On The Scene: 'Idol' Top 9 Performance Night
Apr 4, 2007, 03:22 PM | by Adam B. Vary
Categories: 'American Idol'
I never thought I'd say this, PopWatchers, but I miss Corey the Warm Up Comic. Yes, it's true, on Tuesday nights now C the WUC defects to ABC's Dancing With The Stars one studio over on the CBS Television City lot, leaving American Idol to seek out a replacement funny person to rile up its audience for its all important performance nights. (For the time being, it appears C the WUC has kept his Wednesday night gig. Not that you were worried.)
I'm told by my esteemed Idol colleague Shirley Halperin (out this week for vacay) that last week's warm-up guy was actually funny, pulling audience members on stage not to enact cringe-inducing bootie jiggles but to, you know, sing, which makes so much more sense given Idol's a singing show and all. More importantly, suddenly it looked as if my long dashed fantasy of actually busting out a big note on the Idol stage (oh, c'mon, you know you've all imagined it at least once while warbling in the shower) had new life after all.
Even when I turned to the press colleague next to me to ask if this week's replacement for C the WUC was the same dude from last week, and she shook her head no, I still kept my spirits up. Surely, someone had clued in this new guy, Bill the Stand-In Warm-Up Comic, what the audience was feelin' and what it wasn't, right? He'd see me dutifully scribbling in my steno notebook and think "I've gotta see this cat's 'Desperado,'" right? What's that? Bill the SIWUC's pulling up an elderly woman on stage to shake her booty? And now he's asking her to spank him? And she's obliged? Well, at least Bill's passing out t-shirts. Corey never did that. Hmm? Now Bill's onto fanny-pack jokes? Ah. Corey never did that either.
Indeed, Bill the SIWUC was so, shall we say, undercooked, that Debbie the Stage Manager (i.e. the boss of Studio 36, the one who keeps the well-oiled machine running on time every week) felt the need to reprimand him via her live mic more than once — No, Bill, we can't pull up audience members to dance on the catwalk behind the judges table five minutes before the show's going to begin — providing by far the most off-camera entertainment of the night.
Otherwise, during the ad breaks, I watched the crew set Phil's mic height, Gina and Sanjaya racing over to hug Jordin after her performance, and the judges, Ryan and exec producer Nigel Lythgoe warmly conversing with So You Think You Can Dance judge and choreographer Brian Friedman (kinda the only "celeb" any of us could see). Exciting. And I can tell you there was a scary moment when Debbie the Stage Manager was literally pushing LaKisha to her mark for her coming-up-next shot right before the final ad-break — Kiki literally made it up there with no time to spare. Ummm, what else... If you couldn't tell, the dude Ryan was aggressively hugging while introducing LaKisha was Papa Malakar. Oh, and that hot mic squeal during Jordin's stand-up with the judges was the result of Jordin bringing the singing mic in her hand too close to her interview mic clasped to her shirt. Scintillating stuff, I know.
Speaking of sound, though, I must say the in-studio sound system played some serious tricks on my ears once again. Jordin's "On A Clear Day" grated when I heard it live — it sure was big, but it had none of the warmth and grab-you-at-your-seat snap of Mindy Doo's "I Got Rhythm" (more on that in a sec), and many of Jordin's notes felt sharp within the studio's walls. Watching it back on TV, though, I realized that Jordin was playing to the cameras, not the audience, and singing to her mic, not the back row, so it read (and sounded) so much better on screen. Gina had the opposite problem; I loved the subtle restraint she brought to "Smile," especially in her final note, which soared with just the right tone — and which for some reason you barely heard at home. (It also helped that I couldn't so much see Gina's hair from Sec. F, Row 7, Seat 2.) And though Blake may have underwhelmed on TV, I gotta say his "Mack the Knife" came off with such assured polish and style in person that for the first time the guy gave me goosebumps. (And goosebumps, you know, they don't lie.)
Finally, turning back to Mindy Doo (pictured), I think it was pretty obvious she was an audience favorite, but maybe not that she was by far the audience favorite. Most everyone instinctively leapt to their feet as she rounded towards home on "I Got Rhythm," a thrilling moment of genuine, rousing, spontaneous connection with an audience that's been all too rare this season and was never really replicated the rest of the night. But as Slezak's pointed out in his TV Watch, on the screen Mindy's biggest problem is that she doesn't come across as, well, spontaneous. The camera craves the (seemingly) unrehearsed moment, and, as Simon alluded last night, Melinda's such a consummate pro, she's pretty much incapable of providing one. That may make her the best live performer of the Top 9, but I can only hope that she can find a way to translate that into people's living rooms. Otherwise, with no true standout to get viewers on their feet, the reign of Sanjaya will only continue unabated. And while that may make the 9-year-old sitting in front of me very happy indeed, my nerves would just as soon not have to experience anything close to the unique torture of the first few bars of his "Cheek to Cheek" again.
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