AI:5 - The Denver Auditions

January 19, 2006 · Filed Under popmedia

Ok, much like Sherman in Atlanta, the AI:5 producers unleashed their fury upon Denver last night.

Side note: I wasn’t quite as cranky while watching the Denver auditions. An email exchange with my beloved sister (the lovely Robin) gave birth to a great word for the combination of my state of mind & the write-up that said mood yielded — a Crankinalysis! I like that word so much, I might have to develop a scale, so that I can assign a crankinalysis (pat. pending) number/level to my recaps…
Anyway, Denver wasn’t as annoying to me, perhaps because they kept the carnage limited to a single hour. As per the norm, they focused on the odd, the bad, & the ugly, rather than the good, the talented, & the pretty. One undeniable exception to this was the 16 y/o cutie Lisa Tucker! I truly can’t imagine a 16 y/o being mature enough to weather the 5 month storm that is the AI trek to the Kodak Theater; however, if one could, it seems like Lisa might be the one! She’s definitely one to watch.

Token “rocker” Chris Daughtry bears watching, at least through the Hollywood phase of the auditions. We’ll have to see how he handles the pressure, both of the competition and of his/his wife’s expectations. I have him tabbed as a good, solid, mid-semifinalist.

As for the “inexplicably put through” category, I’d have to put two folks in there. First, April Walsh - she of the super bubbly personality, horrific flowered print dress, & Bjork song. She had a nice enough voice, from what I could tell (Bjork songs really aren’t that conducive to evaluating vocal talent…), and she certainly has personality to burn. But her getting through still puzzles me. I guess she strikes me as an Amy Adams (AI:3) type — potentially a solid late-semifinalist. Second, cowboy & turkey serenader Garett Johnson. He struck me as painfully non-social (not anti-social, but rather someone who just hasn’t had a whole lot of experience in interacting with people). There was a hint of a good voice (which for some reason seemed to really intrigue Simon), that could be cultivated by a good long stint of vocal training; however, I don’t think that’s going to happen by the time he gets to Hollywood. I think he’ll be an early cut in Hollywood.

Finally, the bizarre — delusional she-male Zachary. And I do mean delusional - on several levels. If you saw it, you know what I’m talking about wrt the “she-male” bit — frankly, it scares me enough that I don’t want to write any more to try and describe it. Vocally, “he” was just about as muddled & bad. That “his” mother seemed to feed “his” delusions by calling “him” (in a candidate for understatement of the millennium) eccentric, was just sad, truly sad. (I gotta think that mom wanted a daughter, and was willing to sacrifice her son to get one…). Zachary’s post-rejection reaction was so over-the-top delusional, it defied reason. To call the judges “racist” & “prejudiced” is far, far beyond absurd. It belies an insulting ignorance of what “racist” & “prejudiced” mean. The only people the judges are prejudiced against, are those who have no discernible talent. And in a talent competition, that ain’t unacceptable, now is it?

Next week: 2 hours of folks debasing themselves at the Greensboro Coliseum. Having lived down there, I can only imagine the carnage to which we will be exposed…

-ghp

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