You got to lose to know how to win

Never mind the lateness, here’s the RockStar:INXS recap from the 23rd of August! (and before we start, the good news is that I have DiVoed the show on the 23rd and the 24th. The bad news is that the 1/2 hour show was not taped on Sunday. So I only have a very brief recap of what happened that night.)

So! Performance show time. Brooke Burke was taking a nap before the show because she comes onstage in her nightie. She also threw on some ginormous bracelets to distract us from realizing that she’s in her nightie. Say hi to INXS minus Garry Garry Beers (attending to a personal matter)! Hi to Dave ‘evil hearted you’ Navarro! Noisemaking ensues. Hi final seven! One of them will really become the lead singer of INXS, honest! So on the short show Dave showed up at the mansion (smoking a cig, naturally) and told them they all had to write their own songs. Some were uneasy (Jordis) and some were just fine (J!D!). Some needed other’s help (Suzie). Then on song day they were given five songs so that only two of them would actually get to sing their original compositions. They picked Deanna and Mig’s name out of a hat to do their own songs. Suzie then changes her mind and begs Mig and Deanna to give her the chance to do her own song. Mig felt uncertain, Ty helped Deanna and turned off the house band in doing so. The house band also didn’t think that Mig’s song was cohesive although it improved.

Back to the show. Dave asks Suzie about picking names out of a hat. She really wanted to do an original song for INXS but doesn’t get to this week. Thus the danger of pulling names out of a hat. What does Mig think? He kept his song because he wants to show he really wants to win this competition. But what about J!D!, doesn’t he want to show off his songwriting skillz? He says that when he saw the songs up there (groups like The Rolling Stones and Foreigner!) he wanted to impress the ‘rock’ crowd with a ‘rock’ song. Say Marty, you sure like those modern songs, eh? He says that INXS invented the ‘dance rock thing’ in the late Eighties and the sound is coming back around with bands like The Killers so he wanted to show he’s current. Good answer, Marty! Commercial time.

Suzie interviews that she’s sick of being in the bottom three and starts off the show with (duh) ‘Start Me Up’. She’s sporting a black military jacket, black high boots, pink pants, wide braided belt. She sounds good and growly singing (though I noticed they took out the ‘make a dead man come’ line out). She does the standard walk-stop-grind,-walk-stop stage moves including a long frontal grind on the guitar player (make sure he still has room to play, Suzie!). Then she’s into the audience and up in the peanut gallery singing with the other six contestants. Then she does a swan-fall into the audience, who thankfully catches her, flip her over and push her back up. Good stuff. Dave is really impressed and is shocked that she’s ever been in the bottom three. Jon Farriss thinks she was vocally exceptional tonight. Tim Farriss thought she looked and sounded like she meant business.

J!D! is up now. He thinks if INXS heard his original song, they would have thought it was one of the best things they had ever heard on the stage. But instead he’s doing Foreigner’s ‘Cold as Ice’ J!D! Fortune! style. By this I meant sped up and in a lower key. J!D! is closing his eyes singing but his face is twitching like he’s going to sneeze. The look for him tonight is cream leather jacket, grey shirt completely open, grey pants, much torso. The stage move is squat-threaten to pull the pants down with the thumb- shift back and forth. It’s interesting how when J!D! is performing they never show what the other contestants are doing reaction-wise. I’d like to think they are trying to stifle laughter. Now he’s doing a deep squat and threatening a girl in the audience with the pointed finger move. It comes off neither sexy nor cool, just obnoxious. Just J!D! Dave thinks he’s very good and confident but he feels some of the notes of the song were missing. J!D! claims it was just his interpretation of it and he was ‘just jamming out on that.’ Andrew Farriss thinks he did an excellent job, Tim Farriss thinks J!D! really understands more than anyone what he’s doing as an audition. Cut to Mig, Marty, and Ty looking unimpressed.

Give it up for the House Band! Deanna thinks she’s going to really kick ass this week with an original song called ‘My Truth’ which she co-wrote with Ty. The look tonight is a floor length open sweater, (that she has to hold closed) miniskirt, fake dreadlocks, and boots. Yikes, she should really think twice about doing the squat thing. The song is a stompy rock thing with Nirvana-y chords about self-esteem. You know the drill. The other contestants are rocking out, especially Ty. Dave thought her vocals were spot on, Jon thought the song was cool although in her safety zone. Tim unfortunately wants to know the story behind the song. It’s about singing, and a cheating boyfriend, and her hoping her singing would make him love her. She then thanks him for being an asshole so she could write that song. Oh, snap!

Ty is up next. He wants to impress INXS this week with the song he co-wrote with Deanna and also with his rendition of “Proud Mary” ala Ike and Tina Turner (two other unsuccessful black people in rock). The style tonight is denim jacket (all open) no shirt, jeans, and necklaces. Deanna, Jordis, and Suzie are doing the Ikettes part and Suzie doesn’t bother to suppress an eye-roll as they are introduced. They start it off nice and easy. I’m assuming it’s going to get nice and rough soon. Oh here we go. So it’s a good Ty performance, very high energy. The girls sound good doing their ‘rolling’s. One of the Farriss brothers is playing air drums during the performance. Dave thought Ty was (apologizing in advance) ‘Ty-riffic.’ Oh, it burns, it burns, oww…Jon thought Ty put on quite a show. Kirk thinks Ty was very busy this week and is surprised that he didn’t get Kirk to play piano and J!D! and Marty to carry his bags. Ty Jesus-Christ-Poses and is off.

It’s time for Mig and his song called ‘Do or Die’ and it’s about his experiences in the house (meaning the Rock Star Mansion, not jail). He sings a line about ‘my reality’ and the house band guitarist raises an eyebrow. Hee! Mig admits the band was not impressed at first and he knows that he has to write something to go along side The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith. On to the performance. In an unfortunate clothes choice, Mig sports an all-black ensemble but the crotch of his pants feature a black and white striped part, which just looks like he split his pants. The song has lines rhyming ‘dramatic’ and ‘tragic’ and talks about escaping ‘this asylum.’ The other contestants seem to enjoy his Creed-lite rock musings. Dave thought he sounded good and was glad Mig didn’t make him cry again because that would have made him rethink things about his personal life. Ohh-kay. Tim thought that his song was not real INXS but he liked and respected it. Kirk asks if he worked on it with anyone and Mig says he worked on it by himself (no mention of the house band).

This week Marty is going back to his rock roots and is doing ‘I Alone’ by Live. It’s a very 1993 song, faux grunge, quiet verses and a shouty chorus. Marty is wearing a high collared black jacket, grey and black vertically striped pants and (EEK!) bare feet with black nail polish. Also very 1993. Despite his Rick Springfield incognito looks even I must admit that he has very pretty blue eyes. He’s intelligible during the verses and sounds very strained on the shouty chorus. I don’t know why he keeps picking the shouty songs, he’s really not a shouty guy, and it doesn’t suit him. Regardless he sings on. The Farrisses whisper during his singing. At the end of one chorus Marty does a double knee drop and sings the next lyrics in this position, sounding very out of tune. Afterwards, Dave notes that Marty is not always in tune, which is fine (strange thing in a singing competition) and thinks Marty should go put his feet up. Jon thought there needed to be less screaming and more singing. Tim snarks that Manic Marty is back. Kirk thought he was good but is trying to work out how it relates to INXS.

This really cracks me up. On Channel Four they have a storm-watch system called Doppler 4000. Now Channel Two has one called Doppler 2 Million. Out-dopple that, suckas!

It’s up to Jordis to close out the show with Aerosmith’s ‘Dream On.’ Unfortunately, she can’t hit one super-high note on the chorus but says she’ll make a split second decision on what to do while she’s performing. She’s sporting a newsboy cap, black top, black jacket and bell-bottomed blue jeans. For a change, Jordis sounds shaky and unsure as she sings the first lines. The chorus is a slight improvement. INXS look concerned. She continues and when she gets to the really high part (I’d love to know technically what those notes are), she screeches ‘Dream on! Dream on! AAAIIIIEEEEEEE!’ Even Dave Navarro makes a face at that. She half-assedly finishes sitting on the stage. It’s never a good thing on the show when Dave first of all has to make note of how good the house band sounded. He then says you need a spectacular vocal to make that work and she wasn’t up to it. Tim says he really wanted to like her but couldn’t. Jordis says she was definitely over thinking the song. Tim replies that it’s good to know even someone like her can mess up. Dave asks why she just didn’t change the end of the song. She says that it would have been easy to do vocal gymnastics instead of the note but she felt like going for it. Fair enough, but still not easy to listen to.

Time for you to vote! But who’s in the bottom three for now? Why Deanna, Ty, and Jordis! Will it stay the same or change? You’ll have to wait for the next recap! Get out there and dopple like your life depended on it!