Easily distracted
“The show can’t always last for two hours”, I said to myself, as I settled in for another round of Idol auditions. It should, because how else can you get a feeling for the musical sense of a city. Tonight we saw the highlights of the visit to Louisville. Too much time showing us the grandstand from a racetrack. Too little music, considering that 11,000 potential (a word that covers a very wide range) musicians are distilled into a Kentucky barrel of 19 gold ticket holders.
The producers do know how to use a back story, though. Faces in the crowd are deliberately spun into characters with two minutes of interest. Their fears, their tears, their rants and their hallelujah moments. Someone from tonight will make it through to the real contest, only a few weeks from now, and we’ll get other details that will help us retain the name and the face for more than one evening. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of music in our lives leaves us with the collective memory of a swarm of gnats.
Just to show you how distracting our soundtracks have become; while I’m watching the program, a commercial for a large ISP airs, and the musical bed is the classic “I Feel Free” by Cream. Immediately, my penchant for trivia set off a mad search to recall the exact details of a song that’s been floating around since my high school days. Jack Bruce, doing something other than giving me riffs for my neophyte bass guitar infatuation. I have no idea what other songs were performed during Idol.
