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 eighth report:
Sixty Great American Reality Minutes in Three Sentences: Emo-goth fashion disasters Dot Dot Dot are sent home in favor of Denver and the Mile High Orchestra — presumably because Dot Dot Dot fans are too busy sinning on a Friday night to compete with all the Christian youth groups playing ping-pong, eating pizza and hitting the phone lines for Denver. The remaining bands played the hits of this week’s great American — er, British — songwriters, Queen! And now that there’s only four bands, the producers have to struggle to pad a full hour, so all the bands got to play original songs in the final half-hour (or so we think, since we, like everyone else, turned it off after they announced which band went home).
Best Great American Band: Pickin’ and winnin’ Clark Brothers took Dicko’s advice and added a rhythm section (including a barely audible bass player and a flat-haired, bandanna-clad drummer who looks like he was fired from Dot Dot Dot). Their cover of Queen’s “These Are the Days of Our Lives” was a mandolin-tweaked rave-up featuring not one, but two fiery fiddle solos. We also caught the Clark Brothers original song and the lyrics to their “back to the farm” track were really, really stupid. “Daddy was a preacher, swingin’ that old Bible belt.” Did you guys steal that one from Mad magazine? Anyway, everyone was bowled away by their bigger-than-life performance as per usual, but Dicko thought the lyrics made it a “crap song.”
Worst Great American Band: Light of Doom, apparently trying to capture some of Queen’s sense of theatrical bombast (or the Blue Man Group’s sense of theatrical bombast), come out playing the “We Will Rock You” beat on what appear to be four Japanese koto drums. It might have been pretty great if they had actually put some oomph behind it instead of just gently tapping a meek little “boom boom thwack” with some soft mallets. Oh, and totally botching the harmonies. And awkwardly trying to put on their guitars. And turning the rest of the song into ill-arranged, dumb-as-dirt, directionless blast of meathead metal.
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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
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