Its like a marathon. Feel the burn?

Idol night.
The first night.
I am pumped. I've trained for this all season and I know I can do this. Its been a damn hard slog but I'm sure I'm ready. I've been practicing snide remarks and nasty putdowns. I've primed a list of welldeserved praise and high accolades. I've had exploratory surgery done on my anterior cingulate cortex and my ability to feel and maintain empathy and emotion is in tip top condition. I have both pejorative and complimentary descriptive terms at hand. I am ready, willing and able to go go GO. I nervously finger the remote control as 7.30 approaches, crack my knuckles in anticipation and switch the tv on . . .

Our first semi-final. They've added the live audience element to the show - I like that - it means that even if you bail out at this point you've still experienced that frisson, that thrill of performing for real people, you get an immediate visceral reaction that a cold semi vacant television studio full only of the crew and the onscreen talent won't necessarily give you. We'll be getting two singers from each gender divided show (giving us eight) and then a Wildcard show next Sunday (where four more will go through - though they don't tell us yet how many of those four the judges will handpick). They bring out our six performers of the night and Dean Geyer audibly gets the loudest cheers. We get it girls, he's cute.

Chris Murphy is up first and he's tackling Crazy Little Thing Called Love. I hate it. I hate the arrangement, I hate the cheesy guitar and I hate that it sounds so easy listening FM radio station. His singing in this song is so 'safe' that he's lost all the power we've seen previously. Don't get me wrong, he sings it well, his voice is still extremely good but by god I'm bored. He gets rousing applause and the judges all love him (well, Marcia didn't actually say she loved him, she just said it was obvious he had 'gigged' but you almost always have to read between the lines with her) but Kyle does note that he wants to see more of the grubby rocker. Amen Sandilands, well played. I really thought Chris would go through with the first group this week, but I feel he will have to play the Wildcard. And he should call the CourtJester and get some tips on song choice.

Nathaniel Willemse has decided to completely ruin U2's Vertigo. Seriously, I didn't even recognise this until he got to the chorus. Nathaniel has taken a frenetic, wild song about being thrown off balance and being dizzy with life . . . into an RnB ballad??!! What the fuck? Guys?? Where is the rock tonight? Where is the fun? Why have you sucked the life out of this song, Nathaniel? Just like Chris before him, he sings well, he hits all the notes and he is very sincere about what he's doing but I can barely stand to listen to this version. The judges love it, again. I . . . huh? Really? Y'all liked that? There is discussion of the 'interpretation' of the song - Mark didn't like it, Marcia did - but everyone seems fine with the arrangement. I feel like Bono would disagree and request that all groups concerned meet in a prearranged 'safe' place for talks about the lyric and the content . . . man. And everyone would get to wear big bug eyed sunglasses and Irishman Damian would have to go along and interpret the accent and the beer drinking etiquette. And the Edge would just sit there and raise his eyebrow at everyone and halfway through the proceedings, around about the fifteenth pint of Guiness, everyone would realise they hadn't invited Adam Clayton and that Larry Mullen Jr went to the bathroom an hour ago and didn't come back . . .

Spunky Paul Vercoe comes out and massacres himself a Lifehouse song, Hanging By A Moment. There are so many problems with this performance, starting with the key he begins in and ending with the fact that, if this were your local pub karaoke competition he'd probably be a shoe in to win unless that tone deaf drunk chick got up and sang the theme from Titanic and then forgot halfway through and thought she was in a wet tshirt competition instead. He is flat, there is a decided lack of any melody and its painfully shouty. Sorry Paul, but I'm calling it. Time of death, 8.05pm.

Sidebar : Pink is on 60 Minutes right now and if it weren't for the fact that luvverly Irishman Damien Leith is up next and I have high hopes for him, I would watch the rest of the interview - god I love that Stupid Girls video clip.

Damien is singing You Are So Beautiful by Joe Cocker, which I remember fondly from the days when I was in love with Michael J Fox (before I realised what a dirty Republican his character Alex P Keaton was on Family Ties) - I'm not sure why. Did he dance to this song with one of his girlfriends? Was Courtney Cox on that show? You know, whatever happened to the cast of Perfect Strangers, god I loved that show, I loved the theme song "sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing can be arranged" . . . sigh . . . excuse me whilst I visit You Tube for a moment. Wow, they just don't write theme tunes like that anymore do they? You know, that would make a KICKASS theme night, old tv theme tunes. Gold. I don't get paid enough to come up with this stuff. Anyway . . . I stop thinking about old 80's sitcoms as Damien starts singing because I am transfixed. Yes, he is noticeably nervous for the first couple of bars, his voice wavers a little and his eyelashes are on Flutter Alert : Code Amber, but he regains footing very very quickly. He builds the song up gradually and the bridge is just soaring. I sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the falsetto at the end of that song and . . . here it it and it is great. I get that prickling feeling just behind my eyes that I get watching ER which means I'm about to tear up . . . The judges understandably love him - but Mark hates the thought that they might get stuck with another unhip, uncool, unmarketable winner, right Mark? Thats not how he words it, but its what he means. Not another Poor Poor Casey, not another Kate, right Holden? You want another Callea, a Ricki-Lee, a Guy. You forget - again - that people over the age of 19 buy CD's. In fact, we buy MORE. We may not have bought Poor Poor Casey's or Kate's but maybe you need to start thinking that its not the singer we're avoiding, its the cookie cutter by the numbers bollocks you try to foist off on us via your winner. Kyle however, thinks Damien can sell CD's. I am coloured a surprised shade of I'll Remember That Later . . .

(I catch the end of Pink's interview on 60 Minutes and my girl crush is solidified.)

I had such high expectations from Gangsta's Paradise singing Brendan Boney and to hear that he'll be kicking Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground is an awesome start. Except he's not singing Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground. He's singing the Red Hot Chilli Pepper's Higher Ground. But he is kicking it. To the KERB. (sorry, sorry, bad joke, BAD joke, my profound apologies.) Its faster, its louder and it drowns him out. I can't hear him at all, even when the band cuts out he is still struggling to be heard above the backup singers. His breathing is all over the place and when I can hear him, he sounds flat. The judges basically tell him everything I've written down on my notepad. He'll have to wait and see if he gets a Wildcard and if he does he'll still be riding the wave of his original audition piece . . .

Final singer and obvious Judges Favourite Dean Geyer sings If You Could Only See which is the second song in a row to have previously been performed by a contestant on RockStar Supernova. But unlike Brendan, Dean does almost as good a job as Chris did on that show. But Chris also got ousted the week he did that song. I suspect Dean will have better luck with it. He is cute and sings well, he is rather charismatic, if a teensy on the cheesy side and he doesn't look 100% comfortable performing in front of a live audience but a couple of weeks performing (and lets face it, he's a lock in for Top 12) and I think he'll be kind of unstoppable. He is definitely the 'package' Mark is looking for, Marcia pretty much wants to adopt him and Kyle could pimp the crap out of this boy on his radio show so its kudo's all round for young Dean.

I have to say, Damien aside, I was kind of underwhelmed by tonights performances. Four of them sang well, two of them were kind of crap, but almost all of them were a little boring. I imagine the older viewers will vote fairly en masse for Damien and the younger for Dean Geyer. Chris and Brendan will most likely Wildcard at which point I hope for greater things from them both.

Go Irish.

TallulahBelle out.