VOICES

I haven't blogged yet this season on one of my guilty pleasures - the TV singing talent shows. There are three of them running concurrently at present: The Voice, The X-Factor and Sing-Off. We are nearing musical indigestion, and, thank goodness, finales of the first two. Below is a sample of my favourites this season from The Voice and The X-Factor. Both singers have made it through to the final rounds coming up this week.

From The Voice (Adam Levine's team (he of Maroon5):
Tesanne Chin, a young lady from Kingston, Jamaica. (born 20 September 1985. Virgo Sun, probably Sagittarius Moon) She sang Bridge over Troubled Water last week, it took her into this week's final where she'll compete against 16-year old Jaquie Lee and Will Champlin, son of rock band artist Bill Champlin of the band Chicago.






From The X Factor (Kelly Rowland's Over-25s team):
Jeff Gutt from Detroit (born 2 May 1976. Sun and Jupiter in Taurus, Moon(probably) and Mercury in Gemini) He'll compete with an indie-pop duo Alex & Sierra currently based in Orlando, Florida, and Carlito Olivero, Latino lad from Chicago. Jeff Gutt is, at heart, rock artist but can sing anything - great voice! The performance immediately below got him into the finals. In the second video he sings Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Both songs are, sadly, truncated to fit into the show's time allowance. I wish they'd allocate more time to the singing, making full versions of songs possible, and much less to judges' chat, manipulative "sob" stories, and general "padding". I realised long ago that it's not going to happen.








I feel more confident that Tesanne Chin will be this year's "Voice" winner than I do about Jeff Gutt winning X-Factor. Simon Cowell has been ramming Alex and Sierra down viewers' throats all season. They are good, if you like that kind of thing, but being of the generation able to recall Ike and Tina, Sonny and Cher.....do we really need a re-play of all that in 2013? Mr Cowell keeps saying, "there's a gap in the market for a duo". Yes - and there's a reason for that! We shall see.

Music Monday ~ Terry McDermott & The Voice, Vino Alan & The X-Factor.

TV'sThe Voice and The X-Factor are running side by side at the moment, offering between them guilty pleasures from Monday to Thursday evenings each week. As I've written before, I'm a fan of musical talent shows, but even I am finding this double dose a bit much. For one reason or another, though, we've struggled through most episodes. One stand-out from each show has emerged for me.

From The Voice: a fellow Brit: Terry McDermott, age 35. With wife and child, he's now a US resident, lives in New Orleans. He came here from Aberdeen, Scotland some nine years ago singing and playing with his then rock band Driveblind. More information on Terry can be found at at Wikipedia and Wetpaint

His still boyish looks, assured "never-a-bum-note" performances and his obvious comfort on stage will surely get him into the final, due in a few weeks' time.

Below, Terry's version of The Who's Baba O'Riley (his audition), and Journey's Don't Stop Believin'

Though I acknowledge Terry McDermott is excellent in his genre, he doesn't give me the same goosebumps as my chosen contestant from The X-Factor: Vino Alan.
He's the oldest contestant (40) remaining in X-Factor's top 10. He comes from Missouri, has a son of 15. He sings in concerts for the military - that's all I've gleaned so far. His "Over 25" team mentor is L.A. Reid who had no compunction in initially displaying his distaste for the category he'd been allocated to judge and mentor. I hope that the results of audience votes in the first 2 live shows has shown him that he should not be so dismissive of older artists and their potential audience. The two remaining over-25s in the final 12 or 10: Tate Stevens (37) and Vino Alan have ranked 1st and 3rd respectively, on consecutive weeks, in TV audience voting.

These two older guys appeal to a certain segment of the TV audience who feel somewhat abandoned by musical media these days. Listening to 13, 15, 16, 17 year old kids singing about tragic heartbreak or with overtly sexy innuendo isn't authentic, and at times can even be a wee bit off-putting. We prefer to have someone pour out their heart in song who knows what the heck they're singing about. Why was Sinatra so good? He'd lived it all, and others who had also lived it could recognise its authenticity and relate. Vino Alan isn't a Sinatra, his voice is gritty, edgy, but he has strong appeal to anyone who enjoys a sweet but soul-searing song.

I've enjoyed Vino Alan's singing from his audition onward, but suspected that a combination of his age and numerous tattoos (including all over his head) might prove to be too much for judges and TV audience. I was wrong.

Here he is, singing on the first live show: the old Percy Sledge song, "When a Man Loves a Woman"



Last week ("Diva" week): Tina Turner's "Let's Stay Together"



And from his audition - "Trouble"




I have no birth data for either Terry or Vino, so if any passing readers have information, I'd be very pleased to hear from them, so's I can take a look at natal charts and assess whether the stars are aligning for these guys just now.

SATURDAY-SUNDAY SUNDRIES (Occupy; kinky; Pleasantville.)

A comment I noticed the other day struck me as funny yet clever. It was after this week's police crackdowns and occasional rough behaviour towards Occupy protesters, and it went something like this: "We pay our taxes - the taxes go to pay the police - the police beat us and rough us up - that's kinda kinky when you think about it!"




On another level of "kinky" altogether, X Factor USA is beginning to make me feel a wee bit queasy at times. Last week was supposed to be Rock Week, only one singer (our favourite, Josh Krajcik) actually sang any valid rock, but that's by the way. I'm increasingly concerned about the way the very young contestants are being treated. I'm not sure that the Stones' "Satisfaction" was a suitable song for a 13-year old Rachel Crow to be singing on national TV. Nor was it very edifying to see a 15-year old rapper brought to tears by remarks made by Simon Cowell and L A Reid. Admittedly the young lad, "Astro", had displayed rather too much arrogance (but he's a teen for goodness sake - what do we expect?)

The minimum age for X-Factor is far too low in my view. If a talent show for teens is what they want, it'd be preferable to market it as such, keep it separate from shows for adult performers; give the kids age-appropriate songs to sing, and not use them as cynical publicity stunts!




Among some VCR tapes I bought for $1 each recently was Pleasantville, picked at random, I knew nothing about it. We watched it on Friday night; it happened to be on top of the "pending" pile, room too dark to read the sleeve. What a treat! A fun but still thought-provoking movie.

Released in 1998, written and directed by Gary Ross (a Sun in Scorpio person by the way, who also wrote screenplays for movies Big, and Dave). Pleasantville stars Toby Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen and Jeff Daniels among others.

It's a fable, parable, allegory, piece of subversive satire, fairy story, fantasy - it defies exact categorisation. The more I think about it the more I see in it, the more amazed I am at the layers within layers of insight. It's not only relevant to the late 20th century but also to today - truly, moreso today. It only takes a tiny amount of squinting the mental eye to see it as having been written last week!

In a nutshell: two present-day (1990s) teenage siblings, squabbling over the TV remote, he wanting to watch his favourite nostalgic sitcom, about which he knows facts, figures and detailed trivia ready for an upcoming quiz, and she, rather more worldly, wants to rock to MTV. They are magically pulled, against their wills into the world of the nostalgic TV sitcom with the help of a TV repair man - played by Don Knott (a bit of mischievous casting there).

Their 1990s sensibilities contrast wildly with the two dimensional black and white images of the sitcom brought to life. There are so many clever hints and tricks throughout the movie, too many to list. The real meat and potatoes doesn't begin to reveal itself until around half-way through. I had one of those "sharp intakes of brreath" as I recognised what it was all really about, and even more amazing, how it still can be applied today, with slight adaptation (history rhymes, not repeats - remember!)

Resistance to change, closed minds, fear of change and what some will do to avoid change is at the heart of the message. There are multiple inter-related messages coming at the viewers throughout the movie....and not preachy messages.

The soundtrack is excellent, from Dave Brubeck's Take 5, Miles Davis' So What, Randy Newman's Suite from Pleasantville to, towards the end of the movie the Beatles' Across the Universe sung by Fiona Apple: "Nothing's gonna change my world.....nothing's gonna change my world........"




I later scooted through a few comments about the movie from several different websites. I was amused, but not too surprised to see some strong opposition to the movie's themes, and on a couple of Christian-based websites were comments raging about certain "sinful" parts of the movie, and concentrating on "biblical themes" it presented. The movie did indeed present some biblical images: the apple, the burning bush (or tree) for instance, but it rapidly moved beyond them as part of an overall evolution of attitudes.

I shall watch the tape again, there's far too much to take in at one viewing, once one cottons on to the movie's intended theme it's too late to catch all the references.

Highly recommended!



From a selection at About.com some examples of signs carried at Occupy protests: