Idolator

Excellent BANDS ON THE RUN reset. Am I alone in remembering that as being kind of a kick-ass reality show?

I think Soulcracker has long since broken up. Effing careerists, not so much.

The worst part of the night had to be the rotting corpse of Barry Gibb performing. It sounded like a bad Aaron Neville impression...

"Anybody know what Flickerstick is up to these days?"

Still fighting to make "sunglasses in bars" happen; trashing other band's stages, as they've long since stopped affording new instruments of their own.

Does anyone else remember that show, maybe on VH1, where 3 or 4 different bands were arranged around a studio (much like Top of the Pops) and they had to play cover songs pretty much at the drop of a hat? I seem to remember Paul Schaffer being one of the judges, but I can't remember at all what it was called.

Ah ha! It was Cover Wars. I hope this Idol spin-off is better than that was, but it would be nice if Sebastian Bach was a judge on this new show too.

@Audif Jackson Winters III: I also enjoyed Bands On The Run - and we still get the occasional Flickerstick appearance out here in the DC area

Flickerstick plays Cleveland probably twice a year. At the Agora, no less.

Home of Rock'n'Roll. Gotta love it.

Is it just me or was "To Love Somebody" never sung in falsetto in the first place (especially on the chorus)? It seems that the years have left Barry Gibb without his full-throated voice. Too bad...

I still listen to Flickerstick. I thought Bands on the Run was a brilliant concept, so I am looking forward to this even though it looks a LOT less challenging (they don't appear to be making the bands drive from city to city in their own vans and do all their own promo work trying to get people to attend their shows).

I will ultimately be disappointed at the watered down crap that gets to the finals, just like on Idol itself.

Said it before, I'll say it again: one thing the Idol producers can feel good about this season is finally zapping the bad mojo from that
Season 3 kerfuffle with an all-black-women Bottom Three - the week that sent Jennifer Hudson home.

After a season where 75% of the top four were women of color, no one can accuse the show of inspiring America's worst racist, "they all look alike" tendencies.

Of course, Idol won't get any credit for this small milestone, since no one has a memory longer than two weeks when it comes to this show.

I loved Bands on the Run! The bands kind of sucked, but the concept was great and I was bummed out not to see it come back. I still have a couple of Soulcracker mp3s floating around in my collection - I thought "Staring at the Sun" was a good song, dagnabbit.

You are gonna eat your words when Blake ends up winning over Lakisha/Melina/Jordin. I, on the other hand, will only be crying.

I loved Bands on the Run. I still have "Beautiful" by Flickerstick on my iTunes, but I think I remember wanting the runner-up band to win more. I can't believe of all the reality shows VH1 shoves down our throats, they don't bring back the best one.

I watched Bands on the Run religiously. I remember it as my first experience with true reality show manipulation (wasn't Soulcracker in the "points" lead until they changed the scoring rules to almost gurantee Flickerstick the win?)

Saw Flickerstick on the post-show tour... wow, they are/were pretentious. The Soulcracker show a few weeks later ended with a fight between the lead singer and some drunk guy on South Street.

..all she needs is some chloroform, and she''l be mine

@blobby: Sorry, but no, I won't:

a) They've had two African-American winners, including one woman. No need for another to win to prove a black woman can.

b) I'm still rooting for Blake, out of post-David Brooksian regional pride. A blue-stater has to win this friggin' contest sometime, and homeboy is from Washington State. That's good enough for me.

If the all-around best singer should win, then obviously it should be Melinda, by a mile. But her album will make about as big a post-show impression as Taylor "My Dad's Golf Buddy" Hicks.

Lakisha, you are now free to go and munch on that Twinkie in Idol heaven

(Judges critiquing Barry Gibb's performance)

RANDY: Barry! Barry! Yo, check it out, it's funny you did this, because I was in the studio when this was laid down originally. A little pitchy at first, but you turned it around. America, the BEE GEES ARE BACK, dawg!

PAULA: It's...the way...you...we...you sang your little heart out, and you're just beautiful. I love you. (retarded hand clap)

SIMON: Rubbish. It was rubbish then, and it's still rubbish. You sounded like you had your bollocks caught in a bear trap. And I'm being kind.

@jhowlin: god knows what they would have said of Crazy Ole Diana Ross a few weeks back:

RANDY: Diana! Dirty Diana! Dawg. Old school, old school. You lost your voice entirely through the second and third verses but awesome at the end.

PAULA: I'm touched by your prescence. You are an angel. A black angel...but not like the angel of death or anything. More like an African-american angel of singing. I love you.

SIMON: You look and sound like a crack whore.

Bands on the Run, I caught one episode of that. Wasn't it sort of like The Amazing Race + rawk music? I'm totally down with that concept coming back. But VH-1 is a bunch of dopes, which is no surprise. I worked for them on some show called "You Rock!", which followed 3 hardcore fans competing to play onstage with their favorite musical artist. There were only five episodes and the artists were a hazy Rod Stewart, an in-love-with-herself Melissa Etheridge, the really pleasant but totally boring Matchbox 20, the Barenaked Ladies (oh damn, they are wacky don't you know), and most entertainingly...POISON! The behind the scenes footage on that would be dope, iirc...Rikki Rocket and Bret Michaels talking about Sergio Leone, CC DeVille (at all times), and that other guy whose name I forget. He just sort of sat around acting classy.

I'm not much into the music on American Idol, but I'm always interested to see if the winner can transcend the show to have a career on their own terms (we're at, what, 2 out of 5 on that? 3?)

I get that the album deal is the carrot-on-the-stick at the end of Karaoke Survivor, but really, does anyone here expect to see any of these people doing anything significant in a record store in two years' time other than stocking the shelves?

Puppy Dog Frat Boy will definitely make it to the final two.

LawnmowerMan says:
"The worst part of the night had to be the rotting corpse of Barry Gibb performing. It sounded like a bad Aaron Neville impression..."

Wow! I thought he was by far the best thing about last nights show. His voice was a little weaker than it used to be but it totally had the same character.

By the way, screw Melinda for dropping the "How can a loser ever win?" line from How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.

riverrun -

I was recently perusing the charts on the back of a Billboard-type mag, and there were no less than SEVEN Idol winners or finalists with a song on one chart or another.

Granted, Taylor Hicks was on an "Adult Contemporary Smootho Relax" type chart, and Ruben was on "Mild R&B Gospel" or some made-up thing, but still. SEVEN of them had singles out there that were selling and playing to someone. And Kelly Clarkson, with no current single, was not among the seven.

I think that's a pretty damn good track record of post-show success (more so for Cowell, Lythgoe, et al. who make landfills of money from the record deals, and just a bit for the poor singing monkeys.)

@ perdothegit

Okay maybe he wasn't the worst, but close. Blake's tuxedo t-shirt may get the edge, even though it clearly says "I want to be formal, but I'm here to party"

I should have clarified that I meant post-Idol superstars whose peak fame came after Idol. I think Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson are the only two who might fit that bill. Well, Clay Aiken maybe. But I don't want to think about him.

I think Soulcracker had a lot of potential, and some kick ass songs (40oz of Domestic Violence comes to mind), but they had that monster frat boy tool as the backup singer/cheerleader and he annoyed me to no end. At least the guys in Flickerstick were a genuine rock-and-roll mess of alcohol fueled bad ideas and some good songs.

@ revmatty -

Beastie! He was the Soulcracker jackass whose job it was to basically jump around and act like an idiot. Oh, man, it's all coming back to me, now.