You've got to hand it to Mark Burnett et al... when your new Reality show is tanking like Jacko's once stratospheric (and recently plaintive) career, have the gorgeous hostess, Brooke Burke, come out wearing a leather jacket and panties. That's sure to fire-up the hyperventilating males tuning-in; Burke's nearly exposed hams left little meat to the imagination despite the few inches of dangling sequin attempting to mask (or, fairly accentuate) her down-south private parts. Good god, if you can't get a television audience to watch a "rock SUPERGROUP" and "the world's BEST" unsigned rock vocalists hash it out with the backup of the "world's GREATEST" house band, well... show some ass.
By David W. Taylor (
Email Me)
Reality Reel Media
08.11.05
Brooke Burke, twinkling, told Dave Narvarro: "Now, Dave... Dave... I was having a little wardrobe envy and so I had to mix-it-up a little bit tonight and kick-it-up a few notches..." Wardrobe envy, huh? Toward whom? Navarro and his ubiquitous tank top and jeans? At least when barking the scripted orders from above, you'd think there'd be some contextual basis for their creation. Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Ratings! Dave Navarro: "You know, you could afford to kick that skirt up a few notches..." I guess she could... but then you'd have Porn Star: INXS and really have something.
OK. OK... I'm going over the top. I'm pounding a hobbled horse. But what else can you say about a television show that ran endless promos over the weekend that an "Eric Clapton" song would be featured in the upcoming episode and it turns out to be "Layla." Which any dope who's followed rock history for five minutes knows is NOT an "Eric Clapton" song but a Derek and the Domino's classic penned by Clapton and Jim Gordon. I suppose it's No Big Deal on a slick "non-scripted" production fandango like
Rock Star to give skimpy credit where credit is due... who gives a flip who Derek and the Domino's were or who Jim Gordon was? We'd all rather have Brooke Burke give us a money-shot peep show or watch a post-millennium C List rock band conduct an extravagant "worldwide" beauty pageant. (And the strange irony: the only time a contestant sings an INXS song is when they're in the bottom three.)
Or, jeez, when Jessica is ridiculed for not singing Nirvana's "Come As You Are, with enough "passion." Navarro comments that, "That song for me is really passionate... it's got a lot of passion..." INXS bassist, Garry Beers, echoed the malarky: "As Dave said, it's all about passion and you can't replace a passionate lyric and a passionate vocal with some slick moves... that just left me completely cold." Dude, the song was
supposed to leave you cold. It's freakin' Nirvana for god's sake!
I'll bet Kurt Cobain would've thought it odd if some "rock star" referred to "Come As You Are" as "passionate." It is an unblinkingly nihilistic tempest of angst and smoldering despair... "Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach..." sung by Cobain super-soullessly and without said passion... as dead as cordwood. The draw is the void, the expanse of utter blankness the notes and lyrics morosely undulate with — music as life winced at and contemplated and brooded-over. That Navarro and INXS would indulge in such misplaced platitudinous yarns, to think "Come As You Are" should've been vocalized with some sort of upsweeping, arching "passion" is ridiculous and merely unearths the detachment of these woefully out-of-touch rocker parvenus.
