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  • On Idol Eve, Kris Allen Plays… A Strip Mall?

    American Idol Eve finds Kris Allen Rocking Vienna, Virginia

     

    American Idol premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on Fox, making its debut after crowded seasons from X Factor and The Voice.  The broadcast and music juggernaut buckled several years ago when white guy songwriter syndrome hit the show.  A rotating cast of judges included lil’ Stevie Tyler from Aerosmith, Jenny from the Block, who perfectly leveraged her judging chair into new music opportunities, and even Ellen DeGeneres.

    The watchable train wreck of brutal and honest Simon Cowell, goofy Paul Abdul and people pleasin’ Randy Jackson looks like a dream team in comparison.

    Only Jackson and host Ryan Seacrest provide a bridge to the past.    And Ryan, ageless as his mentor Dick Clark, is now a whopping 38 years old after starting his Idol gig in 2002.   That means he is entering judge’s age territory, the spot reserved for 4o and 50 somethings judging semi-professional artists in their teens and early 20s.     Nicki Minaj of the indeterminate age around 30 is the baby of the new group.  Joining Seacrest, Nicki and Jackson (56) are 42 year old Mariah Carey and 45 year old Keith Urban.

    American Idol changed American music.  Carrie Underwood rules Nashville like a Narnian frost queen while Kelly Clarkson has taken her big voice talents to dance pop and abandoned any attempt to define herself artistically.   They’re joined by artists who have had lasting success,  including Fantasia, Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson and Adam Lambert.  And uh, well, that’s really about it right now.

    And therein lies the problem.    American Idol’s ratings have been falling for five years. The show has been a top 5 show since 2004, but up until last year, you could have said “number one or number two since 2006”.   The competition has clearly taken a bite.  So have the familiar story lines.  But Idol’s biggest problem may be its appeal to the music buying masses.  Fans can undoubtedly tell these folks apart, but could you handle the task of putting songs or faces with the names Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery and Phillip Phillips?   Your hint:  Scotty sings country.  Kris is country.  And Lee worked in a paint store, kind of like Travolta did in Saturday Night Fever.

    Which brings us to Kris Allen at the strip mall, which is unfair since Jammin’ Java in the DC suburbs is an intimate 200 person club in the middle of one of the country’s most prosperous areas.  And while Carrie and Kelly play for 20,000 and Lambert and Hudson play for 2,000, Kris Allen didn’t sell out his 200.

    He is a charming singer, a man you could listen to for a long time, and finding nothing offensive, be motivated by more than a tune or two.   And yet with two Top 20 singles to his credit, Allen dipped often into the Idol gimmick of re-interpreting popular songs.  David Guetta’s Titanium became a well done folk shuffle while medleys included songs like When Doves Cry and fun.’s We Are Young combined with George Michael’s Faith.   Allen’s band was in good form and augmented by a new member after the Idol winner broke his arm in a car accident several weeks ago and can’t play guitar.

    Still, one looks at an artist like Allen with a max gross of under $6,000 for this gig, even counting Meet & Greet ticket upgrades,  and wonders if Idol built the wrong artist or the public is simply tired of Allen, Cook & Company’s pleasant tunes.   Allen is a smart performer as befits his veteran status, and watching any artist support themselves while living their dream is great.    nd Allen is still young enough to talk about remembering his father listening to Garth Brooks’ The River, a comment that made me feel older than Yoda.  Have a look at the video for a beautiful version a capella version of the song following this piece.

    We’ve long ago stopped idolizing the winners.  Even the judges are suspect this year.

    Perhaps Idol tumbles to become a Top 10 show, still an entertainment juggernaut.

    But the competition’s winner from three years ago shouldn’t be playing a small venue four doors down from Jerry’s Subs.

  • Shazam!

    This free musical app is pure magic!

    Picture this.  It’s morning.  You are sitting at your favorite coffee bar, sipping your favorite hot beverage.  You like this coffee bar because they always play cool music and offer free WiFi.  So many times, you’ve heard songs you’ve loved in this coffee bar.  So many times, you’ve left the place carrying a to-go cup, humming one of those cool songs you heard in there, wondering what the title was and who sings it. Sound familiar to you?  It does to me.
    Shazam

    I remember several years ago when my husband and I lived near Fairfax, Virginia.  We were eating lunch in this great Tex Mex restaurant and they were playing blues.  I like blues, but am not as familiar with blues artists as I am other styles of music.  Suddenly, I heard this really cool blues version of “Folsom Prison Blues”, a song made famous by Johnny Cash.  I liked it so much that I wanted it in my own music library.  At that time, I wasn’t downloading music; I was still buying CDs.  We went to the local Border’s and I started searching the blues section, starting with Keb ‘Mo’, the singer I thought it was.  We ended up leaving Border’s with several new CDs, but none of them had that really cool blues version of “Folsom Prison Blues” on it.

    That scenario would probably not be an issue for me today, thanks to a free smartphone app called Shazam.  I discovered Shazam on one of my favorite online communities.  It’s available for a variety of different devices including iPhone, iPad, iTouch, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry, just to name a few.  Once you download it to your device, your days of wondering who sang that cool song are mostly over.  With the touch of a button, Shazam will “listen” to the music on a television show, in a bar, or at a restaurant.  It will then identify the song and the artist, tag it, and give you the opportunity to purchase the song from iTunes.

    I recently had the opportunity to play with Shazam quite a bit over a couple of very enjoyable hours at a pub in Edinburgh, Scotland.  My husband and I were there on vacation, enjoying lunch and a couple of pints.  The bar had free WiFi, which I had turned on.  Suddenly, I heard some very exciting British rock that I had not been exposed to before.  I turned on Shazam and pretty soon, I had identified several songs that I would download when I got back to the States!

    Shazam is not foolproof.  You have to have either a WiFi or cellphone connection in order to use Shazam.  When we visited a pub in Glasgow, Scotland, I heard some awesome music I would have liked to identify, but I didn’t have WiFi, so I couldn’t.  Shazam can still “listen” to the music and try to identify it later when you have a connection.  And sometimes Shazam can’t identify the music at all.  I have found that most popular songs are easily tagged, but sometimes Shazam does get stumped.  The free version of Shazam runs ads; you can avoid them by upgrading to Shazam Encore, which costs $6.99.  Shazam Encore also offers other features that are not available on the free version.

    I have really enjoyed discovering new music with Shazam. It’s the perfect app for music lovers who want to broaden their horizons!

  • #41 album of 2012 – Wing Beat Fantastic by Mike Keneally (with Andy Partridge)

    #41 album of 2012 – Wing Beat Fantastic by Mike Keneally (with Andy Partridge)

    Artist: Mike Keneally (with Andy Partridge)

    Album: Wing Beat Fantastic

    First, I got two careers to quickly summarize here. Mike Keneally — former “stunt guitarist” for Frank Zappa’s touring band — comes across as a friendly, goofy man who simply happens, by dint of hours a day of practice, to be a jaw-droppingly brilliant guitarist. His playing has gotten keneally_wing_beatmore understated and subtle over his solo career. This matches the trend in his songwriting, which has developed steadily more pop/jazz sophistication (which to some extent is a shame; his Potato and Live in Japan, from 1998 and 2000 when his albums were by “Mike Keneally and Beer for Dolphins“, are two of the most gloriously catchy hair-metal songs I’ve ever heard).

    Andy Partridge was the primary singer, songwriter, and arranger for XTC, a band I sometimes think of as what the Beatles would have become if they’d started out in 1978, forced to react — not only to punk and New Wave and Peter Gabriel’s musicology tours — but to the awesome challenge of being a pop band trying to out-innovate the Beatles. Partridge has claimed, plausibly (judging by their first couple of albums), that the origin of XTC’s distinct melodic style was an accident: that he and Colin Moulding simply learned the “wrong” set of three basic chords. Be this as it may, they developed this non-standard base into increasingly lavish tunes that, however unorthodox, nonetheless inspired genuine hit songs: Senses Working Overtime, Dead God, Mayor of Simpleton, the Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead. Then they vanished in 1993, on strike against their label; returned with two indie albums in 1999/2000; and vanished again.

    Until now, with Mike Keneally’s Wing Beat Fantastic, where the cover and Amazon listing both announce “Songs written by Mike Keneally & Andy Partridge”. I hadn’t noticed that Keneally’s and Partridge’s melodic styles were converging, but the resulting album feels natural for both of them, part Keneally’s acoustic Wooden Smoke (with its emphasis on elaborate vocal arrangements and headphone-listening sonic detail), part XTC’s fussily orchestrated Nonsuch. Or to bring in outside comparisons: I’m Raining Here, Inside is a fluid single fusing Billy Joel’s rock strut with the lovely elusiveness of Radiohead’s In Rainbows. Wing Beat Fantastic is like half-a-dozen late-Beatles stripped-down ballads transposed and stitched together into one complex creation. You Kill Me blends several styles of guitar-driven classic rock — some Thin Lizzy, some Who, some Yes, some Dire Straits, some Sesame Street — not all in 4/4 time.

    The guitar — except on You Kill Me — is de-emphasized. The quiet That’s Why I Have No Name is build on ghostly voices, low rumbling piano, and oscillating synthesizer. Your House is mostly a piano ballad, qualified to be covered by lounge singers for the next century. Miracle Woman and Man has one strikingly agile and expressive acoustic guitar solo at the end, but otherwise its forceful strums are notable mainly for the unusual chord progressions and halting-then-fluid-then-halting rhythms, and there’s a Chick Corea-like jazz fusion keyboard solo. Bobeau‘s really acrobatic feature is Keneally’s singing.

    The lyrics are very good, and while I make no attributions — Keneally’s a very good lyricist — the co-written words feel more Andy Partridge to me.

    * Some are happily romantic: “Wing beat fantastic: I want you in my backyard, tucking twigs and twine. Rising here and diving there, we’ll vanish, make ’em wonder where. Both evading cast and snare, we’ll emigrate to regions rare”.

    * Some are self-conscious: “What if you should see me here? I’d whirl blue and disappear”.

    * Some are lonely, emotions protected only by the search for the perfect metaphor: “My blue umbrella is no use: I’m raining here inside. Salt water flowing endlessly, just adding to the tide. Since you’ve gone, no light has shone; I’m drowning in my pride”.

    * Some are socially aware and indignant: “You kill me, with your cheap AK and your ‘Let us spray’. You kill me, with your oily games and your gift of flames. You kill me, with your ‘Praise the Lord!’ and your waterboard… I don’t mean to vote for you, but your machine will fix it so I do”.

    It adds up to a writing style I’ve recognized and largely admired for half my life. In whatever format, and with whatever help, I’m happy to have it back.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!