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  • American Idol Season 8 – Please End The Show On Time Tonight

    After last night’s debacle where anyone who wasn’t watching live and was DVRing the show missed Adam Lambert’s performance, they better have something good up their sleeve tonight.

    Ryno Seacrest put a YouTube video of the performance up on his blog, but of course, it was taken down. Even Ryno Seacrest can’t put one over on the YouTube police.

    (By the way, it’s getting really hard to put one over the YouTube police these days.)

    Kellie Pickler and Kid Rock
    Kellie Pickler and Kid Rock
    Seacrest is out already promising performances from Flo Rida and Kellie Pickler. Remember how I said they better have something good up their sleeve tonight? Well, it’s already a fail. Next you’re going to tell me that Allison is leaving tonight. She better not be.

    After all the timing issues they had last night, they decided to bring out Frankie Avalon to sing. Three performances tonight?

    On Ryno’s Twitter page, he posted this comment:

    Frankie avalon almost didn’t go on because he had an allergic reaction…paramedics were called. Close call but we love him!

    You can follow our Twitter feed here.

    Looks like Frankie was ok. You couldn’t tell anything was wrong when he was on stage.

    For some reason, the group song is Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. Only Adam really seemed at home singing that song. I’m guessing he knows it by heart.

    Ryan asks Adam, Anoop, and Kris to stand up.

    Randall says that Adam was the bomb last night. Kara and Paula loved him as well. Adam is safe. Kris is safe and Anoop is in the bottom three.

    Flo Rida is on stage performing something resembling music. I understood why Kanye West was singing horribly on this show a few weeks ago. He’s a superstar and probably brought some extra eye balls. I didn’t quite get Lady Gaga, only because she’s not a superstar yet. She was just opening up for the New Kids On The Block during their concert run earlier last summer. I absolutely don’t get why Flo Rida is on my TV. This ain’t 106 & Park. And my name ain’t AJ. Thankfully I was able to fast forward through most of that.

    Someone needs to steroid test that dude too.

    Danny and Matt are safe. Scottie Mac is next. And he’s in the bottom three. The last person in the bottom three is between Allison and Lil. Lil is in the bottom three.

    At least you can give America credit for getting the bottom three right this week.

    Simon says there’s one contestant in the bottom three who they’d think about saving.

    Kellie comes out and sings a nice little ditty. Is it me or is she trying very hard to look like Carrie Underwood?

    Lil Rounds is safe. Either Scottie Mac or Anoop Doggy Dog is going home tonight.

    Anoop is safe and Scottie Mac has to sing for his American Idol life.

    I highly doubt that he’s going to be saved, but you have to give the guy credit. He wasn’t only liked because he was the feel good story of the season. He was liked because he had a great sense of humor about everything and showed a ton of humility and class on that stage when some of those contestants take themselves way too seriously.

    Simon says two of the judges think he should stay and two think he can go. I’m going to guess that Paula and my wife Kara want him to stay. Simon tells him it’s the end of the road for him.

    How can you not like that guy? Even though I won’t miss him as a performer, I’ll miss him as a guy to root for.

    Carrie Underwood sings him back to home sweet home.

    Seacrest out!

    Photo by Army.mil and shared via creative commons

  • Shoulda Been a Hit: “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”

    jordanCovering a Prince song is a dicey proposition. Not only with the man himself, as he’s not terribly fond of others recording his music, but…how can you outdo Prince? A couple of artists have gotten it right. Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You” is better than the original, as was Sinead O’ Connor’s take on “Nothing Compares 2 U”, which he wrote for The Family back in ’85. That said, for every “When You Were Mine” by Cyndi Lauper, there’s a “When Doves Cry” by Ginuwine (ugh) or “Purple Rain” by LeAnn Rimes (double ugh…and yes, LeAnn Rimes re-recorded “Purple Rain”. Go listen if you think you have the stomach for it).

    So, the last thing you’d imagine would be a credible Prince cover by a former New Kid on the Block, right?

    “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” was one of my favorite songs from Prince’s magnum opus, “Sign ‘O the Times”. It’s a near-perfect slice of pop-rock with an interesting narrative and some fantastic guitar playing (although it’s kind of buried in the mix). It’s deceptively peppy, considering the subject matter (Prince meets unhappy girl at a bar, girl falls in love, Prince says hey, I’m good for a quickie but I’m not the type that’ll stick around forever). Knight’s version (which you can find on his 1999 solo debut-I believe it’s out of print but you can find copies cheap online) completely recasts the song as a sorrowful ballad, bringing out the heartbreak of the lyrics. It’s a pretty ballsy move, but it works. It’s also helpful that Jordan doesn’t try to oversell the song, instead letting the story unfold without adding any extra drama to an already dramatic scenario.

    Somehow, despite the fact that it was the follow-up to a Top 10, Platinum single (“Give it to You”), “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” didn’t chart. Perhaps the stigma of being an ex-NKOTB prevented the song from doing so (it certainly prevented a lot of people from taking the album seriously, which is a bad move, because the album is a satisfying slice of blue-eyed soul that beats the pants off of both Justin Timberlake albums and stands head to head with all three Robin Thicke albums…probably because Thicke co-wrote and co-produced almost this entire album), but this is one that definitely should have been a bigger hit than it was.

    I’d love to post Prince’s original, but I might get drawn and quartered by the man himself if I do. Besides, if a copy of “Sign O’ the Times” isn’t in your record collection, you should be ashamed of yourself. However, here’s the video of Jordan’s version. Turn your volume up.


    I could never take the place of your man • Jordan Knight – Jordan Knight

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #30: Jackboots & Kilt

    Napoleon XIV's 1966 novelty hit, "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!"

    NAPOLEON XIV  “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!”  b/w “Photogenic, Schizophrenic You” (Eric Records #195, early-’80’s reissue.  Originally released on Warner Bros. #5831, Summer 1966)

    When it comes to artistic integrity, few social groups get maligned as much as the mentally challenged.  Even in this enlightened era of advanced education, when extensive research is being done to comprehend such phenomena as autism, terms like “outsider” still separate the layers of our ability to understand the deeper workings of the human brain.  Probably out of fear.  Fear of discovering that, one way or another, we are all outsiders.

    Early rock performers like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis clearly understood the minds of the mentally challenged.  They knew that there was a little bit of crazy in all of us, that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and that all we had to do was just open up and let it out.  Few later rockers understood this better than The Cramps’ late leader, Lux Interior, whose pure joy in performing for mental patients is chronicled in the stunning Live At Napa State Mental Hospital DVD.  “Finally!” you can imagine the patients thinking as they jump around to the band’s pounding, distorted rockabilly, “Music for ME!  Music that speaks to ME!”

    "...to the funny farm..."

    Back in the Summer of ’66, one record ratcheted up the insanity to previously unprecedented levels when 28-year-old New Yorker Jerry Samuels (under the nom-de-straitjacket, Napoleon XIV) recorded a totally batshit spoken-word ode to a misbehaving, runaway pup.  Released on Warner Bros., it sped to the top of the charts thanks to tons of airplay and just plain utter “gotta-hear-it-to-believe-it” ridiculousness.  Behold the psycho-chaotic masterpiece of marching-band drums, helium vocals and ambulance sirens that is, “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!”

    Play \”They\’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!\” by Napoleon XIV

    Not psychotic enough for ya?  Check out the B-side of the original Warners 45, “!aah-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er’yehT” (which is — you guessed it! — the A-side backwards).

    yalP \”!aah-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er\’yehT\” yb VIX noelopaN

    Great fun on jukeboxes.  Anyway, my early-’80’s Eric Records (the pre-Rhino Rhino) pressing of ” They’re Coming…” is backed with a later Samuels composition, “Photogenic Schizophrenic You.”  Slightly more melodic and ballad-like than the A-side, “Photo-Schizo” once again employs the device of the narrator blaming the cause of his mental illness on that of another, this time a gorgeous, but of course completely multiplexed, blonde (a stone from which modern gag writers still manage to wring blood).

    Play \”Photogenic, Schizophrenic You\” by Napoleon XIV

    “They’re Coming…” shot to #3 on the Billboard singles chart before insensitivity protests from advocacy groups wiped out the airplay entirely.  Nonplussed, Samuels went on to record two whole albums of nuthouse-inspired novelty tracks for Warners.  These days, like a modern Broadway Danny Rose, he runs the successful Philly-based Jerry Samuels Talent Agency, booking  juggling clowns and one-man-bands into homes for the physically and mentally challenged.  Viva Napoleon!

    NEXT WEEK: I’m not a sailor, I’m the captain.