Sprinting my way to nothingness

Ladies and germs the madness is underway. American Idol's top 12 dudes squared off last night. Simon defaulted to saying that performances were unoriginal or safe, with the exception of the bobblehead who took a butcher knife to the Gavin DeGraw song.

It seems to me that every time there's a movie about the music industry, Ray or Walk the Line for instance, we hear the music industry execs talk about the importance of having your own sound and being an individual. American Idol is apparently also looking for new ground to be broken. My experience with the music industry has been that being "new" is right above the importance of shoe size to most in the music industry. E.G. in "I'm Trying to Break Your Heart" Wilco gets dropped because (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have a copy of that movie handy) the album doesn't tell you exactly who it's for and how many copies it will sell. When my band Overground was shopped to record labels we were "too jazzy" for the rock labels and "too rock" for the jazz labels. One A&R guy (these are the people that are more or less responsible for signing new talent) lamented being at the place where art and commerce intersect, and I doubt he was alone. Point being: if American Idol is really looking to break new ground, that's great! They have the biggest microphone and the biggest stage in the industry right now. I hope they do something great with it (and I hope his name is Brandon Rogers).

I've heard musicians scoff at A.I. for being a factory of cookie cutter artists and a symbol of all that's wrong with the music business. I have to mostly disagree. Here's the irony of the show. Let's make a brief list of the actual American Idols of rock and pop: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Elliott Smith, Kurt Cobain. Of that list, only Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and maybe Elvis would make it through to Hollywood week! It would be pretty bland to exist in a world where only the most virtuosic, or completely terrible singers can be heard. But there absolutely should be a part of the world where the most talented, show stopping singers can make it "to the top". If they're encouraged to be unique all the better. My friend Brandon Rogers is classically trained. Maybe he'll bust a mash-up of Puccini and P. Diddy on that ass and then we'll see who's who.

Anywah, I'm happy that they're pushing Brandon and judging him at a higher standard because he's an artist and he has it in his bones to transcend this competition and himself and make great music. We get to watch it on TV. That does not suck.

By the by, the text message voting thing is totally insane. And, now that I googled it, my 500 text messages are invalid?!!?!? You can only text message vote if you have a cingular phone. I have a Treo 650 on the Sprint network. I set up a text message template. I had to press two buttons and I could send approximately 30 text messages a minute. I had family members call in and they got through once or twice after repeated dialings. This sucks. It takes about 100 times as long to vote once on the phone as it does to send the randyforsaken text message. Why can't the Apple iPhone (only for use on the Cingular network) already be available and in my possession so I can ram home 100 text messages a minute?!

On the other hand... Maybe we can do the Presidential election like this. Vote as many times as you want if you have a cingular phone. Aiken/Obama '08!