I am an American Idol fan, which almost sounds like something you would hear at American Idol Anonymous. Why I am a fan, I do not know because I do not see myself ever buying an album of an American Idol winner. That is generally not my type of music. So now we have another in a long line of American Idol ripoffs that premiered last night, RockStar: SuperNova. Maybe this is my type of music???
Rockstar was on last year and I believe I watched about 2 and a half minutes of it. The show finds a lead singer for a rock band; it’s all very simple and believable. Last year’s band was INXS and since I had not cared anything about INXS since about 1989 I had no interest in the show. Now the producers of the show have formed a new band to find a lead singer for, a supergroup that consists of Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee, Gilby Clarke formerly of Guns ‘N’ Roses, and Jason Newsted formerly of Metallica.
So these guys and some producer dude have to wade through 15 guys and gals and pick their new lead singer and they will record a singer and perform a New Year’s Show. Last night’s show was our first introduction and our first impression of the potential lead singers for SuperNova. It didn’t go well.
Most of these singers, guys and girls, all had the American Idol type affectations you would expect from a rock singer. One of the singers performed Satisfaction by the Stones and strutted around like Mick Jagger. He of course was slagged by the band for it, but most of the singers made use of the Backstreet Boys style of hand movements. All the singers except for two made use of the rock squat.
Rock squat? I’ll explain. The crowd was right at the feet of the singers during their performance and all but two made sure to squat down like a catcher in baseball to make themselves closer to the crowd. It was as if the producers of the show said, “Sing with confidence, have fun, and for the love of God, be sure to bust out a rock squat about half way through the performance. It will impress the band.” The performances were all the typical “rock” performances and none of the affectations impressed me.
Some of the songs these people picked made me want to vomit. When you think of being the lead singer of a band with members from the Crue, G’N’R, and Metallica, I don’t sing a Goo Goo Dolls song. I don’t take Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and turn it into a Dave Matthews jam. I don't take the Police’s Roxanne (one of my personal alltime favorites) and totally butcher it beyond recognition. The song choices mostly sucked, about half were contemporary rock songs and/or songs we have heard 6,000 times. One inspired choice was The Who’s Pinball Wizard by the first girl, but she looked to be a psycho during her performance and she freaked me out.
I know this is getting long, especially for a show I don’t even like, but I did like two of the performers. One was a chick named Dilana who performed a Nirvana song. She just kind of stood there belting it out, which I liked. Unfortunately she began to rock a little bit and started doing some sort of satanic chicken dancing and a dance that could only be described as running in place through the tires at football camp. Other than that, I dug her; she scared me into liking her. The bad news for her is that there is no way that this group can have a girl as their frontman. At least not as long as Tommy Lee is in the band.
I also liked the last dude who sang Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell. He just looks weird enough to win this thing. He wasn’t particularly good, but he seemed more genuine in his stage presence and did not have the same affectations as the rest. I believe that this guy, let’s call him Udo, will win this thing and go on to be the adequate frontman for the supergroup SuperNova.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
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5 comments:
*Shakes head* See, and I liked SuperNova: RockStar. Last year when they did it, to find the new singer for Inxs,I thumbed my nose at it. I thought it was just a ripoff of the movie Rockstar, and was a great slap in the fan of any true Inxs fan. Thus I did. not. Watch.
But ok, I am a goof, and saw that Tommy Lee was somehow involved in this season's, thus needed to watch. And I liked it. Better than I like A.I.
I enjoyed the chica from Africa, who did the Nirvana song. I thought she nailed it, until she did that M.C. Hammer dance. I also liked the chick who did the Joplin song. I have to admit that I turned the show on late, as I forgot to TiVo it and was not home.
Most of the contestants were a step better than A.I. contestants, but not much better. And absolutely not rockers. Not yet anyway. There were some other people I enjoyed but can not think of which specific performances 'rocked' my world.
But I will watch faithfully. Even if it is just to gawk at Dave and Tommy and wish they'd cut these kids to ribbons and tell them what it's REALLY like to be a rocker.
The guys in the group, the producer, and Dave Navarro are all pretty much one big Paula Abdul. They never really had one bad word for anyone except for Newsted busting the guy who kept looking at his hands to find the chords as he played the guitar and they lambasted the guy who butchered Roxanne and they needed to do.
I hope they will bare their fangs a little more as the show goes on. What I like about this show over AI, is that the group decides which person goes home out of the bottom three and not the audience who can be kind of dumb in situations like this.
I may not sound like I enjoy the show, but I like crap TV as much as good TV and I expect I will keep an eye on this sure train wreck. I also more than likely will purchase an album from this "supergroup" because I have tons of albums from their other groups. Heck, I even have Gilby Clarke's solo album Pawnshop Guitars.
With Piccu there is not bad TV, because go him even bad TV is still pretty good and good enough to TiVo.
I think I am falling in to the TiVo trap. I dvr'ed SupernNova and was home to watch it. Is that bad???
So did I. It's not bad, but we both may be clinicly insane.
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