and let the music take over. 

sidenote: As we walked onto stage we realized Coco's drumstick wasn't in position.. THANK GOD Stee had a spare one hidden in his drumset!

Next we walked off stage, hugged our team and into the green room with a confident feeling of relief. We were all proud of what we achieved, and we felt SO GOOD about it. It was high time for some white wine and beers and to hug all of our amazing friends that were already in the green room.

What happened after we all know…yes we did NOT make it into the final. It was a weird feeling standing there and waiting to hear the results, wanting to celebrate all of our friends getting through while still hoping that one of the leftover spots will be filled by us. When it was over, and they announced the last spot it hurt. It did. I mean there’s no way around it. Nobody likes not “succeeding” or feeling like they didn’t succeed. We were sad and we may even have shed a tear or two with some of our other friends that didn’t make it either. And some of us may or may not have eaten entire bars of chocolate. (Coco) :)

It was a mixture of emotions and we didnt really know how to feel ☺ It wasn’t a bad night. It also wasn’t a good night. It was a GREAT night. Think about it. We got to perform in front of soooo many people in a fantastic arena, with a fantastic crew and then we got to see our family. If that’s not a great night, then I don’t know what is. Its just a shame it was all measured by points and ranks. Because overall we all got to compete in the olympics and thats PRETTY FUCKING AMAZING!! There is one big feeling that remains; GRATEFULNESS. We are so grateful for this experience and all there is left to say is simply THANK YOU. To all of you who made this adventure possible!

AND as u know us by now, we were never going to just pack up and leave our friends to party alone. We wanted to stay to support the other contestants that did make it through, to support and celebrate them. Plus, getting to see Lisbon with our families was also a very nice side effect. 

Now that we are back home the world keeps turning and we keep working. We had a lot of mails to answer, admin to do (helloooo taxes you are SO fun!!) and thanks to all of you we had tons of merch to send out. Speaking of which, we updated our merch and have even more things for you to get online so check it outttt!

www.zibbz.com/shop

And more importantly; we have a ton of shows to prepare for. Shows that we are playing in Switzerland, Germany…and maybe other places? Who knows ☺ Stay tuned and we cannot wait to start writing our next chapter with you all. 

We promise to make it another good one.

We thank you, we love you.
Your Zibbz & Team

(Ps: if you can't get enough: this V-LOG may help processing the entire ESC-ADVENTURE a bit.... enjoy!)

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#10 PARDON ME BUT I DON’T WANNA GO BACK

Hello Zibbzterz and happy Thursday!! 

We thought we’d do a little mid-week update this time, because we have a lot going on and wanted to share it with you.

We have arrived in Lisbon and it is magical. Magical. First off, we happen to have the very best team with us here. Everybody has an amazing attitude, is professional, and we are all one big family. At our first press conference, the interviewers even sensed immediately that we seem to have “a lot of love” in our delegation and it couldn’t be truer.

Once we arrived we were greeted by our two ESC assistants at the airport who are an excellent addition to our team as well. We already caught a glimpse of how well organized the ESC is. We had to get our accreditations and thought that could get complicated. But nope. This is such a well-oiled machine that it literally took minutes to get done and we were on our way to the hotel. 

After a quick moment to unpack (we all had to order more hangers because a, no hotel is equipped for people to stay for TWO WEEKS and b, we all brought an excessive amount of dresses. Well maybe not Stee) we went to our first rehearsal in Lisbon. It wasn’t at the Arena yet, but right next to it so we caught a nice view of that beautiful thing. 

The next day, Monday, was our first official rehearsal day at the Arena. Remember how I said this is a well-oiled machine? It sure is. The organization and team here are TOP NOTCH. And coming from Swiss people, that’s a huge compliment. Us swissies are known for four things; chocolate, cheese, watches and for being ORGANIZED. We are the virgos of countries. Anyway, at the Arena we were greeted by our assistant/guide for the day Joana (who is LOVELY). Everyone (Coco, Stee plus the four backings) was given a number and then us 6 went from room to room, where we had in-ear monitoring, received the mics, received the mic-stands, just so everything would be perfect and ready for us on stage. The whole process was already so amazing that Coco said she wishes this would be the standard for every show she’s ever going to do. And then we all walked on stage. GOOSEBUMPS. This thing is huge. Coco realized that the metaphorical “marathon” we were talking about in the last blog might not be just a metaphor but real. Walking over these bridges that include STAIRS (btw who the hell invented heels?? A man???) is no joke my friends. Speaking of heels, this was the first time Coco was able to try on her full outfit for the stage and as you've seen in pictures it reveals her toned mid-section quite wonderfully. Definitely a moment of gratitude there on her part that we have a good gym at the hotel, so she can keep working out every day. :) And guess what. Coco killed it on that stage and so did Stee. As you guys might know I’m part of the backing vocalists and where we stand (right of stage) we can see the entire stage and arena. We don’t look at the stage while singing backings, we look at each other in a circle to make sure we don’t get distracted but I couldn’t help but quickly look at them on stage during the bridge and I swear I almost cried. It feels so right, they feel so at home, it’s magic, it’s real. Just wait til you see them. After the rehearsal nobody had to say anything. We just knew it works. And the vibe was simply this: PARDON US BUT WE DON’T WANNA GO BACK. 

But until you get to see the whole thing, watch this 30 second video of the rehearsal here:

It is now Thursday and we had more rehearsals and more interviews and videos to do. We also got together with Cesar from Austria to jam and combine our two songs for a quick video. Keep your eyes/ears peeled for this one! So far, we haven't seen a lot of Lisbon but we had some time yesterday to walk around the old town and it is gorgeous!! 

Tomorrow morning will be our second rehearsal on stage. We have a show for the Swiss embassy coming up tomorrow morning as well as one on Saturday at the Eurovision Village where we hopefully get to meet some of you beautiful people! Who’s coming? 

Thank you for the continuous support and love !!

Zibbz & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#9 MARATHON PREPARATIONS

HAPPY MONDAY FROM LISON (YES, LISBON!!:)) ZIBBZTERZ!

Yes, we just touched down in Portugal and we are already feeling the ESC vibes in the air. We are excited, happy and a little nervous. But first, let us update you on our past week. 

As you probably know, last week we travelled to Madrid for our last ESC pre-show. Upon arrival in Spain we checked into a great, artsy hotel. We were among the first guests to ever stay there, it was modern and full of instruments everywhere we turned. 

Although we do enjoy a very healthy lifestyle, we won’t say no to a good drink, especially if it’s made in Spain.. so we joined the other artists for welcome-drinks followed by the press conference and then off to the welcome party, which felt more like a family reunion. Seeing all the other artists again is always a happy moment in our books, but the setup felt a little strange to us, since we were divided from the fans and community and had food while they didn’t get anything. Secretly, we wished it could have been one big picnic. Overall it was a fantastic evening and we ended up staying awake and talking with the other artist until the early hours.

The next day was show day! Let me tell you guys…this red carpet was quite long. About 40 mins. Probably the longest red carpet we’ve ever walked. Now…from what we hear, last year’s ESC red carpet lasted THREE hours so I think Madrid is prepping us for the Marathon. No runner just runs a marathon without running a few long-distance runs first, right? Well we are similarly prepping for our ESC Marathon this month. Our only question is, will there be snacks and drinks for us too? You know how they give away protein bars and waters along the way on a Marathon? Do they do that for us on the ESC red carpet? Asking for a friend. Only partly kidding.

The BEST thing about the Madrid red carpet was the outside where we got to meet you beautiful people!! The fact that you guys know our song and sing along or sing it TO us on the red carpet is still such an amazing and humbling experience. THANK YOU!!

Also, thanx to Mikolas Josef (Chech Republic) I finally got to wear my yellow dress on the carpet... that boy has got ironing skills! (I guess you ll have to check our insta channel for the full story)

After the red carpet we were so ready to eat. I mean READY. Probably because there weren’t any protein bars along the way. Just saying. We were all a bit hangry by that point but infinitely happy when we got to quickly fuel up before the show...and what a show it was!! We still get goosebumps looking at the videos. The energy that everybody brought was killer and you all sang your hearts out. Again, we can’t thank you enough!! 

This time, Stee actually played more than one song because he subbed as a drummer for the Humans (Romania)! Collaborating with other artists is one of the single best things about being a musician. 

And yes we did jump into the locked down hotel pool with Ari & Miki that night. (photo can be found somewhere on Ari’s insta story)

Overall it was another great weekend with great People!!

In Switzerland we had one full day to shoot a fun little video. Stones in 7 styles in 70 seconds. Stee produced the different music styles on the plane on the way home and Coco recorded vocals in a quick break from shows and interviews at the beginning of the month as well. As you have probably been able to tell…we don’t take ourselves too seriously and we love being creative and having a laugh. We hope you enjoye it! Shout out to our trusted makeup artist Manuela Keller for helping with this shoot. She’s been with us on this ESC journey in the beginning at the national selection and is now a part of our core team in Lisbon. It’s great to have talented friends!!

The rest of the week consistent of a radio tour in Switzerland and even though, yes, our country is pretty small, it still filled up our schedule pretty quickly. Doing radio tours is obviously always great because they then play our songs at all the different stations. We know a bunch of the radio hosts from earlier years, (album releases & parties) which means interviews felt more like an easy conversation with and old buddy.

This is the official end of the pre-show month and the beginning of the actual Eurovision Song Contest. It’s been a ride and we are eagerly looking forward to everything that’s coming now. We are ready to run this marathon. The best part about this whole thing has been the support from our lovely fans. We LOVE seeing new Zibbz fanpages come up on Instagram, your HILARIOUS memes, your sweet messages, we love and appreciate it all. Thank you thank you and we will continue to watch out for you guys.

We will be posting the daily madness on our Insta so make sure to follow us there!

Until next week,

Zibbz & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#8 THE EARLY BIRD CATCHES THE WORM (?)

HAPPY MONDAY BEAUTIFUL ZIBBZTERZ,

Quick shoutout to start this week to all of you who are supporting us! On Social Media, by singing and playing our songs to your families and friends, by saying hi to us at the shows, by reading this blog, by making your pet miau/bark/tweet to the Stones tunes. Everyone. We see you! Thank you!

As you probably know…this week we went to Amsterdam. Our second to last pre-ESC show in April. Is this month really already over? Holy smokes that went fast and yet we feel like we have seen and done more than should be physically possible for this amount of time.

But let's talk about Amsterdam. This one started with an early wake up time to get to the airport. Very early. 5 am to be exact. Now, 5 am might be totally fine for most, a regular thing for some, …but for musicians? 5 am is the middle.of.the.night. We are NOT natural early birds. We don’t want to catch those worms. Anyway, so at 5 am (with still no clean clothes btw…yep we STILL haven’t managed to do our laundry) we made our way to Amsterdam. Coco was unfortunately already feeling under the weather and partly lost her voice after giving interviews for two days straight and was trying not to make a peep (get it?) at all. Vocal rest is still the best remedy for vocal issues. That and INSANE amounts of tea. Of course vocal rest doesn’t mean that travelling was any less fun or entertaining because there is still Stee. Stee who knows how to distract Coco from not feeling well, Stee who likes to plank on luggage trollies (yup), Stee who likes to learn the language of every country we visit. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Entertaining either way! If you want to keep up with us in real time, definitely come follow us on Instagram. We are constantly updating stories for you guys all day and we promise they don’t disappoint. 

Once we arrived in Amsterdam, Stee went ahead to do an afternoon of press by himself so Coco could stick to the vocal rest. It was no fun to have to stay behind but it was so much more important to sing for all of you beautiful people at the show in the evening. We had heard in advance that Amsterdam would be the biggest location of any of the pre shows and boy what a show it was! You guys were all fantastic. With your help and the adrenalin Coco was able to not only rock this show but to truly enjoy and appreciate all of you who came out. Thank you so much!!

After an epic night in Amsterdam we flew back home the next day and got ready for a quick three day press tour in Switzerland. There are two very cool things about doing press in our own country: 1) We get to go to places of nostalgia for pictures and 2) we get to visit places in our own country that we have not yet explored. This week for our nostalgia fix we got to visit what we call the “Erdmannlistein” (I dare you to record yourself saying this and tagging us!!) which literally translates into "meerkatstone” This is a place we went to with our family when we were kids to bbq and play games. It was so nice being back there and we encourage you all to come to Switzerland and bring your kids, friends, dogs, guineapigs, or meerkats with you. The legend says that if you run around the stone 7 times while holding your breath, you will see meerkats. Stee tried it but we wouldn't spoil the results for you. 

1912

...

2018

The next day we got to do press in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, a place where we haven’t really been to a lot. Lugano was beautiful, the food amazing and the interviewers were very cute. We think we could start spending some more time there. Not a lot of cons. 

While our short time in Switzerland was wonderful, we can’t wait to go to get back on the road again to meet more of you and to be reunited with our ESC artist family. At this point it truly feels like we are all touring together and being apart for three days felt a little weird. So, Madrid; Here we come!!

P.S. As most of you have probably already seen we released our One-Take for Stones this week and we love hearing what you all thought about it. Watch the video below and if you’d like to go back and read about the Making of you can find the blog about it here. 

Until next week,
Zibbz & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#7 ISRAEL CALLED - AND WE ANSWERED

HII ZIBBZTERZ

Another week – another adventure! This week’s adventure was…you guessed it…ISRAEL!

But to get to Israel you have to travel and to travel as ZIBBZ you have to travel with your sibling. Duh. While it’s fair to say that Coco is a pretty well-rounded and organized traveller, Stee can be just a tad more special to travel with: Coco was finding the gate to board the plane. Where was Stee? Oh, you know just wearing a VR headset. Coco was working on Social Media during the flight. Where was Stee? Drumming on the seat in front of him happy as a clam. Or sleeping, also happy as a clam. Coco was admiring the culture of Israel. Where was Stee? Oh you know, just playing an oversized harp. 

When we first arrived in Israel we pretty much immediately headed for a walk on the beach. Not too many of those in Switzerland so that was a treat. Later we quickly got ready for the first red carpet. All of us were taken to the red carpet in a bus and each act waited in the bus to get called to walk the carpet. They went in alphabetical order…needless to say we really had some time to enjoy that bus. And we did. We had a blast with the rest of the waiting acts and spent most of the time playing HEADS UP. Do you guys know that app? It’s invented by Ellen Degeneres and it’s a life saver for any party, family Christmas, funeral, doctor’s office, waiting in line at Disneyland or waiting on a bus with all the Eurovision acts. An app for many occasions. Throughout the entire Israel time we kept playing it together actually and we MIIIGHT even put out a funny compilation video soon? Comment below to let us know if that’s something you would like to see. But enough with this commercial break for HEADS UP (we do not get paid for this btw..although Ellen..we’d LOVE to be the faces of any future heads up commercials. Just saying)

Once we got called to walk the carpet they played our song and we couldn’t help but feel like rockstars. Hearing your own song getting played anywhere is still pretty surreal overall and it’s weird to imagine that that feeling will ever go away. I guess we’d have to ask Beyoncé. (If you’re reading this: text us girl - we’d love to know). Later, we had the pleasure to watch some previous Israeli Eurovision artists perform and even met the diva herself; Dana International. 

The next day was no joke. This day was planned out perfectly and boy are we grateful for all the things we got to see and experience. Amongst our stops that day were: Mount of Olives, City of David (where they are STILL digging up treasures!!) and the Western Wall. It was all incredibly interesting. We also stopped for lunch where they had a DJ that was just a little too good at his job and we all decided to make a dance party out of our lunch break…as I’m sure you’ve seen on many Instagram stories. The entire day was so culturally impressive and filled with many magical moments. We saw places that we might not have been able to see otherwise and are so grateful for that! PLUS. Without being dramatic here, we made true friends. This Eurovision community already feels like family and we are sure that those relationships are going to go way further than this competition.

Then the last day of our Israel time came around. Our performance day actually started with the annual tree planting ritual for the Eurovision Song Contest. Planting a tree requires some water right? Well the heavens knew that because it was raining the entire time we were there. That didn’t keep us from having fun of course. As Game of Thrones fans we took the most Game of Thrones looking contestant (Rasmussen) and filmed that little winter is coming video that you might have seen on our Instagram. And if you haven’t seen it. Go check it out here. (verlinkt mit insta) After successfully planting the tree we quickly headed back to the hotel to wash the mud off our clothes and faces, got changed and headed straight to the gig. And that’s where we met so many of you!!! Thank you for being so wonderful. This was the biggest audience that ZIBBZ ever got to perform for. 20 K people in the audience as well as 200K live stream audience..so that was pretty epic. So epic that we didn’t even realize that all the lights and screens went out for our performance. JAnother fun fact about that night: There was a misunderstanding shortly before the show where Coco told Stee she won’t walk on stage until the music starts this time and Stee somehow missed that (or was playing an oversized harp again) so when Coco didn’t immediately walk out with him he improvised and started beat boxing. But we think that was a pretty good answer to that situation right? 

We hope you enjoyed the show, we know we did!! And thanks for calling Israel…don’t hesitate to call us again anytime. We will answer.

Quick update on the clothing front btw: We’ve been working on/crafting our stage outfit with the Onkai hats & belt team. Its already looking badass!

Read all about our Amsterdam Adventure here in the next blog !!
Also, can someone come help us with the mountains of washing we have accumulated?! 

Until next week,
Zibbz & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#6 BIRD POOP STANDS FOR GOOD LUCK (OR SO WE THOUGHT)

HELLO AND HAPPY MONDAY ZIBBZTERZ

Wow. What just happened…? You know how time just seems to fly when you are experiencing a lot of new things? That’s how we feel about this week.

It all started with the shoot for our ESC “postcard” (basically an introduction video that will be used in the contest). On Monday we flew straight from Zurich to Porto, Portugal. Once arrived we were immediately met by the lovely filming crew. We felt an instant good vibe and could not wait to begin the collaboration. But first there was actually time to walk around Porto and experience the culture. We fell in love. The people, the buildings, the history, the old doors and patterns...many patterns. (Not sure if you know this but Stee is a huge pattern fan) And last but not least: So. Many. Ice-Cream shops. Big fans of those. So feel free to send us patterns or Ice-Cream recipes any day! 

After a good night’s sleep, aka some time for Coco to digest 4 flavors of Ice Cream, we woke up early for our first day of shooting. It was actually raining almost all day which made it challenging to film, but the wonderful team made it work. Overall there were two highlights of this day and I’m not sure what order is appropriate but I’m going to start with this: A helicopter flight. Yes, a helicopter. And not to mention Coco’s FIRST ever flight on one of those!! It was truly breathtaking and such a treat. We are grateful for all these amazing opportunities already. And we are also grateful for bird poop. Yep. Bird poop is the official second highlight of the day. Coco’s Onkai hat was having a rough day as it is during the day because the wind made it super hard to keep on her head and then a bird decided to relieve itself on it as well. But no need to worry you guys. I looked it up. It’s a sign of good luck. So, I thank that bird, that bird was a Zibbzter for sure. :)

The second day of shooting was a little less eventful but not any less beautiful and rainy. We ended it with a quick shot at the beach in Porto and the sun came out just in time for an amazing sunset. 

Overall these days in Portugal were spent with Stee learning as much Portuguese as he could (so far one sentence, but it’s a good one) and Coco updating the socials to keep in touch with all of YOU. 

On Thursday we flew out to LONDON for the first Pre-Show!! Once we landed we went straight to a press center. Which…what even IS a press center? We certainly didn’t know. But we were met there with a lot of press, influencers and most importantly: some other contestants. Which was great to finally meet them in person. After giving some interviews and meeting a lot of people that know much more about the Eurovision than we do and being able to learn from them, it was time to head to the sound check. It went well and we felt ready for the show. Now here’s some quick reality about being a live musician: things can go wrong. So many things in fact could go wrong. But this time it was the in-ears (which allows singers to hear themselves) that were not working, meaning Coco was unable to hear herself sing the entire song. THE ENTIRE SONG. To say that that is less than ideal is an understatement. Unlucky. I mean, where is that Zibbzter bird when you need it? Anyway, thanks to all of the beautiful people in the room who were singing along, it actually was all fine in the end. Stressful, but fine. That's Lif(v)e! ;) And in general it was so fun to perform for all of your beautiful faces. It was a dream and we can’t wait to do it again in Israel. 

We had a fantastic time in London, we got to perform, meet some of our personal favorite acts of this year, got to give a lot of fun interviews (one of them was with BBC, which we were incredibly honored to be asked for) and we even got the cutest presents from some of the fans outside. We can’t thank you all enough!!! Now back to Switzerland for a staging rehearsal and then right back on the plane to Israel.

See you there

Xxx

Zibbz & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#5 THE RETURN OF THE HOLI POWDER

HELLO AGAIN ZIBBZTERZ

Let’s start this off with a huge THANK YOU to all of you who are supporting us, following us on our journey and especially to those magical unicorns of you who are creating FanArt for us!! We LOVE seeing them. Simply amazing creations. And can we take a moment to talk about the fact that there is a video out there of a CAT singing stones? Holy smokes. That’s special. Even for us dog people. So, thank you! And keep them coming. We will try to share as many as possible on Instagram of course. Here’s a few of our favorites:

This week we filmed our ONETAKE for «Stones» ...for those of you who didn’t know us before the Eurovision times…we used to do this thing called OneTake Mondays. That means every week, we filmed an entire song, either one of our own or a cover, in ONE single TAKE. The instruments and voices are always recorded live. Obviously, we don’t just perform it in a regular/boring way. No. We try to come up with some unique way to reinvent the songs. How do we do this you ask? Well, for our most popular one we used fruits instead of instruments for example. That one actually got over half a million views on Facebook and close to 2 thousand shares! I guess the cool kids would say we went viral? 

The Stones OneTake was not going to be an exception to our rule. The brainstorming began. Stee had the brilliant idea to have some of the instruments “fly” to us. Easy, right? From every direction, even above. Manageable, right? He then also had the idea to throw some of the instruments back “up in the air”?  piece.of.cake, right? He THEN also had the idea to add in the red holi powder again falling from the sky. Suuuper chill, right? (it’s not like we weren't still sneezing red powder ever since the first shoot) :D

Well, he won. Because let’s face it…those ideas ARE pretty cool. And thanks to the help of our lovely roommates (our partners and Carlo) we made it happen. Carlo was on the roof with multiple instruments, Yves filmed and threw instruments. Sabrina started sound, threw instruments and held the keys up for coco to play in the chorus. Sometimes she was too late because she was staring at coco and fangirling. (I can say this because I AM her…writing this) But you can’t blame me. Who WOULDN’T fangirl for coco? 

We will share the final video with you at some point later this week. Keep an eye out for it on our socials! For now we are going to share some older ones that we really like. 

Later in the week came the time for packing. Now, if you think filming a OneTake was a struggle…packing was infinitely harder. Trying to fit everything you want to potentially wear for a gig or red carpet or just a dinner for a few months is difficult. I’ll just let this picture do the talking:

We are so incredibly excited for this journey ahead of us. We are going to film our ESC introduction video in Portugal at the beginning of this week and from what we’ve heard from that shoot…it’s going to be a LOT of fun. After that we are heading to LONDON for our first pre-show!!! We finally get to meet some of YOU!! All we can try to do at this point is to enjoy every minute of this madness, breathe and share our music with the world. We cannot wait and we are on our way to YOU!

Until next week, ZIBBZ & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#4 THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

HAPPY MONDAY ZIBBZTERZ!

We would like to start off by taking a moment to honor the memory of Lys Assia who was the first to ever win the Eurovision Song Contest. What a force she was, and we will continue to hold her in our hearts and hope to make her proud with the performance in May. Our sincere condolences go out to her beloved ones. Thank you for your soul & music Lys Assia.

This week was all about the actual performance for the ESC - we worked on our STAGING. Obviously, this is a huge part of the show as those of you know that have ever watched ESC. Since February 4th (the day we won the Swiss selection) we have watched countless, and I mean COUNTLESS videos of Eurovision performances. To get inspired, to see what we like and what is possible!! (..like a dancing monkey! wow. but also - why? :) )

It all comes down to this: We want to stay true to who WE are, to our b(r)and ZIBBZ. And we found the perfect show director for this. He comes from the world of Rock’n’Roll and is all.about.the.MUSIC. No flashy stuff. He flew out to LA for what was essentially one day, and we booked a dance studio for that day. All he wanted us to do is to perform the song over and over again and ideas started flowing immediately. 

We won‘t reveal too much about what our staging is going to look like but we concluded that we want to highlight the MUSIC. That’s what it’s all about. And we don’t want to distract from that. However, another huge part of making it work is the movement of the cameras (something we have not had to be concerned about so far) as well as the lighting. This is why it is so valuable to have an amazing Team with us that knows exactly what to expect.  We are beyond grateful.

More rehearsals with said team are going to take place in April and May, until then we rehearse by ourselves in front of our stuffed animals and dogs. Best audience ever. 

Photo by Tomo Muscionico

Speaking of rehearsing we are also getting ready for all the pre-shows in Europe in April - we cannot wait to go out there and meet this lovely community!! We are confirmed to play in London, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam and Madrid. Are you practicing the lyrics yet? We want to hear you, perform WITH you! To make this a little easier on you we even put up a karaoke version of "Stones".

Styling wise we are starting to puzzle the pieces together. We thankfully had a lot of wonderful humans reaching out to us and offering their advice and help. Guess who we had to hold back from buying too many pairs of shoes though? If you think it‘s Coco - think again. 

Overall this week has definitely felt like the calm before the storm. And with „calm“ I do not mean we weren‘t busy because we surely were but our ESC pre-show tour is coming up in a few days and looking at the schedule for that we get nervous/ excited butterflies in our stomachs….scratch that, not butterflies, more like dragons. 

See you out there 

xxxx Zibbz & Team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#3 DEFINING OUR B(R)AND

HI LOVELY ZIBBZTERZ

Another week – another blog – another list of things we got done for our preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest in May. I think we are getting the hang of this you guys! It’s starting to become second nature to think of ourselves as a bRand and not just a band. Because that’s what it comes down to…as an artist (actor, musician, painter…you name it) there will always come a point where you need to start viewing your art as a brand and through the preparations for the ESC we are understanding that more and more.

So what did we do for our brand/band this week? We created a press kit, we finished and revamped our song (basically the CORE of our brand), we played a show in LA and we started defining our LOOK.

Press kit
Whenever we release something like an album, a single or playing a big show like ESC there will be more interest from the media. And guess what? They like pictures! :) Because imagine how boring the papers and magazines would be without pictures. But in order for them not to have to use pictures of us ca 2003 with bad haircuts and even worse sense of style (guys, there’s some older pictures out there…that are…let’s say.. Special!) while we embrace our older pictures we do like presenting new ones that represent us NOW. Therefore, we took an entire day with Tomo Muscionico, a fantastic photographer friend of ours here in LA (who is Swiss as well) and we shot hundreds of pictures for our press kit. View the selection below and let us know what your favorites are!! Btw, the hardest part is going through that many pictures of your own face and trying to figure out the good ones!

Song
As some of you might know the song “Stones” is produced by Stee and Herman Gardarfve. Herman is from Sweden so he flew in for three days to finish and revamp the song with us. We decided to do this work in our own home-studio (where by the way our entire album was produced). Check out the picture below. We are quite proud of our little creative space. Those three days with Herman were definitely loooong days where we all needed lots and lots of caffeine but in the end, we are super proud of the outcome and the revamp of Stones. Do you guys like it? Can you tell what changed?

ZiBBZ - STUDIO

SHOW @LUCKYSTRIKE LA

Show in LA
Let’s face it…the best part about being a musician is getting to share what you do and play a show. We played one on Thursday night at the Lucky Strike in Hollywood and it was a blast. Thank you everyone so much for coming out – it was a great turnout and just amazing vibes in that space.
We actually decided to show everyone our video for stones. We simply brought a huge white canvas that we found in our garage, held it up on stage with our own hands and projected the video on to it. It worked. Who needs fancy screens? Not us ! :)

Our look
On our pre-ESC tour in April and in Portugal we are going to be “out and about” a lot. Meaning...people will see us on quite a few occasions and there might even be cameras here and there. This also means we can’t get away with wearing the same three shirts every day. And aren’t we all guilty of that? How many things in our closets do we really wear am I right? So, in a nutshell: we are looking for outfits. We have gone to many thrift shops and already found a bunch of GREAT pieces. At the same time we are trying to partner up with a few brands we love to promote them too! If you know anyone that knows clothes or if you know a good brand that might be interested let us know. Tweet us! Message us! We are open for suggestions!!

Thanks for all the support, the love on Instagram, Twitter, everywhere – we love you!

Until next week,
ZIBBZ & team

this blog is written by SabrinaKern

#2 VIDEO MAKING OF

HII AGAIN, FELLOW ZIBBZTERZ

It was great reading all your feedback after our last blog post – thank you so much for that. It’s been some crazy weeks since then!! We shot our music video for “Stones” and we are so excited to be able to share with you today. I think it’s safe to say that we are proud of the outcome. 

But we are jumping the gun a little bit by talking about the outcome here because obviously the music video wasn’t just a magical unicorn that appeared out of nowhere. Although that does sound great..?

Here’s what happened leading up to it:
Of course it all started with a lot of brainstorming…sometimes a little heavy on the brain and at times it felt more like …just a storm. After hours upon hours of meetings and skype talks and more meetings we had plenty of ideas but mostly knew that we a) really wanted to convey that you are your own worst enemy when it comes to bullying and b) that we wanted the video to feel like “us”, meaning, our style, our “vibe”, our music, our souls. Because that’s what it’s all about right? So after looking at different ideas and pitches we fleshed out one treatment. Thankfully we’re lucky to have the A-team with us, lead by our fearless directors Simon Steuri and Viet Dang who we’ve worked with several times before. 

Next we got into the actual planning. We produced this ourselves, which means we had to location scout, organize all the talent for the video, choose costumes, buy props, etc etc. Since we worked with Holi powder it was quite the adventure to try and figure out how to use Holi powder and … to only get the things red you want to get RED. We are still dusting off the powder as we speak…it. Is. Everywhere. ☺

AND THEN IT WAS HERE..the day of the shoot. We got up early, loaded the van and drove out to Studios60 downtown LA. After an hour and a half of set up time we started filming. The first two hours were mostly performance shots from every possible angle. At noon we had our background talent come in, aka all of our best friends in LA (thanks again so much for being there!!). For the Holi powder scenes the boys set up an entire tent (see below) so that the red powder wouldn’t get everywhere.. (it still did) But it was quite the set up!! Watch our little making of video here:

Photos provided by Adrian Bretscher, Tomo Muscionico, Alex Lake, and my phone ;)

Let me tell you.. the day flew by…even though it was a 15 hour day.. and by the end we were all incredibly exhausted and incredibly happy. Before going home to hop into the shower for 3724871 hours we rewarded ourselves with some Thai food (and scared all the other costumers away with our red faces). We are thrilled to share this journey with you and are looking forward to hearing your feedback. 

We would like to thank everyone again for coming out and being a huge part of our most important music video yet and especially our “A-Team”:

Simon Steuri // Director
Jonathan Sandford // DP
Alex Lake // Orange Grove Avenue
Viet Dang // Co-Director&Choreographer
Sabrina Kern // First Assistant Director&Actor
Yves Nicollier // Technical Assistant

AND HERE IT IS:

this blog is written by www.sabrina-kern.com

#1 LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN

HEY EVERYONE AND WELCOME TO OUR BLOG

This will be our weekly space to update you all on our road to Lisbon, our road to the Eurovision Song Contest. Feel free to share, like and comment with things you’d like to know more about. This is for you…And maybe for both of our grandchildren some day? :-)

It is now three weeks ago that we won the Swiss national selection for the ESC and are still so humbled by the fact that we get to represent Switzerland in May. Thank you to everyone who voted, watched and rooted for us (our sister currently holds the record with 300 votes). 

Every day since has been filled with Skype meetings, planning, rehearsing, location scouting (for our video shoot – stay tuned!), frantic coffee drinking, positive manifestations at 2am and more meetings, meetings, meetings...

We are not complaining at all, but we do realize now that we didn’t fully understand the amount of work that goes into standing on that Eurovision stage. That’s what’s so fun about our lives; We do things. We think – hey, this’ll be fun. Then we face reality. And then more often than not…it turnes out just as we imagined. So, here’s to this journey and to sharing it with you.

Next week we will be writing all about our video shoot and share the first exclusive photos right here.

Xx
ZIBBZ & Team

this blog is written by www.sabrina-kern.com