How the mighty have fallen
Anyone who knows me understands that I file “Reality TV Shows” under the heading “Trash of the Most Heinous Sort” – usually it is so terribly massaged toward false drama that it makes me sick.
I have to admit though, that I have been casually following ‘Rockstar: Supernova’ lately for two very important reasons: Storm Large and Jill Gioia.
Storm Large is a hometown girl from right here in the Rose City. She’s had a pair of standing gigs at Dante’s and on the Riverboat for some time now, and it’s great to see her up there belting ’em out. She got to open the first show with a rendition of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard” and I was impressed by how well she sang it – it takes guts to tackle such a classic. I’ll even cut her some slack on the jumbled line in the first verse of the chorus.
Her second performance, however, was a bad choice: Cheap Trick’s “Surrender”. One, her voice is too deep for it, and two, she was in full-on lounge singer mode. I hated it.
Jill Gioia has been touring with Trans-Siberian Orchestra for some time now, so I’m already pretty familiar with her work. She’s a tremendously talented singer, and I’d love to see her hit the big show – provided she still does the TSO tours too, of course :)
The first night, she went out and belted Janis Joplin’s “Piece of my Heart” and just nailed it to the wall. I need to find the video of that performance so I can load it into my MP3 player. She dropped to the bottom three, unfortunately, and had to make up some lost ground on the second show. To prove to the guys she can sing without the rasp she chose Evanescence’s “Fallen”, a song that had already been done (poorly) by another contestant. Damn – another trophy on the wall.
The third reason I’ve been watching is an unknown: Patrice Pike. The first night, she was absolutely channeling Grace Slick for her performance of the Jefferson Airplane classic “Somebody to Love”. Impressed the hell out of me.
Enough TV for now.
Hollerings