by Chip Letzgus
March 16, 2010
Reporting to you live—from Television City in Hollywood—this is “American Idol”!
Despite the superficial resemblance—the drinking, the descent into madness, the sequins—there are so many ways that I am not like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Among them: When it comes to getting tickets to see “American Idol,” I have never had to depend on the kindness of strangers. For that I have been blessed with friends—who may be strange, yes, but no stranger than me—including John Mihelich, who last Thursday night called to let me know that he had gotten an admission voucher for two for tonight’s broadcast and was, as luck would have it, dateless.
I have to admit I was a little leery, having spent four hours on Beverly Boulevard two years ago carrying a sign reading “SYESHA SHINES LIKE A DIAMOND” only to be turned away like so much riffraff at the door. An admission voucher doesn’t get you in the studio; it just keeps you in line until the CBS pages determine whether or not they need seat-fillers. But I haven’t seen John in several years, so I figured if nothing else we could spend the afternoon chatting before being rejected like a couple of incompatible kidneys. I never allowed myself to imagine that we might actually get past the velvet rope and into the Cathedral of Kara . . .
And since the show turned out to be actually quite good, I am very grateful to John for inviting me. (If the show had been lousy, I would be bitter and would probably never forgive him. John, you lucked out this time.)
Not much to report before the show got started, but we did spend a little time getting to know Katie Stevens’s brother. He was there with a group of his college friends (“a very small private college in New York,” he said, which sounded a little uppity to me) and they were all carrying little black-and-white Katie faces on sticks. The big revelations: there are many pre-auditions before the actual auditions (Katie auditioned at least twice before she was actually seen by the judges); Katie’s parents have moved to Los Angeles to be with her during her stay on the show (which means they have plenty of money even after they’ve forked over tuition to a very small private college in New York); and the guys on the show are either shorter or taller than they look on TV. Ryan Seacrest is of average height, not short; Michael Lynche is big, but not tall; and Casey James is “like six-four or something.” So much for the big reveal.
Speaking of which, we also spotted a D-list celeb waiting to be whisked to the VIP section: the crown prince of the big reveal, Clive Pearse, host of “Design Star” and “Designed to Sell” on HGTV. Clive was dressed all in black and was sporting very stylish, very dark sunglasses, which he adjusted frequently. He also snapped his head a lot, as if he had just heard his name called, even though he hadn’t. It was a studied and bittersweet display of desperately needy nonchalance. I’m going to try it myself.
Once inside the studio, we were seated—and I do mean seated. We were not standing in the mosh pit with the teenagers; we were on chairs in the bleachers with the old folks. The married couple next to us had driven in from Palm Springs, despite the husband’s bad back. You would never spot us on television, but so what? I’ve reached the age where it’s a lot less appealing to be standing with the beautiful people than to be seated with the infirm.
When I saw the Final Three live two years ago, I thought all of the contestants sounded great in the studio. But listening to them on the broadcast a couple of hours later, I heard a number of vocal problems that I didn’t pick up on from the audience. Once again, I thought tonight’s contestants all sounded very good from the bleachers. Surprisingly, though, I thought by and large they were still good when I watched the show on TV.
Is this season’s crop of contestants getting better? Or have they assaulted me for so many episodes that I now am a pushover for mediocrity?
Let’s find out.
In order of appearance:
MICHAEL LYNCHE—“Miss You”—3 / 93
One of Michael’s strengths as a performer is his ability to choose songs that let him show off all his vocal prowess, that allow him in the space of two minutes to go from Barry White to Barry Gibb and back again. Sure enough, this song gave him the chance to display his falsetto as well as the big notes of his chest voice. Trying to work the big stage, Michael danced a bit, which Simon called corny. I would be even harsher: it emasculated him. Also, we’re still not getting enough consonants from Michael: the last line of the song didn’t sound like “Come on home”; it sounded like “Come on, ho.” But the vocal was otherwise solid, and the performance energetic.
DIDI BENAMI—Play with Fire—9 / 87
I’ll give Didi—who appears not to be capitalizing her second “D” anymore, although I could be wrong about that, or about whether she ever did—credit for trying to act the song. I liked her facial expressions. Although she recovered nicely, she dropped a lyric, and I thought several of her high notes were flat. Randy Jackson loved this performance, but I thought it was a weak effort from Didi, no matter how she spells her name.
CASEY JAMES—It’s All Over Now—5 / 91
Casey is a musical magician. He somehow knows how to make a song good and average at the same time. I don’t know how he does it. This performance was fun, and Casey impressed me with his few short riffs on the electric guitar. His vocal was solid enough, too. Maybe the song just didn’t demand enough of Casey to elevate him to the top of this group. So although I don’t have anything really bad to say about Casey’s performance, I don’t have anything really good to say about it either. It’s magic!
LACEY BROWN—Ruby Tuesday—10 / 86
An onstage, overwrought string quartet accompanied Lacey as she warbled this number. That was just the beginning of the strangeness. As Ellen DeGeneres correctly pointed out, it was inconsistent with the music and the arrangement for Lacey to be walking—from the wings past the strings—at the slow, moody beginning of the song, but then to spend the song’s more rocked-out conclusion seated on the lip of the stage. Movement—like facial expressions, gestures, even posture—should be motivated and justified by the music or the lyrics or both. Oh, and there was this other little thing: Lacey’s voice. Distinctive as it is, she displayed almost no breath support tonight, and completely ran out of steam at the end of a couple of lines—including the last one. Not good.
ANDREW GARCIA—Gimme Shelter—8 / 88
This week’s pre-performance video packages told us all about the contestants’ lives back home, complete with interviews with their parents, because of course nothing screams “family values” like the Rolling Stones. Through these vignettes we discovered that Didi calls her mother “Mommy Benami” and that Casey’s mother looks just like Reba McEntire. About the Garcias we learned this: that Andrew’s mother is silent and enormous, and his father thought he would grow up to be a custodian. If you’ve ever been to Moreno Valley, you know that there, this is considered aiming high. Anyway. Andrew. I was worried. Were there ever any girls in the Rolling Stones? Like maybe Avril Lavigne or somebody? No? Could be trouble. I like the sound of Andrew’s voice, and I didn’t find the performance “pitchy all over the place,” as Randy did. Kara PsychoGuardi got closer to the problem when she said Andrew didn’t make much of a connection to the lyric; I think the problem is that he doesn’t make much of a connection with the audience. He’s got to ditch the horn-rims. They are a wall between him and the people to whom he is, theoretically, singing.
KATIE STEVENS—Wild Horses—6 / 90
Katie was pretty as a picture in her frilly party dress, and the past few weeks, Katie’s prettiness has been her only strength. Tonight she gave her best vocal performance to date: on key and full-throated. In the studio, I noted that I didn’t think she was expressive enough facially, but watching on TV later that wasn’t an issue. I wasn’t bowled over, but neither was I offended that Katie had advanced to the Top Twelve while Lilly Scott was eliminated.
During the commercial break after Katie sang, those of us in the studio audience were treated to a performance you didn’t get to see on TV. The warm-up comic had asked for a volunteer to “wow” us with their talent, and a 35-ish blonde named Lisette offered to sing the National Anthem. As she sang, a few members of the band, up on their perch between the giant blue whirling electric gyroscopes, started playing along. I don’t think Lisette could hear them at first, and her pacing was a little erratic. Watching Rickey Minor frantically conducting, trying to get his musicians to speed up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was pretty damn funny. Then, as more of the band joined in, Lisette realized she was being accompanied and rose to the occasion. She hit that big high Whitney Houston note at the end as if this were the Super Bowl and she were Susan Boyle. Then the orchestra swelled and improvised a beautiful chord progression under the last note, and the overall effect was joyous. You would have loved it.
TIM URBAN—Under My Thumb—12 / 84
So here we have a creepy song about a once-dominant woman who has been forced, somehow, into utter submission by her vengeful lover. And now, for some reason, it’s been arranged to a kind of calypso beat, less like “Under My Thumb” by the Rolling Stones and more like “Under the Sea” by the Little Mermaids. Add to that Tim Urban, crooning it as if it were a Michael Bublé mid-tempo swinger about wanting to get together with his girl on Saturday night. Put it all together and there is just so, so much that is wrong here. I will say this, though: Tim has a beautiful, clear voice whose quality I like more every week. I’ll miss it.
SIOBHAN MAGNUS—Paint It Black—1 / 96
A perfect little three-act play, all compressed into two minutes. Siobhan began perched on the Red Stairs of Angst, singing moodily about whatever particular madness this Rolling Stones song happens to be about (civil unrest, Vietnam, sexual perversion—I’m not sure). Moving off the stairs, she stalked like a predator toward the audience, building her vocal power and her emotional intensity gradually until they reached a shattering climax. That can only mean one thing: the cat’s in the Cuisinart again, and it’s going to scream at us through the vessel of Siobhan’s mouth. Then, after the ovation that always follows a Siobhan Shriek, she brought it down to the level almost of a lullaby. And she did all this wearing ringlets, a little black party dress, and Doc Marten boots, like she was all dressed to go to a cocktail party in Afghanistan. Altogether bizarre, yes—but powerful, even riveting. I hate to admit this, but Kara is right: Siobhan is the female Adam Lambert.
LEE DEWYZE—Beast of Burden—7 / 89
My friend John’s partner, whose name is also John, is a Lee Dewyze fan (he regularly encourages me to “Vote Dewyzely”). So in the spirit of appreciation for the friend of the friend who brung me to the dance, I tried very hard to drink the Lee Dewyze Kool-Aid tonight. It didn’t work. During the live performance in the studio, my mind wandered; although I like the rough edge to Lee’s voice, I found myself not paying attention to him but looking at the lights and the judges’ backs and the frightening swirling giant blue gyroscopes. On TV, I found the performance less boring. “Less boring,” however, isn’t much of a compliment, is it?
PAIGE MILES—Honky Tonk Women—11 / 85
After the calamity that was “Smile” last week, Paige tried to recover with an energetic performance of “Honky Tonk Women.” She looked more confident, but she didn’t dominate the stage or work the crowd the way she needed to in order to really make a mark. Paige can hit some big notes, and tonight she did, but she is not as accomplished and assured a performer as she needs to be to advance much farther in this competition.
AARON KELLY—Angie—4 / 92
The 16-year-old Aaron has been a pretty inconsistent performer in my book. Tonight he was “on.” Yes, it helped that he got to begin by sitting on the same Lighted Stairway to Stardom that moments earlier had held Siobhan, only this time they were blue. But beyond the dramatic impact of the staging, I saw—particularly in the studio—Aaron’s ongoing appeal. He’s comfortable on stage. He knows how to move. He acted the song. He doesn’t have the strongest voice in the crowd but he’s a good performer. If he stays “on,” he could be Top Five or even Top Four material.
CRYSTAL BOWERSOX—You Can’t Always Get What You Want—2 / 95
After her performance tonight, Crystal admitted to not being in “the right zone” when singing the song. Well. I can only imagine what a performance we would have witnessed if she had been in “the right zone.” The left zone was pretty damn remarkable. At least vocally. I still think Crystal—who gets wound up very tightly into the music, the lyrics and her guitar when she performs—could let the audience in a little more and make more of a connection to us. But her voice is amazing—seasoned, controlled, raw, expressive, just perfection.
One person’s gotta go home on Wednesday night, and I’ve ranked Tim at the bottom of my ballot. What will actually happen? It’s too soon to tell. We’ve never learned who the “bottom three” were in any of the previous results episodes. Even when Ryan has narrowed it down to two contestants—one safe, one gone—he’s never said that these were the two lowest vote getters, only that one was going through and one was going home. So Tim and his bangs could have tons of fans out there. To see any of the following go—the interchangeable Didi and Lacey, the underachieving Andrew and Katie, the dull Tim and Lee, the unsteady Paige—would not surprise me.
Whatever the results, I’ll be watching them from the comfort of home, not at Television City, but still and always grateful for the kindness of my ticket-bearing friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment