
The producers of American Idol think they can find The Next Great American Band on TV (and no, they’re not talking about the next great Grand Funk Railroad). We think we can find some pleasure in this pursuit with our Rock Reality Show Recaps. Here’s our sixth report:
Two Great American Reality Hours in Three Sentences: Somehow-still-around bluegrass band Cliff Wagner and the Old No. 7 finally gets sent home after a nail-biting showdown with somehow-still-around goth-punk band Dot Dot Dot. The six remaining acts cover the Rolling Stones — Tres Bien notabably giving “Get Off My Cloud” a funky lilt and a Broadway key change. Also, Daniel from Light of Doom is revealed to be a freestyle walker.
Best Great American Band: Dicko may be getting tired of Sixwire’s all-harmonies-all-the-time platform, but America isn’t. Kicking up the Stones’ “The Last Time” a few bpm and adding their signature rock-twang, they wowed the judges (Dicko: “At last, some masculinity!”). But they still couldn’t touch the band to beat, the Clark Brothers. Their version of “Gimme Shelter” (played on a steel guitar shaped like a Flying V, no less) brought Vietnam-era terror, apocalypse and grief to a bunch of lazy Americans loafing at home on a Friday night. Plus, a dude who prays before he goes on stage made a electric steel neck slide sound like a bomb dropping. If only there was a huge clusterfuck of a war to make this really relevant!
Worst Great American Band: No one set it better than Denver himself: “How can we take [a Rolling Stones song] that is so edgy and so raw and just make it very much Denver and the Mile High Orchestra?” Obviously, by taking the edginess and rawness out of it, adding clinical horn blasts, horking a wack sax solo and doing the funk-lite schtick that Dicko’s been blasting them about for three weeks straight. Honestly their version of “I’m Free” sounded worse than the shit-tronica remix featured in a Chase credit card commercial ten minutes later in the show.

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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC.