A photo review of last night’s American Idol Live concert at the St. Pete Times forum. To check out a review of the show, click here.
A piano duel between Matt Giraud and Scott MacIntyre. Read the rest of this entry »
A weekly bulletin on musical guests playing late night TV; set your TIVOs or DVRs if you’ve got an early bedtime.
The Late Show with David Letterman, CBS
Monday, July 13: Kelly Clarkson (Pictured, to promote her new album, All I Ever Wanted)
Tuesday, July 14: Wilco with Feist (who will perform their collaboration from Wilco the Album, “You and I.”)
Wednesday, July 15: Paul McCartney (hopefully he’s be yakking and playing)
Thursday, July 16: Grizzly Bear (to make up for their non-appearance a few months ago, when they got bumped because GM’s Bob Lutz went over. Will likely play something from Veckatimest.)
Friday, July 17: Metric
The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, NBC
Monday, July 13: The cast of Hair (all the way from Broadway, NYC)
Tuesday, July 14: Sugar Ray (Why, oh why, did this shitty ass band have to come back? Wasn’t it bad enough they gave Mark McGrath a job over there at Extra!?)
Wednesday, July 15: Kris Allen (American Idol)
Thursday, July 16: Daughtry
Friday, July 17: Demi Lovato Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t let her goofy personality and head full of dreads fool you. Emily Turnage is a young musician with huge potential. “I think I’ve been playing since I was about 14,” she told me in a recent conversation. A Saint Petersburg native, this flower child finds her peace through the strings of her guitar.
Her love of guitar paved her way to joining band after band, never giving up on her dream. “I want to have 30,000 people sing my songs with me.”
Raw talent flows through her veins. She has never taken a guitar lesson in her life. “I taught me-self!” she exclaimed with a laugh.
Emily took inspiration from the music around her. “My best friend Jacob is an excellent musician and whenever he played I just fell in love with it. Hayley Williams [Paramore] influences me as well.”
I did not watch the American Idol season eight premiere. Just like I didn’t watch any of the previous premieres. When it comes to that wretched spectacle, I’m a conscientious objector. I find the show, the very idea of the show, abhorrent.
I’ve watched it, or portions of it, a handful of times over the years — and can’t escape the ubiquitous news updates that treat the program’s progress as a matter of important international concern.
My beef with Idol is not the circus atmosphere, the wacky (Abdul) or cruel (Cowell) judges, or the gimmicky device early in the season of showing the tone-deaf hacks, which I’ve always suspected are plants (I understand Idol has backed off showing those clowns some).
It’s not so much that even the good singers come from a cookie-cutter mold of safe, vaguely soul-oriented music (I read that one girl performed “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” during the first show).
It’s that American Idol is a creativity killer. The program has become the quickest avenue to pop stardom, and as such it has a disproportionate influence in defining American mainstream music. As they say, we reap what we sow. In this case, bland, bland, bland, same, same, same. If there were a program where singer/songwriters performed their own music in a contest format, and the judges used creativity as a criterion, I’d give it a look-see. (Who knows; there may have already been one that failed.)
Certainly some of Idol’s late-round contestants have singing chops, but I’ve never seen an ounce of originality from them. They know the drill; they follow the blueprint.
I can’t really blame Cowell and the rest for cashing in on such a lasting phenomenon. It’s really the public’s fault. The masses are allowing themselves to be manipulated and dumbed down. The rest of us, those of us with some taste, reject the show as glitzy karaoke (or watch it as camp).
Some of you may now be thinking: Oh jeez, the rantings of an elitist music critic — lighten up, dude. Fair enough, but let me add that I’ve always liked a lot of mainstream stuff, and it pains me that a big, bloated karaoke show has become the prime mover in shaping it. In the end, I firmly maintain that American Idol is a destructive, or at the very least stagnating, force in American (make that global) pop music.
Those of us with a conscience should refuse to watch. It just may help the show go away quicker.
The Beatles’ songs have been used to peddle everything from sneakers to big box stores over the years but nothing offends me more — at least for the moment — than their music being co-opted by American Idol. I’ve always loathed the show for flying in the face of everything spontaneous and edgy about rock ’n’ roll. Learning that the contestants covered Beatles songs last night makes me want to start picketing outside the program’s studio.
Contestant David Archuleta (pictured) committed a grave sin by attempting to cover “We Can Work It Out,” one of my favorite Fab Four originals, before actually learning the song. Entertainment Weekly reports:
[Archuleta] promptly missed the song’s opening note. (Strike one!) And then botched the second line of the first verse. (Strike two!) And then, a few seconds later, blanked on a few more words. (Strike three!) But wait, we’ve got one more fumbled line. (Uh, strike four?) And a wrecked attempt at falsetto! As Simon so succinctly put it, the performance was ”a mess.”
This guy should be struck down by the rock ‘n’ roll gods and have his vocal cords ripped from his throat. There’s just no excuse for such ineptitude, I don’t care how young he might be. And while I’m on a rant here, when are people going to stop watching this pitiful show that’s only succeeding in making that slimy prick Simon a rich man? OK, it did launch Kelly Clarkson’s career, and I dig her, but that was years ago. Do we really need another Daughtry to emerge — or this ass-wipe Archuleta to land a recording contract — before American Idol gets taken off the air?
