Well, I’m starting the thread now. I didn’t see the “reality show” half-hour Sunday night, & I’m not getting cable for one half-hour a week.
There are 9 sort of reasonable candidates left (or 7 pretty good candidates plus the deeply goofy JD & the underdeveloped Brandon, if I may voice concerns). Likely to be another tough week.
The reality show portion showed Jordis’ birthday party; Marty and the rest got her a big guitar-shaped birthday cake, and then Jordis’ boyfriend showed up as her “encore” present.
The singers had a clinic on handling the press, and most of them really fumbled around a lot on this. MiG admitted that J.D. is the one that bothers him the most in the house during one of these interviews. J.D. repeated his little bit about how his strategy is to “kill them with kindness” which to me sounds like, “be a backstabbing liar” but anyway it ended up that J.D. was having a little tantrum over the song selection so eventually the other singer (I think it was MiG again) gave up his song for J.D. J.D. also convinced Suzie to “take a risk” with another song and to try to rearrange it in some funky style. The house band didn’t think that was working for her, but she seemed determined to try it. A case of J.D. sabotaging Suzie? I think so.
Also, most everyone was partying it up big time the night before rehearsal, so when Jessica showed up she was hungover really badly.
So my prediction is that Jessica, Suzie, and either Brandon or Deanna will be bottom three.
I saw a screencap of Jordis’s BF. He has an oddly shaped face. Odd enough I wondered if he was missing teeth.
Jessica will go this week, and IMHO, it seems pretty clear Ty will win.
They certainly didn’t care for her performance tonight.
I was on vacation last week and didn’t tape this (or any of my reality shows) – what happened to Ty last week?
Ty got bottom three, but he really impressed INXS with the song they gave him, so they sent him back up again <phew>.
I’m hoping like mad that Jessica will be gone this week. She annoyed the shit out of me on the ‘mansion’ show with her pissing on and on about how the song she wanted was the one and only song for her and this is her LIFE GODDAMNIT!
I just hope Suzie took the band’s suggestion over JDs and won’t rearrange “Losing My Religion” too much. I can see that going badly wrong if she’s not careful.
And just a quick request - when it comes to the elim show, can we please put the results in spoiler boxes? There is still a delay between when it’s shown in the US and over here, and I really don’t like coming into the thread to weigh in on the performance show or continue a discussion, and having the results up there before we’ve had a chance to actually see what happened for ourselves.
Ty’s performance was outstanding tonight. He is so far beyond even the best of the others and you can tell the band members love him.
Jessica is gone this week for sure.
Ty is so good! I even went to all the trouble of moseying over the the website and voting for him. (Let’s hope my bad Dancing with the Stars* mojo doesn’t carry over.)
And yes, we’ll do spoiler boxes – a reasonable request. (Whaddya mean, you can’t calculate what time it is on the East coast of the US when it’s noon your time? 
)
Well, we’ll do spoiler boxes if we remember how to code them… :smack:
Ty is a very good singer, but so is Barry Manilow. I’m not saying that Ty is Barry, but I don’t think that Ty quite fits in with INXS. He doesn’t seem like a lead singer to me. He seems like a solo singer. He should have gone the AI route.
Ty is a fabulous singer, but he still seems to me like he is doing stage musicals, all of his movements and techniques still seem very scripted and unnatural. MiG, in contrast, is also a theater guy but makes everything seem spontaneous and relaxed.
Jordis was disappointing, as she’s my favorite, lacked her usual energy. I still think she’s safe from the bottom three though.
JD is showing he’s a one-trick pseudo-Green-Day pony.
Susie is growing surprisingly better. She was dreaful the first couple of shows, but is doing some impressive improvement.
Brooke’s mini-tassle skirt was hey batter batter sa-wing batter distracting. Yowza.
Jordis was disappointing, compared to how great she can be.
MiG was great - but I agree with Dave Navarro (!?!) that he has to mix it up in terms of song choice.
I thought Marty did a great job with his unplugged version of the Killers.
Deanna was also disappointed - superb talent, but didn’t come across as INXS-ful
Ty - great song, wonderfully sung
Of all of them, I thought Marty - although not the best singer by far of the lot - came across as the best choice.
Well, I thought that was an interesting show.
Jordis, as some have already mentioned, seemed a bit off tonight…but her off nights still somehow seem better than Jessica’s best nights. Jessica is also starting to cop some of that Daphna-esque attitude, I think. I wouldn’t be too surprised if she told INXS to shove it when she gets sent home. Deanna sounded her best so far, but again I don’t think it’s enough. Suzie is getting better and better, I think; she’s a little annoying with the constant crying, but she’s developing as a performer by leaps and bounds.
So I think that, among the females, it should come down to Suzie and Jordis. Jordis has the edge in the vocal department, but her stagecraft is a bit lacking. I used to think that Jordis had this thing in the bag, but I honestly think that Suzie has a chance now.
Among the guys, I’m starting to think that MiG might be the top choice right now. Marty is also doing well, but I’d be afraid that he’s start doing his weird robot dance or something. Ty is a great singer and I’m sure they’d do fine with him at the front, but somehow MiG just seems like he fits with the band better. J.D. needs to go away. I think INXS pegged Brandon perfectly; when he’s in his element, he’s great, but his element is southern rock, not INXS. This week it seemed like maybe Brandon realized that he’s not going to be able to change into the kind of front man that INXS is looking for, so he was going to go out with style and showcase his strengths as much as possible.
Hopefully, regardless of who wins,
Whoops…continued from previous post:
Hopefully, regardless of who wins, Ty, Jordis, MiG, Marty, Suzie, and Brandon will get some good offers or contracts out of the deal. And hopefully J.D. will find a nice comfy spot back under the rock he crawled out from under.
Did I mention I don’t like J.D. much?
OK, last night was the second time I deliberately listened to the performances without looking at the screen on the first run-through. I’ve usually done it after *watching *once; I find it helpful in imagining the radio-play quality of the contestants.
Also, I haven’t generally been snarky about this, but today I am. Maybe I’m familiar enough with this bunch now, or maybe it has something to do with planning out how I was going to vote & then for stupid (unrelated) reasons not even getting online. (Oh, well. As I’ve said before, it’s not my decision; it should be the band’s.) Mostly, it’s that the night started really strong, & then just slid slowly in quality for the first six performances.
Suzie did really well. Another case of taking a bo-oring REM arrangement & replacing it with something that rocks. This would turn out to be one of my two favorites tonight.
MiG sounded different from his usual Euro-pixie self. Like a real rock guy. Like a man, if you will. I didn’t know he could do that. Wow. Later, when I saw what he was wearing, it just ruined the whole effect for me. I don’t know how Paul Rodgers was dressin’ when he was in Free, so maybe that little glam ensemble was somehow appropriate. But for me, it was like, wow, he can sing blues-rock in a cool voice–but then he has to show us all what a cute little cupcake he is. Bah! Away with you, pixie-boy.
JD did well. Did he drop a line at the beginning? Anyway, he sounded good. His voice on this song reminded me of Bowie somehow. Or Billy Idol, maybe, a little. Not Seal, oddly enough.
Jessica’s voice was a little rough. A bit more forceful & blues-rock chick than Cobain. It was OK. Not great, but OK.
I think one thing that may hurt her chances most was last week, when Dave said, " I want to see more of Jessica," & she said, “That was it.” She doesn’t pretend to have hidden depths (which is to say, she probably is more complex than she realizes). But she does sing INXS songs really well. I’d rather not stick her in the bottom 3 this week, 'cos she’s proven that already.
Jordis had a nice tone to her voice. But she really did not sing that song well. I think she started to high in her range, then tried to kick way up on the end of, “…ease my worried mi-ind,” & had no strength behind it. Jordis has done so well so far on the strength of her distinctive tone & working really hard. I’m not sure she can sustain it.
Brandon, OTOH, didn’t screw up his vocals. He just decided to be more honky-tonk than ever. I was going to throw a few votes this way in the interest of getting people in the bottom 3 that hadn’t already been, but this just lost me.
Marty sang in a standard modern-rock guy crap voice. OK for that, but ick ick ick. Send him back to the Lovehammers already.
Deanna’s performance sounded good–because of the backing band. It’s just that gorgeous a song. Her singing, though, was just sort of musical. I do rank her a little higher because at the a cappella bit, she showed she can really sing. Then again, it just now occurs to me, why didn’t she?
Ty blew me away. Something about his vocals here reminded me of Phil Collins (in a good way). Best of the night.
If I had voted, I would have voted for Ty, Suzie, & Jessica. My personal bottom 3 this week were Brandon, Marty, & Jordis. MiG & Marty are making me a little ill.
The band have shown by their previous choices that they don’t just want a good singer, but will toss a good technical singer in favor of what they consider a strong stage presence that can emote–act?–on stage. Also, they like the real spazzes like Marty. At this point, I’d be happy to let them pick a spaz, so Ty & Suzie can form their own duo-led band that I’d like better. Tuzie and Sy!
After watching the show, I flipped over to the local PBS station. Apparently it’s pledge time. They were running (not for the first time this week) a Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band concert. Just amazing. Those guys make INXS sound like few kids kicking a tin can around. Somehow, I’m not so worried about the INXS show anymore. More like, “who cares?”
Oooooh but was Jessica dirty when they were giving the feedback last night. I think it was when they were talking to Brandon, and mentioned how he can take feedback really well, and the camera focussed on Jessica and there was the dirty, horrible glare she was shooting at them… Oh, the sour grapes were ripe that night.
I really was impressed with Marty’s performance, and with Ty’s. Suzie’s was okay, but Losing My Religion is one of my favourite songs, so I don’t really feel comfortable with what she did to it, and it colours my view somewhat. Jordis wasn’t great, but she still did better than some of the others, it’s nice to see her doing something that she’s a little less confident with and still making it sound pretty good.
Can’t say I was overly chuffed with what Brandon did. I’m really not seeing him getting too much further, he’s really giving off a ‘southern country-rock’ vibe all the time now, and it’s not fitting in with what they seem to want.
(Just an aside, what’s with the weird-ass capitalisation of Mig’s name?) None of the others really impressed me. Except Jessica, but that was less ‘impressed’ than it was ‘incredulous at how horrible that sounded’. She says she was really feeling the song, but I agree with the band - you couldn’t see it, and she really didn’t do the song any favours. I’m still sticking with the hope that she’ll be booted tonight and go home. And cry.
I’m a horrible person, I know.
There was (is?) a Soviet (Russian) fighter jet that was called the MiG – some kind of acronym, I assume.
OK, spoilers, I guess:
[spoiler]Like the band, I was really surprised to see Suzie in the bottom three this week. I thought she had a really strong performance on Tuesday. I thought that the bottom three really should have been Brandon, Deanna, and J.D. So they almost got there, but not quite!
Jessica really does shine on the INXS songs. That has saved her so far, and I think it may continue to save her for a while. Question is, can she do one of the standard cover songs well enough to stay out of the bottom three for a while? If she does halfway decent next Tuesday, I’ll vote for her just to keep her out of the bottom three.
Suzie actually had a fairly weak performance of “Bitter Tears” at the beginning, and then she seemed to pick it up as the chorus hit. She shouldn’t have been in the bottom three this week anyway.
It’s for the best that Brandon goes. He’s a southern rocker, all the way. He and Neal are kind of like peas in a pod that way. Give Brandon a southern rock gig and he’s golden.
Next week, I think Deanna or J.D. should go. Please, please let J.D. go…[/spoiler]