Brandon's Buzz

We all get a week to catch our collective breaths following the end-of-September blowout and in preparation for the imminent holiday shopping onslaught. Behold:

She is nothing less than one of the finest singers in the history of the world, and to the betterment of everyone, the divine Linda Eder is back in the spotlight with her eleventh studio album, Soundtrack. A covers project, the album contains adventurous renditions of a handful of Eder’s favorite film tunes, including modern standards like “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” (from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and “Accidentally in Love” (from Shrek). But the undeniable standout track is a wildly bold take on last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Original Song, Once’s “Falling Slowly.” If you, like me, can scarcely imagine anybody on the planet besides Glen and Marketa singing those words, just wait ’til you get a load of this.

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6:37 pm (NOTE: all times central): No agricultural emergencies delaying my progress this year. We’re actually startin’ early!

6:39 pm:  Last year’s “Idol” live blog was the first thing that really put Brandon’s Buzz on the map in terms of garnering some attention from the online world, so I’m very excited about tonight!

6:44 pm: Assuming that Adam was always a slam dunk to make the finale (and Paula predicted it twelve full weeks ago, so there you have it), I still think an Adam / Alison faceoff would have provided the most bang for our entertainment buck.  But I still think we’re in for a riveting evening of music, madness, and mascara tonight.

6:46 pm:  Let’s set up the cast of characters.  In one corner, we have Adam Lambert.

6:47 pm:  Because Adam screeches, shrieks, screams, wails, and just generally irritates the piss out of me, he will be known tonight as Banshee Boy.

6:48 pm: Adam is a glam rocker following the obvious David Bowie template — at least visually — but when he opens his mouth, he sounds like the love child that Robert Plant and Siouxsie Sioux might have created in an ill-fated night of passion.  (You might think I mean that as a compliment, since I rather like and admire both of those people, but I really don’t.)

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Not much going on out there this week, except the biggest band in the free world returns from a five-year hiatus. Yippee-ky-yay, kids.

Remixes of recent smashes from Britney Spears (the thrilling “Womanizer”), David Archuleta (the hilariously addictive “Crush”), Pink (“So What” if it’s brilliant fun?), Coldplay (“Viva La Vida,” 2008’s song of the year, if you take the Grammys’ word for things), and the infinitely irritating Katy Perry (“Hot & Cold,” a song that makes A smile broadly urry time it pops up on the radio, which is unspeakably often) highlight the latest collection from Thrive Records, Total Dance 2009.

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The economic news gets bleaker and bleaker, but lucky for us, the names get bigger and better in the music world, as a handful of the year’s most anticipated releases make their arrival in record stores across the land this week. I’m telling you, if this slate doesn’t jumpstart the holiday shopping season, nothing will.

Two compact discs and one digital video disc would seem to be adequate acreage in which to assemble The Definitive Rod Stewart, and, indeed, things go swimmingly on the audio side of this project: evenly split between his hedonistic years (the mid-to-late seventies, which yielded such classics as “Hot Legs,” “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” and “Tonight’s the Night”) and his more grown-up ones (late eighties, early nineties, which gave us a string of triumphs capped by the monumentally staggering cover of Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train”), the two CDs very effectively cover a wide swath of Stewart’s legendary career. (For good measure, the good folks at Rhino Records who oversaw this collection even threw in Stewart’s shattering (and super-rare) cover of “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” — another Waits classic, that — which, heretofore, has only been available in America as a b-side.

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So, we finally have a new president, which means we can finally get back to the important stuff: what we’ll be listening to when we realize that the cesspool of American politics will likely do to him exactly what it did to most of the rest of ‘em. Lucky for us, we’ll always have magnificent music on which to fall back.

Speaking of our new president, a compilation album which was commissioned Barack Obama’s campaign (and which, heretofore, was only available with a donation to the campaign’s website) has been granted a mass release.
Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement features previously released tracks from Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, and Stevie Wonder, among others, as well as a new track from John Legend (an impassioned cover of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)”) and a new collaboration — their second — between Kanye West and Maroon 5’s lead singer Adam Levine.

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6:50 pm: OK, this is more like it. Hey guys, are we ready for two bloated hours of movie previews, pitchy performances from has-been former stars, and the coronation of a new American god? Yup, me too. Can’t wait!

6:54 pm: So, I have a bit of housekeeping to take care of before the show starts. Here’s what I get for not paying attention last night: neither Archie nor Jughead actually sang the true 2008 American Idol Coronation track last night. Because of last year’s “This is My Now” trainwreck (which, some say, unfairly tipped the scales in favor of Jordin over the more electrifying Blake when they both had to sing it in ’07’s performance finale), the producers decided to let each David pick their favorite from the top ten entries in the songwriting contest, and decided to save the winner for tonight’s show.

6:56 pm: The winner is called “Time of My Life” and it was written by a guy called Regie Hamm, whose name you may or may not recognize. He released a terrific album called American Dreams in 2003, and I’m pretty sure nobody but my deranged ass owns it. And/or loves it.

6:58 pm: At some point during this evening’s festivities, I’ll figure out how to link to Amazon’s Regie Hamm page so that you can check it out. It’s a very good album.

7:00 pm: It’s finally here! Is David Cook wearing a Nehru jacket, for the love of Jesus?!

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7:10 pm: Due to an agricultural emergency (don’t ask), I’m a little late in liveblogging the “American Idol” finale. That’s what I get for hyping this to you people!

7:11 pm: At any rate, dinner is ready (and a tad burnt), the TV’s on, and we’re ready to go. I haven’t missed a performance yet, but I’m fifteen good minutes late in introducing you to the cast of characters. Screw it; we’ll do it on the fly.

7:14 pm: Good lord, Daddy Clive is picking songs again. Remember that year he picked “Open Arms” for Elliott Yamin and he blew it?

7:15 pm: Who put Andrew Lloyd Webber in charge of the peanut gallery?

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After a brief hiatus (for which you can blame A — he popped into town for the weekend, and we spent that time alternately vegging at the movies — if you miss 21 on the big screen, do NOT let it (and the wickedly handsome Jim Sturgess’ exhilarating, star-making performance, not to mention typically snarky work from Kevin Spacey) escape you on video — and making pigs of ourselves at our fave restaurants — and if, by some cosmic accident, the poor woman who waited on us at Marie Callender’s Friday night is reading this, please know: A did NOT mean to take your head off when you asked him that benign salad question), the Buzz is back, and with a major announcement, to boot: the end of “American Idol’s” seventh season shall blissfully cross paths with this here spankin’ new multimedia platform of mine (which today celebrates its one month anniversary) tomorrow and Wednesday, whereupon the Buzz will venture into uncharted waters and take its first stab at liveblogging.

A and I have a tendency to IM each other while watching the big, splashy events (y’know, the Grammys, the Oscars, etcetera), and since I’m rarely at a loss for witty sarcasm during these moments, he always tells me that the world at large should be privy to these confabs. This week, at their discretion, they will be: both Tuesday and Wednesday evening, starting at 7pm central daylight time (perhaps a bit earlier, if I’m feeling especially fired up), the Buzz will document urry riveting second of “Idol’s” epic Battle of the Davids as it happens, and you’re all invited to join in on the fun. Set an alarm if you must, but don’t miss this.

I’ve spent the past thirty-some hours, Syesha, trying to summon something even remotely interesting to say about you and your tenure as one of this year’s top twelve. And to my dismay (and even slight horror), there’s just nothing there, my darling. Despite the fact that you never once had a true knockout performance, you were expert at straddling the median (even in your best weeks, you weren’t as good as Brooke or Michael, two unfortunate victims of your phenomenal lucky streak; neither, however, were you as abominable as Kristy Lee or Jason, each of whom now flank the incomparable Sanjaya as “Idol’s” most stunningly inept semifinalists). Most weeks, you were so unassuming that America seemed to altogether forget how unremarkable you really are.

Consider this, Ms. Mercado: the “Idol” highway is liberally littered with the carcasses of contestants who well inhabited your very niche, and be they ridiculous (season five’s Mandisa, anyone?) or sublime (how many folks still believe “Idol’s” original diva Tamyra wuz robbed all those years ago?), you’ve managed — save one, who ended up winning the whole enchilada by plumbing the American songbook and brilliantly fleshing out, of all things, a Gershwin tune (!) from the ’30s — to place higher than any and all of them.

As I whispered in Brooke’s ear two heartbreaking weeks ago, there is nothing you could have done to alter last night’s verdict. Syesha, you could literally be Whitney, and it would still have been all for naught: ever since Mr. Cook turned Lionel Richie’s shockingly schlocky “Hello” into the coolest grunge ballad this side of “Plush,” the forthcoming David Squared face-off has been in the cards. You must have known your great fortune — however remarkable heretofore — was never gonna derail that train.

Simon predicts a “humdinger” for next week. Get yourself a front row seat, Syesha, and watch the fireworks unfurl.