globe and mail article-last nite's IDOL show

[charlene]

He screams, she screams, they all scream for Idol


By ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
From Friday's Globe and Mail

We were still 15 minutes from show time, and already people were screaming. They screamed to prove that they were there, in the John Bassett Theatre and not in the crowd still waiting on the sidewalk. They screamed at each other's hand-made placards, and at their own faces, as these flashed on screens around the theatre. Screaming, it turns out, is the best way to express yourself at a taping of Canadian Idol, unless you're one of the contestants.

Oh yes, and they screamed at Gordon Lightfoot, as the legendary composer and performer took his seat, across the aisle from Ronnie Hawkins, before Wednesday's tribute edition of the show.

Lightfoot must have thought he had walked into a parallel universe. The crowds at his annual Massey Hall concerts are enthusiastic, but they tend to focus their effusions on the performers and the music. At Idol, even the commercial breaks are greeted by more screaming.

Entering this scene as an "embedded" music critic was like walking sober into a party that's been rolling hard for three hours. But no party is as heavily structured as Canadian Idol. Everything about this talent show is a ritual, from the off-camera screaming tutorials ("Let's hear a little more love for Jacob"), the sometimes cutting responses of the judges ("that was b-b-b-boring"), to the brief contestant sit-downs with Ben Mulroney as the host reads out the number to dial to vote for that last performance.

Idol combines the rigid format of a game show, the glacial narrative tension of a soap opera, and (if you're in the theatre) the push-button frenzy of a cheerleader's convention. It's an addictive formula for the roughly two million Canadians who tune in twice a week.

Lightfoot's appearance marked the first time the show had shone its lights on someone who had actually made it in the Canadian music business. Unlike the six remaining contestants, Lightfoot slogged his way to the top over a period of years. He became a star before there were any Cancon rules for radio, before you could get a grant to make a record, and before an Englishman named Simon Fuller (the father of some 25 Idol franchises) figured out a new way to speed up the production of celebrity.

Having done it the hard way, Lightfoot might have been expected to disdain Fuller's battery-hen methods.

Au contraire: Lightfoot consented to appear at the show, and even to act as a coach. Each of the six contestants worked over his or her selected Lightfoot tune with the man himself. Video clips before each live performance featured his edited responses to what he heard in rehearsal.

"I should be a judge, for God's sake," he said at one point. That was just after telling Shane Wiebe that all the laid-back contestant needed to fix up his interpretation of The Way I Feel was to "go and rest up a bit."

We didn't find out what Lightfoot thought of the broadcast performances. He stayed in his seat, and let the judges and screamers hash it out. The criteria must have seemed alien at times. Lightfoot made it on the strength of his songs, but also because he developed a way to sing them that was unmistakably his own. Kalan Porter, by contrast, got a big response from judges and audience for singing If You Could Read My Mind pretty much as the composer recorded it, with a tone that wasn't far from Lightfoot's in his prime.

Jacob Hoggard was even congratulated for mimicking someone else's cover version. Judge Jake Gold noted that Hoggard had copied an interpretation of Sundown that appeared on a recent Lightfoot tribute disc, "and you nailed it."

These are the standards of the karaoke bar. Maybe that's not so strange, since all the Idol contestants sing well-known songs to prerecorded accompaniments. (Last night's show was the first to feature actual instruments, played live by the hopefuls themselves.)

"The real Canadian Idol will be able to sing anything that's thrown at them," Gold said earlier. Again, should that be true? Even Sinatra fumbled sometimes (if you doubt, check out his version of Mrs. Robinson). The great pop interpreters have always been choosy about repertoire. Being able to get through anything at all is a skill prized mainly by singers in cocktail bars, because you never know when a customer is going to want to hear Mack the Knife.

But Canadian Idol is only as confused about the true value of distinction as the rest of the culture. A current ad for Wal-Mart shows a dozen or more young people asserting their need to express their individuality, before zeroing in on the one brand of jeans they've all got to buy to do it. Be yourself, conform!

The real Canadian Idol will be the one who makes this command seem least like a contradiction.

How far this all is from the craggy individualism of a Gordon Lightfoot. Granted, he didn't always stand out. He began as a Pat Boone-style crooner, and was a regular ensemble performer on CBC-TV's Country Hoedown in the fifties and early sixties. The producers of that show weren't paying him to blaze his own trail -- but they helped him get started.

Eventually, all this Idol-ness may have a similar outcome. Somebody will play by the rules of same-but-different and get through, and then begin to work themselves up to something that only they can do well. Or maybe Lionel Richie had it right, when he opined during his guest spot last week that instant celebrity may be the worst kind of prelude to the development of an individual voice. It hasn't yet helped last year's winner, Ryan Malcolm, or runner-up Gary Beals, whose blandly competent debut album was released this week.

In the meantime, you've got to wonder who will follow Lightfoot next year, if the show's producers decide to make an annual ritual of tribute to some established Canadian star. Joni Mitchell? Sarah McLachlan? Leonard Cohen? Maybe there should be a special voting number. Or maybe we should all just scream.



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[charlene]

He screams, she screams, they all scream for Idol


By ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
From Friday's Globe and Mail

We were still 15 minutes from show time, and already people were screaming. They screamed to prove that they were there, in the John Bassett Theatre and not in the crowd still waiting on the sidewalk. They screamed at each other's hand-made placards, and at their own faces, as these flashed on screens around the theatre. Screaming, it turns out, is the best way to express yourself at a taping of Canadian Idol, unless you're one of the contestants.

Oh yes, and they screamed at Gordon Lightfoot, as the legendary composer and performer took his seat, across the aisle from Ronnie Hawkins, before Wednesday's tribute edition of the show.

Lightfoot must have thought he had walked into a parallel universe. The crowds at his annual Massey Hall concerts are enthusiastic, but they tend to focus their effusions on the performers and the music. At Idol, even the commercial breaks are greeted by more screaming.

Entering this scene as an "embedded" music critic was like walking sober into a party that's been rolling hard for three hours. But no party is as heavily structured as Canadian Idol. Everything about this talent show is a ritual, from the off-camera screaming tutorials ("Let's hear a little more love for Jacob"), the sometimes cutting responses of the judges ("that was b-b-b-boring"), to the brief contestant sit-downs with Ben Mulroney as the host reads out the number to dial to vote for that last performance.

Idol combines the rigid format of a game show, the glacial narrative tension of a soap opera, and (if you're in the theatre) the push-button frenzy of a cheerleader's convention. It's an addictive formula for the roughly two million Canadians who tune in twice a week.

Lightfoot's appearance marked the first time the show had shone its lights on someone who had actually made it in the Canadian music business. Unlike the six remaining contestants, Lightfoot slogged his way to the top over a period of years. He became a star before there were any Cancon rules for radio, before you could get a grant to make a record, and before an Englishman named Simon Fuller (the father of some 25 Idol franchises) figured out a new way to speed up the production of celebrity.

Having done it the hard way, Lightfoot might have been expected to disdain Fuller's battery-hen methods.

Au contraire: Lightfoot consented to appear at the show, and even to act as a coach. Each of the six contestants worked over his or her selected Lightfoot tune with the man himself. Video clips before each live performance featured his edited responses to what he heard in rehearsal.

"I should be a judge, for God's sake," he said at one point. That was just after telling Shane Wiebe that all the laid-back contestant needed to fix up his interpretation of The Way I Feel was to "go and rest up a bit."

We didn't find out what Lightfoot thought of the broadcast performances. He stayed in his seat, and let the judges and screamers hash it out. The criteria must have seemed alien at times. Lightfoot made it on the strength of his songs, but also because he developed a way to sing them that was unmistakably his own. Kalan Porter, by contrast, got a big response from judges and audience for singing If You Could Read My Mind pretty much as the composer recorded it, with a tone that wasn't far from Lightfoot's in his prime.

Jacob Hoggard was even congratulated for mimicking someone else's cover version. Judge Jake Gold noted that Hoggard had copied an interpretation of Sundown that appeared on a recent Lightfoot tribute disc, "and you nailed it."

These are the standards of the karaoke bar. Maybe that's not so strange, since all the Idol contestants sing well-known songs to prerecorded accompaniments. (Last night's show was the first to feature actual instruments, played live by the hopefuls themselves.)

"The real Canadian Idol will be able to sing anything that's thrown at them," Gold said earlier. Again, should that be true? Even Sinatra fumbled sometimes (if you doubt, check out his version of Mrs. Robinson). The great pop interpreters have always been choosy about repertoire. Being able to get through anything at all is a skill prized mainly by singers in cocktail bars, because you never know when a customer is going to want to hear Mack the Knife.

But Canadian Idol is only as confused about the true value of distinction as the rest of the culture. A current ad for Wal-Mart shows a dozen or more young people asserting their need to express their individuality, before zeroing in on the one brand of jeans they've all got to buy to do it. Be yourself, conform!

The real Canadian Idol will be the one who makes this command seem least like a contradiction.

How far this all is from the craggy individualism of a Gordon Lightfoot. Granted, he didn't always stand out. He began as a Pat Boone-style crooner, and was a regular ensemble performer on CBC-TV's Country Hoedown in the fifties and early sixties. The producers of that show weren't paying him to blaze his own trail -- but they helped him get started.

Eventually, all this Idol-ness may have a similar outcome. Somebody will play by the rules of same-but-different and get through, and then begin to work themselves up to something that only they can do well. Or maybe Lionel Richie had it right, when he opined during his guest spot last week that instant celebrity may be the worst kind of prelude to the development of an individual voice. It hasn't yet helped last year's winner, Ryan Malcolm, or runner-up Gary Beals, whose blandly competent debut album was released this week.

In the meantime, you've got to wonder who will follow Lightfoot next year, if the show's producers decide to make an annual ritual of tribute to some established Canadian star. Joni Mitchell? Sarah McLachlan? Leonard Cohen? Maybe there should be a special voting number. Or maybe we should all just scream.



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