Final Four: I Wanna Rock!

Rock Night on Idol was surprisingly painless.  I was expecting a giant stink-bomb, but aside from Gokey rewarding our VFTW voting block by taking a dump on the stage musically and physically it was a well-sung night.  Also, Idol duets was a long-time coming (and something I thought was a good idea several years ago.)  It definitely separates the men from the children, and both songs were well sung, if not really choice Duet Songs, but more on that later.

It didn't hurt that three of the Idols have a more rocking spirit.  I won't insult the wonderful "rock" genre by calling any one of the Idols a "rocker" like the show tends to brand them.  However if by "rock" you mean music that's not the usual Celine-Whitney-Phil Collins shit, then yes.  This show rocked.    

Oh, and for some reason the Producers absolutely BURIED Kris Allen.  

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Idol has the magical power to take any good music and boil it down to it's stereotypical mass-marketed essence and make it somehow evil.  But despite singing some of the all time great songs, they were vintage hits from over 30 years ago, so that they're impossible to ruin with the American Idol treatment.  For the purposes of this show, "Rock" means classic rock songs from the '70s that you've heard a million times on the radio and Guitar Hero variations.  And it was amusing for me to watch Simon squirm and pretend to like the music.  

On a humorous note, I read last week's People magazine where the Idols list their various musical influences.  It will surprise no one that Adam loves Freddie Mercury, Lil Rounds was a fan of Mary J. Blige and Allison is a fan of Pink.  At least these are real, professional musicians with a body of work that stretches back a few years.  But hilariously, Danny Gokey's favorite artist is... Elliott Yamin.  So in the history of music Gokey picks Elliott, a guy who sold 20 albums of his jazz/blues vocal ditherings and who wound up losing to Taylor Hicks.  That's just sad.  And funny.
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Adam Lambert -- "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin - 1970.

I will admit that a little part of me died tonight by hearing Led Zeppelin performed on Idol , even though Glambert did an adequate job approximating Robert Plant's ethereal wailing.  Adam hit the right notes but he was pretty reverential to the Rock Gods and sang the song fairly straight.  And sorry Kara, but singing rock songs on Idol doesn't make anybody "Rock Gods."  I like Adam as much as the average hetero male Idol viewer, but he's still a rock neophyte to me.

Still the fact that he sang the song, didn't make me hate it, and did it fairly well is worthy of applause.  Simon correctly declares it the best performance of the night before anyone else sang a note.  

GRADE: A -- Yeah, I know.  It was a pale imitation of the original, but we're grading on the Idol scale here.  And I'd rather hear a wan version of "Whole Lotta Love" one million times before I would ever choose to listen to a Mariah-Whitney-Celine song.

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Allison Iraheta -- "Cry Baby"  (originally written for Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters in 1963-- Thank you Wikipedia) but performed famously by Janis Joplin in 1970.

Allison gives an acceptable if forgettable performance.  Her voice is good and she hits her notes, but there was nothing exciting or vibrant about her performance.  Allison seems like she's checked out on Idol.  She talks back to Simon, defending her song choice (and she probably made the right pick) but she seems to be jogging in place, doing nothing exceptional and not really taking any chances since she blew me away in the early Hollywood weeks.  

GRADE: C --- Kara tries to prop up Allison's limp performance with "you have no personality, but you adopt a personality when you sing."  And then Allison sasses Simon with, "Maybe I should talk more."  No.  The magical formula is sing more, talk less, Allison.

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Kris Allen -- "Come Together" by the Beatles in 1969, and famously covered by the more "rockin'" band Aerosmith in 1978 for the execrable "Sgt. Pepper's..." movie.

Kris Allen brings his Jason Mraz (his People magazine-named influence) and Dave Matthews groove while playing guitar.  The performance was a little bit different and decently sung.  Not bad.

I didn't think the song was that great, Allen's thin voice is becoming a liability at this stage in the game.  But the judges, with no provocation destroyed Kris.  Hmm, are we all thinking a Gokey-Allison-Adam trio the Producers preferred finalists?  I think so.

Randy damns him with faint praise, saying "I wasn't blown away" but more importantly that "The vocals were weak, but that's not your thing anyways."  Wow, so Kris' pigeon-hole is "The weak-singing, forgettable, cute guy?"  

Simon calls it "boring and forgettable."  Now, I'm not disagreeing with Simon, but how come these weaknesses weren't brought up weeks ago?  Oh, right, I mentioned those things weeks ago.

GRADE: B -- I'm impressed with how Kris has survived this long on likability, Dave Matthews-ness, and pure gumption.

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Danny Gokey -- "Dream On" by Aerosmith in 1973 (but became a hit with a re-release in 1976).

I love how every week the judges apologetically tell Gokey that "this isn't your genre, dog."  Well, unless next week's theme is "Easy Listening Christian Songs" night, it ain't ever going to be "his genre."  

They teased us with a brief clip of Gokey in practice nailing the Steven Tyler shriek in the song, so I was actually expecting something good from the Goke-ster.  Thankfully he gave us something even BETTER, a down and dirty Awful-Good VFTW performance for the ages.  Gokey goes flat from the start and stays there.  He then quickly follows that by getting off-beat as well.  Also Gokey has NO MOVES or stage presence.  He lightly shifts from foot to foot as he desperately clings to the microphone to keep himself from sliding right off the stage... I think the dude has equilibrium problems.  Also, Gokey is wearing a suit vest and pin-stripe dress pants for an AEROSMITH SONG?!?!  

Then when he goes to the high note (I think Slash was setting Gokey up to fail by telling him that he absolutely had to nail the scream) Gokey totally misses on the Tyler shriek, but then throws in some godawful modulation in a vain attempt to approximate the real note, all while doing a dance move that I liken to taking a dump on-stage.  And because Gokey always has to be a douche and get the last word in, announces that he thought he nailed the note, but humbly suggests he'll have to watch the tape back.  He thought he was GOOD!

Then to continue the hilarity, Kara proves that she's an ignorant slut by idiotically suggesting that Gokey should've sung an "early Aerosmith" song like "Cryin'" or "Crazy."  I'm still laughing.  Yeah, they were never better than in the "early years" of 1993-94.

Kara clearly prefers the creepy, old, sell-out pussy Aerosmith to the young, vibrant pre-alcoholism, bad-ass Aerosmith.   

GRADE: FAIL -- But should be an A+ for Awesome, of course.
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And the Duets:

Gokey and Kris sing "Renegade" by Styx from 1978.  

This is one rocking song and Kris and Gokey do a good job.  Of course the producers kept any harmonizing to a bare minimum two measures in the whole song, but it sounded good.  I actually enjoyed this performance even though it's not a good duet song.

GRADE: Give 'em both an A -- The judges are gravely mistaken by saying Gokey out-sang Kris (yet another example of throwing Kris under the bus tonight.)  What does the dude have to do?  He has to share the stage with Gokey-Mania, and although "vocals aren't his thing" he sounded pretty good going toe to to with the Gokester.  

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Allison and Adam sing "Slow Ride" by Foghat in 1975.

This is an even worse Duet song.  It's really just a jam song with the words "Slow ride, take it easy" sung over and over while the band is tripping on shrooms and jams for about 20 minutes.  Also the vocals aren't challenging and there's zero harmonizing.  For added comic effect, both of them are dressed ridiculously and are their spastic dancing never meshes.  Allison is even wearing her second skin leather pants from earlier, but threw on a skirt over them because it's take about an hour to cut her out of those bad boys. 

Simon says this song saved Allison (really?) as he throws Kris under the bus yet again.  

GRADE: C+
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I'd say overall Adam was the most believable "rocker" but Kris did pretty well, and if the genre was "Late '90s Mellow Jam Hits" Kris would've won easily.  And he's the only one who had the balls to jam with Slash.

So the show was all rock, no ballads.  Solid episode, I say.

--Chan

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