OT: American Idol

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jojo68
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Post by jojo68 » Thu May 28, 2009 5:01 pm

As a musician I think American Idol is a f***ing joke ! F**k American Idol. Paula Abdul is a JUDGE ????? A chick who's ONLY talent is looking good and dancing ??? LOL :lol:

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Post by MaxRossell » Thu May 28, 2009 6:02 pm

Asphalt Jungle wrote:
MaxRossell wrote:That last bit in bold is deeply ironic, do you not think? You can't honestly find it asinine that I describe fans of this type of show as unquestioning morons, and then advise me to think less in order to back up your point.

My comments are generalisations only in the sense that it's a generalisation to say that everyone who likes M&Ms has a taste for refined sugar. The selection process involved in these shows is a systematic peer-approved search for diluted mediocrity in order to derive maximum profit from a lowest common denominator. The only talent available is that of the marketeers (if an all-consuming eagerness to actively devalue an art form for the sake of money can be described as "talent"). The only humour on offer is that of the producers and judges, who are laughing all the way to the bank.

If you derive some sort of entertainment value from the shows, then more power to you. But if you genuinely believe that there's even a vague connection between musical talent and the kind of sanitised fast-food commercial jingles these passionless preening fame-hungry idiots who volunteered for this trash are performing, then I'd invite you to start thinking more.


Well, yes, I suppose my statement would be ironic for one that is reading way too much into the subject. Simple entertainment. It's all just for entertainments sake, and to globally describe a person that enjoys this type of show as an unquestioning moron is, frankly, an insult to tens of millions of people. But, I'm sure you would consider them all wrong. How interesting.
In your opinion I'm reading too much into the subject, in my opinion you're not reading enough into it. I guess I just can't help engaging my brain. And when you think about stuff like this, you realise remarkably quickly that it's not just for the sake of entertainment. Quite apart from the fact that I've found more entertaining things clogging my drains, when someone builds up a gaudy pile of crap based on lies directed at shallow populist aspirations and airs the stinking result at me, fully expecting me to applaud like a mentally defective toddler every time one of the vacuous cretins they're exploiting delivers yet another pale rendition of a Gloria Estefan "classic", they spectacularly fail to entertain me. And that's before I even get into the obscene amount of cash the producers of these stupid, pointless shows are sucking out of the viewers.

I've said worse things about tens of millions of people than that they're idiots for endorsing a TV show that is a direct insult to their intelligence. And as long as people continue to goggle in admiration at a procession of losers with dollar signs where their souls should be, I'll likely continue to say those kinds of things.
Likewise, you must consider classic rock-n-roll or R&B to be "sanitized fas-food commercial jingles"......have you even seen the show? Or, are you just calling the shots form your bitter armchair? Sure, I agree that it's all for the sake of feeding the cash cow, but the music being performed is nothing close to how you describe it. It is what it is, try not to think too hard about it.
There you go again with your "try not to think". This may come as a surprise to you, but some of us were educated to use our brains as much as possible, and were taught that actively avoiding thinking is tantamount to deliberate stupidity. When you say "try not to think", what you're saying is "accept whatever's put in front of you, be gullible, don't question anything, let them manipulate you however they want." That might come naturally to you, but to me the concept is about as pathetic as volunteering for a lobotomy.
Thanks for the invite, but I do plenty of thinking in my real life....I try not to think too much about how American Idol is destroying the sensibilities of the masses on my free time.
So why are you standing up to defend it? You willingly admit that you actively avoid applying judgement to the crap you're inflicting upon your brain, and yet you're contradicting those who do judge it? How do you know it's so great if you haven't even bothered to intellectually process it? What gives you the right, having as you say not put any thought into it, to argue with those who have?
Talent? You and I clearly have two different ideas about talent. We, as guitar players, likely hold players like Eddie Van Halen or Earl Klugh in high regard and would most likely describe them as talented. If you could conjure the same licks and feel (or...gasp....actually expand on it) as those two players and create the illusion for your audience that the original player was playing the instrument, would you consider yourself a talentless hack? Probably not. I fail to see how this is any different with vocals.

Just my two coppers.
Yeah, sorry, for me the idea of some mall-creature with self-worth issues whining his way through a piss-weak cover of Aerosmith's already desperately trite and insipid theme from Armageddon doesn't live up to my expectations of what talent should look like. Maybe I'm just elitist, but a bunch of 90210 extras bleating Barry Manilow covers for the approval of a failed 80s pop diva and a guy whose career peak prior to this horsesh*t was producing Power Rangers records, completely fails to create even the vague illusion that I'm witnessing a budding source of talent.

Oh, yeah, so some of them can carry a tune. Some of them even screw up their faces with counterfetit emotion while they do it. But I have no respect whatsoever for people who have that relatively banal ability, if at the first opportunity they allow it to be publicly examined by pantomime hate-figures in exchange for a sniff of the music industry purse.

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Post by Bandeapart » Thu May 28, 2009 6:05 pm

jojo68 wrote: Paula Abdul is a JUDGE ????? A chick who's ONLY talent is looking good and dancing ??? LOL :lol:

I think you meant only talent WAS.
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Post by xTRUTHOFMYYOUTHx » Thu May 28, 2009 6:38 pm

Asphalt Jungle wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvwcJUhIa0U

The guy is not just some random chump off the street. He has serious talent, and....dare I say it....he has "it". The guy oozes charisma, is uber confident, has a unique style and vision, and can sing his tail off.

As for the show, it is what it is. It wouldn't hold peoples attention if they allowed nothing but original music. Besides, that's not the point. The show isn't about who can write the best song....it's about vocal ability, and vocal ability only. The other things that each individual bring to it are what sets the contestants apart.
man, my best friend has been doin plays since he was 8 and looks alot better on the stage than lambert does. all that video proves is that hes just another theatre geek. sure, he'll have more of a voice than alot of people ever will, but hes not doing anything new and he doesnt sound different than any other actor in the theatre.
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Post by Drdos » Thu May 28, 2009 6:44 pm

Bandeapart wrote:
jojo68 wrote: Paula Abdul is a JUDGE ????? A chick who's ONLY talent is looking good and dancing ??? LOL :lol:

I think you meant only talent WAS.
Yeah cause she looks kindah like a Crack Ho, and I'm sure she doesn't dance well on drugs! :D
Vince

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Post by jojo68 » Thu May 28, 2009 7:11 pm

Bandeapart wrote:
jojo68 wrote: Paula Abdul is a JUDGE ????? A chick who's ONLY talent is looking good and dancing ??? LOL :lol:

I think you meant only talent WAS.
:lol:

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Post by bassdrop » Thu May 28, 2009 7:13 pm

Wow, this debate has become far more entertaining than Idol ever was!

As I was mentioning earlier, I have found it entertaining and humorous in many ways, but rarely do I go, "Wow, that guy was really doing something there". In that regard, it truly is pathetic especially near the end of the finals as the desperation and stress build. The best are the first shows of the season where everyday people try out that can't even fake being good- although it's really best to Tivo it so you can skip over the ridiculous sob stories of "I grew up on this here pig farm and we ain't got no indoor plumbin' or nothin' so I can't even sing in the shower"- everything in the middle is mostly really bad. There's been two black female singers that were pretty good and neither of them were Fantasia- she is absolutely horrible. People often tend to confuse the intensity of the performance with overall quality- and with her it won her the championship.

Music is an art form that can never be encapsulated in a pedantic competition format like Idol. Because, guess what, anyone that's really good, would never try out in the first place, because they risk losing any modicum of integrity they had. It is a last resort for folks that have convinced themselves that there's no other way to break in. You have to remember that Idol is reality TV first, and everything artistic is a distant second.
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Post by xTRUTHOFMYYOUTHx » Thu May 28, 2009 7:23 pm

bassdrop wrote:
Music is an art form that can never be encapsulated in a pedantic competition format like Idol. Because, guess what, anyone that's really good, would never try out in the first place, because they risk losing any modicum of integrity they had. It is a last resort for folks that have convinced themselves that there's no other way to break in. You have to remember that Idol is reality TV first, and everything artistic is a distant second.
that goes along with a thought i had yesterday which was:
if these people are so talented...why wouldnt they be in the business already?

i just think its funny that they are supposedly america's "idol," yet they had to be searched for instead of being found out.
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Post by Asphalt Jungle » Thu May 28, 2009 7:25 pm

MaxRossell wrote:
Asphalt Jungle wrote:
MaxRossell wrote:That last bit in bold is deeply ironic, do you not think? You can't honestly find it asinine that I describe fans of this type of show as unquestioning morons, and then advise me to think less in order to back up your point.

My comments are generalisations only in the sense that it's a generalisation to say that everyone who likes M&Ms has a taste for refined sugar. The selection process involved in these shows is a systematic peer-approved search for diluted mediocrity in order to derive maximum profit from a lowest common denominator. The only talent available is that of the marketeers (if an all-consuming eagerness to actively devalue an art form for the sake of money can be described as "talent"). The only humour on offer is that of the producers and judges, who are laughing all the way to the bank.

If you derive some sort of entertainment value from the shows, then more power to you. But if you genuinely believe that there's even a vague connection between musical talent and the kind of sanitised fast-food commercial jingles these passionless preening fame-hungry idiots who volunteered for this trash are performing, then I'd invite you to start thinking more.


Well, yes, I suppose my statement would be ironic for one that is reading way too much into the subject. Simple entertainment. It's all just for entertainments sake, and to globally describe a person that enjoys this type of show as an unquestioning moron is, frankly, an insult to tens of millions of people. But, I'm sure you would consider them all wrong. How interesting.
In your opinion I'm reading too much into the subject, in my opinion you're not reading enough into it. I guess I just can't help engaging my brain. And when you think about stuff like this, you realise remarkably quickly that it's not just for the sake of entertainment. Quite apart from the fact that I've found more entertaining things clogging my drains, when someone builds up a gaudy pile of crap based on lies directed at shallow populist aspirations and airs the stinking result at me, fully expecting me to applaud like a mentally defective toddler every time one of the vacuous cretins they're exploiting delivers yet another pale rendition of a Gloria Estefan "classic", they spectacularly fail to entertain me. And that's before I even get into the obscene amount of cash the producers of these stupid, pointless shows are sucking out of the viewers.

I've said worse things about tens of millions of people than that they're idiots for endorsing a TV show that is a direct insult to their intelligence. And as long as people continue to goggle in admiration at a procession of losers with dollar signs where their souls should be, I'll likely continue to say those kinds of things.
Likewise, you must consider classic rock-n-roll or R&B to be "sanitized fas-food commercial jingles"......have you even seen the show? Or, are you just calling the shots form your bitter armchair? Sure, I agree that it's all for the sake of feeding the cash cow, but the music being performed is nothing close to how you describe it. It is what it is, try not to think too hard about it.
There you go again with your "try not to think". This may come as a surprise to you, but some of us were educated to use our brains as much as possible, and were taught that actively avoiding thinking is tantamount to deliberate stupidity. When you say "try not to think", what you're saying is "accept whatever's put in front of you, be gullible, don't question anything, let them manipulate you however they want." That might come naturally to you, but to me the concept is about as pathetic as volunteering for a lobotomy.
Thanks for the invite, but I do plenty of thinking in my real life....I try not to think too much about how American Idol is destroying the sensibilities of the masses on my free time.
So why are you standing up to defend it? You willingly admit that you actively avoid applying judgement to the crap you're inflicting upon your brain, and yet you're contradicting those who do judge it? How do you know it's so great if you haven't even bothered to intellectually process it? What gives you the right, having as you say not put any thought into it, to argue with those who have?
Talent? You and I clearly have two different ideas about talent. We, as guitar players, likely hold players like Eddie Van Halen or Earl Klugh in high regard and would most likely describe them as talented. If you could conjure the same licks and feel (or...gasp....actually expand on it) as those two players and create the illusion for your audience that the original player was playing the instrument, would you consider yourself a talentless hack? Probably not. I fail to see how this is any different with vocals.

Just my two coppers.
Yeah, sorry, for me the idea of some mall-creature with self-worth issues whining his way through a piss-weak cover of Aerosmith's already desperately trite and insipid theme from Armageddon doesn't live up to my expectations of what talent should look like. Maybe I'm just elitist, but a bunch of 90210 extras bleating Barry Manilow covers for the approval of a failed 80s pop diva and a guy whose career peak prior to this horsesh*t was producing Power Rangers records, completely fails to create even the vague illusion that I'm witnessing a budding source of talent.

Oh, yeah, so some of them can carry a tune. Some of them even screw up their faces with counterfetit emotion while they do it. But I have no respect whatsoever for people who have that relatively banal ability, if at the first opportunity they allow it to be publicly examined by pantomime hate-figures in exchange for a sniff of the music industry purse.

I read your comments, and I’m sorry to say, all I can picture is some miserable, bitter, unshaven, middle-aged man sitting in a dark, smoky room, shaking from the paranoia and hiding from the masses lest they come and rob him of his intellect with mass media designed to soften the brain and ultimately rob you of your soul.
Just because I comment that “I try not to think too much about itâ€
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Post by MaxRossell » Thu May 28, 2009 9:12 pm

Asphalt Jungle wrote:I read your comments, and I’m sorry to say, all I can picture is some miserable, bitter, unshaven, middle-aged man sitting in a dark, smoky room, shaking from the paranoia and hiding from the masses lest they come and rob him of his intellect with mass media designed to soften the brain and ultimately rob you of your soul.
Is that what you gotta do? Imagine anyone who dares to rain scorn on mindlessness as some sort of withdrawn, cantankerous Jean-Paul Sartre figure? Does that comfort you, or something?
Just because I comment that “I try not to think too much about itâ€

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Post by xTRUTHOFMYYOUTHx » Fri May 29, 2009 7:09 am

maxrossell's hittin it right on the head.
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Post by bassdrop » Fri May 29, 2009 12:41 pm

It's not that the viewers need to take it less seriously, but, IMO it works best as a comedy show, with the music being more incidental than anything else. It's the producers and singers that take the event and themselves so seriously that every performance comes off as thoroughly overwrought. Yet that has become Idol's imprimatur- cheesy, completely over-done and over-rated tripe (there have been very, very few exceptions to this fact). As such, any performance that actually approaches mediocrity is deemed perfection since it is always contrasted against true suck.

The only judge I have any respect for is Randy, because unlike the other two/three, he's actually produced a boatload of music, some of it good- unlike Simon, and he's a great bass player to boot. I don't know if you caught the show last year where he was in Mariah Carey's backing band. That was some kick-a$$ R&B and Randy was laying it down real thick. The house band is pretty good, too. You will hear some incredible fills from that drummer from time to time. But again, these are the treasures in a land-fill and I really can't blame anyone who doesn't have the patience to wait for them- I didn't this year. In fact, if it weren't for my wife I would have never watched it in the first place.

One thing I will disagree with is getting personal over this. There's no reason for it and as entertaining as it has been, I think this discussion has run its course, because after these last posts, it could get ugly. There doesn't seem to be anyone conceding the point, so we may all just have to agree to disagree.
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Post by Borderline Productions » Fri May 29, 2009 3:55 pm

Wow, this discussion is still going on!

Read the thread a few days ago and followed the link to videos. The kid can sing and can sing different styles. His pitch is dead on (unlike most of the contestants). Yes, he could sing in my band, and I would let him.

Most of the discussion is not whether he can sing, but about the show.

I don't have cable, so I only hear about it second-hand and watch an occasional youtube clip.

The show has a formula, and the contestants are trapped by that formula. Unfortunately, some of the most talented people get booted early. As Frank Zappa once said, "Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them in the ass."

Idol is baby cereal, you don't go there looking for prime rib. Occasionally (probably rarely) the real thing shows up there. This kid may be the real thing, he has the potential and nothing I've seen says contradicts that.

A little charisma, a good voice, and good musicality is what is needed, but often even that is not enough.

David Bazan did not excite me. Sorry, but folk singers need to stand out, like Greg Brown, who has a distinctive voice and writes memorable songs.
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Post by xTRUTHOFMYYOUTHx » Fri May 29, 2009 7:53 pm

Borderline Productions wrote:Wow, this discussion is still going on!

Read the thread a few days ago and followed the link to videos. The kid can sing and can sing different styles. His pitch is dead on (unlike most of the contestants). Yes, he could sing in my band, and I would let him.

Most of the discussion is not whether he can sing, but about the show.

I don't have cable, so I only hear about it second-hand and watch an occasional youtube clip.

The show has a formula, and the contestants are trapped by that formula. Unfortunately, some of the most talented people get booted early. As Frank Zappa once said, "Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them in the ass."

Idol is baby cereal, you don't go there looking for prime rib. Occasionally (probably rarely) the real thing shows up there. This kid may be the real thing, he has the potential and nothing I've seen says contradicts that.

A little charisma, a good voice, and good musicality is what is needed, but often even that is not enough.

David Bazan did not excite me. Sorry, but folk singers need to stand out, like Greg Brown, who has a distinctive voice and writes memorable songs.
im a little surprised to see 2 people that are not into bazan. i was hooked the first time i gave him a good listen. but theres more to him. hes an exceptional poet and writes perfect songs. and is one of very few left in the business that isnt all rock-star, hes a super nice guy and knows that hes just another person and not something special thats too good for everybody. but on the other hand- im not surprised because not everybody is going to like someone.
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Post by Winston » Sat May 30, 2009 5:39 am

I like neither Lambert nor Bazan... but Bazan was much more insufferable of the two.

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