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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

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  • American Idol’s Top 4 Revealed

    One might think that the amount of screen time Henry Connick, Jr. received over the past two nights has positioned him as a candidate to judge the show next year. That would be a terrific lineup with a strong performer and arranger who also has credibility as a young star and a history with Ellen DeGeneres. But meanwhile, he likely helped his album sales tremendously this week. I know that he spent most of the day as a trending topic on most Internet sites.

    The video packages continue improving as Idol’s producers look for anything to generate interest in the show. This week, Ryan tell us that 32 million votes were cast and seems pretty smug about the situation. The judges remain strangely silent and even when Seacrest tries to draw out Simon, he gets nowhere.

    The Idolettes sing a Sinatra medley while Bowersox rocks a Fedora and suit like the guys. Everyone gets their obligatory solo although The Manhattan Transfer called and want their charts back.

    How cool was it tonight that Harry Connick, Jr. actually referred to charts and called the judges out for inventing the term “pitchy”. Go ahead. Look in a music theory book prior to Idol airing in the U.S. Good luck finding pitchy.

    Ryan teases out next week’s theme (Songs from the Cinema) and mentor (Jamie Foxx).  Jamie got the Rat Pack last year during the Top Five week, and Kris Allen and Adam Lambert both made the bottom three so it’s still anyone’s to win. Yes, Mike, exhale.  Oh, you did?  BTW, AI directing team, we’re really tired of audience shots of Michael’s family every episode.

    Gaga performed Alejandro. She was her typical push-the-envelope brilliant self.  Live leads on acoustic guitar, piano and violin mixed in with the catchy chorus.  She is on her way to being this generation’s Madonna and may even take it further.  Her live performances are events.   Less of an event was Harry’s take on And I Love Her.   I liked his crooner phrasing, which sounded more like Tony Bennett than Frank Sinatra.  It was a nice enough piece and after two decades, Connick knows how to command a stage and hold an audience. He really is a funny guy.  The judges gave him a standing ovation so they at least showed respect.

    Lee was declared safe between the performances so Ryan had Crystal on one side with Mike and Aaron on another.  Then he sent to Casey to join Crystal, and Lee declined to play the “Guess Which Group Is Safe” game.  Holy Cow, I thought.  The Clashers playing in the contest got it right again, and Crystal is in the Bottom Two!

    As if.

    Casey and Crystal are safe for some reason while Aaron and Mike face the music again.  This time Aaron, who belted Fly Me To The Moon both nights, gets the boot.  Look for his album to sell big at Christmas.  And as a true gentleman, Harry Connick played for him as he took the last bow.  (Anyone else notice Ricky Miner was absolutely marginalized this year, even before he took The Tonight Show gig?)

    So your Final Four are Crystal, Casey, Lee and Mike.

    Who goes to the finals?  Who goes home next week?

    What do you think?  Good show?  Bad show?  Boring show?

  • Sonic Singing Contest – Vote Now!

    Forcing the Top 5 to take on the ultimate song stylist, even with Harry Connick’s brilliant help, was a tough assignment.  Had Siobhan not gone home last week (sigh), she certainly would have been gone this week.  Or she would’ve carried SummerWind to a place Simon Cowell called cabaret.

    But the previous week’s votes were just as interesting. SonicClashers, usually a pretty uniform group, were absolutely split on who to send home.  True, more than a third selected Siobhan–heck, I had her in The Bottom Two–but there were plenty of votes for Mike and Aaron continues to get his share.    Let’s remember the GG/George rundown on this year’s American Idol top finishers recorded when the final 12 were announced.

    Crystal, Lee, Siobhan (“…and don’t be surprised to see Aaron emerge as a dark horse and finish fourth”)

    After getting 5 of 6 last year and potentially 3 of 4 this year, I”m feeling pretty cocky this year with my fancy 80% success rate.  If only my score this year was better than GG’s.  But there are plenty of scores that are looking really good.  Here is our Leader Board:

    MT – 12 points
    Yoel / Joel – 11 points each (a tie–how cool!)
    Cindy – 10 points

    and a whole mess of people around 8 and 9 points.  Let’s also get the obligatory “GG would be winning with 16 points were he eligible” message out of the way.  Me?  I have 12 because I refused to send Siobhan home last week.

    Looking ahead, most folks have Crystal winning the competition, but there are votes for Lee and even a vote for Aaron.  (Don’t look at me.  I picked him fourth).

    Ready to vote? Remember, you would win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

    HERE IS YOUR LINK TO VOTE IN THIS WEEK’S SINGING CONTEST!

    Remember that voting closes the second the EAST COAST version of the results show begins to air.

  • The Band Played… “Poptones.” The Continuing Adventures of Public Image Limited in the American Midwest

    I’ve been waiting literally 20 years to see the band Public Image Ltd, the jagged-post-punk-dub-arty-dance-pop-with-something-to-say juggernaut led by former Sex Pistol John Lydon. The last time the band played Milwaukee was in the fall of ’89. They were touring behind their album 9 at the time, and had a near brush with the U.S. pop charts with the song “Disappointed”, which, if I were to rank my personal favorite singles of all time, would probably fall somewhere in or near the top 10. (Along with their signature classic from 1986 “Rise”.)

    After their next album together (1992’s That What Is Not), PiL sort of disappeared for awhile. Aside from a John Lydon solo album, there have been no new records from the band. But while there still isn’t a new album from the group, it would be incorrect to say that there has been no new music. Lydon has reconvened the band for its first U.S. tour since 1992. Last night, I saw them play at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee and it must be said that even though their set list leaned heavily on songs from the group’s 1979 album Metal Box (or Second Edition) – generally, and rightly, considered the group’s masterpiece, and truly a pivotal album of its era – the music felt very new, and the performances very now. Listening to the band re-animating their back catalog, I was again struck by how rhythmically, atmospherically, and emotionally complex these songs are, and how well they rebuked the joker a few rows behind me who shouted “Pretty Vacant!” (and laughed at his own stupid joke) as the band took the stage.

    Not only have songs like “Poptones” and the freaking glorious “Albatross” remained relevant, they’ve actually become more so over time, and when the band closed its set with an increasingly bass-heavy (at Johnny’s chanted urging) take on the song “Religion”, prefaced with a pop quiz (“These are not trick questions!”) on the Pope, the Catholic church, and justice (Milwaukee is one of the epicenters of the current pedophile priest scandals), the outrage and the rebellion were absolutely palpable. (And not just because the ridiculously/wonderfully amplified bass was rumbling our Pabst Blue Ribbon filled bellies.) If there had been a picture of the pope in the room, the bass alone would have vaporized it.

    It’s true the band is comprised entirely of graying and/or paunchy fifty-somethings – PiL veterans Lu Edmonds and Bruce Smith, along with bassist-extraordinaire Scott Firth (whose resume includes work with both Elvis Costello and the Spice Girls). It’s also true that they played a slew of obvious fan favorites, like the opener “This Is Not a Love Song”. But let’s make at least this much clear: This is not an oldies act. This is not a greatest hits show. It’s a 2010 show by a 2010 band with 2010 things to say; and though this is a band that spoke to the high school social outcast 1989 Paul Lorentz, this is a band that kicked the ass of the mortgage-paying-cube-dwelling-slightly-more-socially-appealing-father-of-two 2010 Paul Lorentz.

    A quick note about the audience. The apparent median age of the pit audience was 47 and a half. The average weight I’m guessing was about 245. There were more chins than scalps with hair. It was, without exaggeration, the oldest, fattest, baldest pit I’d ever seen. In fact, it was an audience I felt young in, which is an increasingly rare phenomenon, and this gave the proceedings another (however accidental) layer of subversion. The truest punks and rebels of the Milwaukee metro area now look like (and are) grandparents. I myself had a bit of a curmudgeonly moment during the band’s entrancing, alternately meditative and cathartic performance of “U.S.L.S. 1” when an overly flirtatious douchebag and the Taylor Swift lookalike he was trying to make (the only twentysomethings in the audience?) wouldn’t shut up, and I asked them to take it to the lobby. They didn’t immediately comply, but they were clearly not there to see a band play a show (or maybe they were there to see Maroon 5 – oops, easy mistake), and were not long for the place.

    After Lydon firmly admonished those in the pit to keep their beers and their bodies off the stage, Lydon affirmed that Public Image Ltd was at the Pabst Theater to enjoy themselves, and they proceeded to do just that for a couple of hours. Throughout the show, Lydon was equal parts den-mother, coach, guidance counselor, rebel warrior, nation-builder, and incendiary device, and he took on each of these roles with an uncompromised joy and unflinching conviction. Reputation for confrontation notwithstanding, Lydon proved a most gracious frontman for an audience that was often either overly polite or (especially later in the show) just plain pooped.

    One of my favorite moments in the show was the band’s take on the 1989 single “Warrior” , in which all of those roles came together in a single song. The chorus of the song says “I’m a warrior. This is my land.” In concert last night, Lydon virtually declared the audience and the band together a new nation-state; but he also touchingly proclaimed the U.S. his adopted country (he’s becoming a citizen), repeatedly mentioned how nice it was to see smiling faces in the audience (and by extension the U.S.), and rejected self-pity and complacence. At the end of the song, he asked “Are you a warrior?” The audience replied with the predictable noises. Lydon chuckled in response (I’m paraphrasing), “Well, yes, kind of relaxed warriors.” It was more sweet than judgmental, but it was clearly both. It was good to see his smiling face too. I hope to see it again soon.