Rock, a bye. Baby.

Sitting down to Idol Round Two : Rock at Chez Belle, my guests and I make some early (and in retrospect, hasty) predictions. It is generally agreed upon that both Mutto and Chris should romp this one in and coast through to the next round but that it all hinges on their song choice, that if Klancie isn’t singing Black Velvet we shall wash our hands of her; and Gracie all but promises to stomp her feet in a little Irish jiggy hissy fit if there is any U2 this week. These points are agreed to in an Algonquin Round Table kind of way – ie with much nodding, murmuring and the occasionally bitchy and scathing bon mot as I get my Dorothy Parker on . . .

First gelled and plucked cab off the rank is Ricky who has left RnB at the five and dime and is yelling Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’ at us. The crowd goes freaking nutso for him, but there’s not a hell of a lot of actual singing going on. He still gets mad props for actually sticking to the theme but his nostrils are like some ever growing creature, threatening to take over the world. Seriously, he flared those damn things so much towards the end of his song that Idol lost a microphone stand, a spotlight and three members of the live audience. Luckily G had thought ahead and tied a rope around Mathieson’s waist so he could find his way back for the post song interview. Mark raves about rock suiting Ricky more than RnB and we all ignore him, its for the best.

Lisa continues to front with great song choice that she can’t back up with great delivery. Tonight, the mouse that squeaked looks hunched while singing The Donna’s version of Billy Idol’s ‘Dancing With Myself’. Yo. The Donna’s are some seriously bad ass rocking chicks and this? Lisa’s version of their song belongs on the soundtrack to a teen romance flick loosely based on something Shakespeare wrote. It isn’t bad, the song kind of suits her strange voice, but it is so seriously lacklustre and ONCE AGAIN she is wandering all the hell over the stage. It gets better at the end but she’s still basically aimless and almost totally lacking in charisma. Mark and Marcia get into a big ol’ cat fight about Lisa’s lack of energy and point. Mark bemoans her lack of experience and I almost pass out in an angry red haze as I scream at him for putting a 16 year old with no experience through to this point. Kyle jumps in and bitches about her lack of stagecraft and connection with the audience and Marcia, who quite plainly at this point can’t allow the guys to say anything without nonsensically disagreeing with it, jumps in to defend Lisa. I happily Shut Up Marcia at her.

There were a couple of really great performances of Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’ on Rockstar Supernova this season. Mutto’s version, who pulls some rock ninja poses whilst he sings, is nowhere near as good. He has Falsetto Envy. The crowd looks bored. The audience in my living room looks bored. Mutto gets even more pose-y towards the end and then gives the camera some serious serial killer eyes that make all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Marcia tells us he’s sick, hence the disappearing falsetto and Shaneequa mutters that she makes excuses for her favourites. Kyle continues to be the voice of reason and notes that the naff choreography has to go. Mutto earns our love and gets a pass for the so-so performance when he stands up to Mark on Little Lisa’s behalf.

Klancie ruins my night with Georgia Satellite’s ‘Keep Your Hands To Yourself’. This was potentially an awesome song choice for her, its country rock and it gives her the opportunity to let rip a great country yodel but she backs away from it and misses all the really good notes. She makes it hard on me by having such a freaking good time, but I am just not sold on her voice - or her hair, Euph notes that they’ve given her the Cosima Fringe from season one – her voice is just not strong enough. None of the judges see fit to comment on her singing, it’s all about her look and the whole bullshit country/western thing. Do they really really REALLY think Klancie will sell records? Really? My least favourite performance of the night.

Okay, so we’ve already worked out that Bobby? Is a littttttle strange. We obviously haven’t given him nearly enough points on the Ripley’s Believe It or Not scale, because he is daring us to take him remotely seriously with his bizarre take on what constitutes Rock. Warren Zevon’s easy listening staple hit, ‘Werewolves of London’. I was in the kitchen when they read out what he was singing and my ‘WHAT???’ could be heard all the way down my street. The original of this song? Not rock. This version? Not rock. He renders the song almost unrecognisable. Sings it well, don’t get me wrong, but what the fuck? The judges all freaking adore him and don’t appear to notice that he’s performed the same song three weeks in a row, and that oh, by the way, that one? Not ROCK. I’m pretty sure that if Ricky had paid no attention to the theme and sung a rock song RnB style, he’d have been SLAUGHTERED. Ritually sacrificed on the altar of You Will Follow The Theme. Bobby has been given some kind of get out of jail free card with the judges. Fosse just wants to know if Bobby has more hair than he did last week . . .

Oh Reigan. Oh sweetie. I admire greatly that you chose to do such a JJJ alternative rock song like Karnivool’s ‘Themata’ but we need to talk. Do you actually want to be in this competition? Because you are practically begging to be thrown out. The tweenies are going to hate you so very much. Next to Ricky, Reigan is the only other contestant who steps out of their comfort zone and avails herself nicely, if slightly pitch-i-ly. Until she gets to the last note. Oh dear. Words fail me as to how bad it is. She’s trying to show off her soprano but she cracks and miffs it completely. The judges just don’t like her very much, Mark tells her she didn’t nail it at all and Kyle tells her how stupid her song choice is and calls her mental. I suspect she should already have her bags packed.

Irish sings Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ not as well as Lukas did on Rockstar, but its still pretty damn fine, if not a little bit too damn pretty. He’s unfortunately had to speed up the start which rips a lot of the feel away from the song. The falsetto is a tad shaky but the glory note is fucking awesome and the end is pure Chris Isaak. Mark criticises Irish’s need to elongate and hold every note and I reluctantly agree. Marcia continues her grand tradition of disagreeing with Mark just for the pure sake of it and disagrees with Mark. Kyle then picks on Irish’s dress sense which prompts a riposte from Mark and the pithy banter that ensues between the two is worthy of the writers of Frasier. Oh hang on, no, not Frasier, whats that show I’m thinking of? Oh yes, Married With Children. Sophisticated humour at its best, brava boys. Idiots.

Jessica continues to show us how unbearably cute she is and what an awesome set of pipes she has by laying out Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Walk Away’, a move that initially had my head in my hands because that is a hard song to sing, but Jessica nails it to the freaking wall. When she hits the big KC note in the middle she gets a ridiculously pleased look on her face, she’s Cheshire Cat happy and tremendously hard not to like. It’s an extremely joyous performance and (along with Klancie and Chris) Jessica is having the fucking time of her life up on that stage. Kyle discards any and all brownie points he may have earned with me by saying that although he loved her singing and the performance that he doesn’t want to “see the jelly belly in the white singlet” again. There is a millisecond of quiet from an audience that can’t believe what the FUCK they just heard, before they go batshit crazy, screaming out how beautiful she is and James and G practically leap off the stage and gut Kyle where he sits, spitting at him that she’s only sixteen (she is, in fact, seventeen but that is SO very beside the point) and G tells Kyle “you can talk chubscout”. I fucking heart both of them and think Kyle should check his brakes before he drives anywhere. I sincerely hope she is able to forget he said that and that Jessica didn’t go to sleep last night with that fuckwit’s words replaying over and over in her head because that way lies an eating disorder and she is quite frankly adorable. But you can see on her face that she’s gone from the amazing high of her performance to the incredible low of wondering how fat she looks on tv and vowing not to eat for the next week. I loathe Kyle more than I’ve ever loathed him before. Congratulations asshole, you’re back on my shit list.

We quickly move on to Chris, who Gracie immediately dubs ‘Nacho Libre’ in honour of his ever so spot on resemblance to Jack Black. He’s performing The Darkness’ ‘Is It Just Me’ and its fucking hilarious. He is SO 70’s shaggy rocker that it will physically hurt me if he doesn’t sing Sherbert’s ‘Howzat’ when it comes to Australian night. I don’t know this particular Darkness tune but it is so perfect for his voice, a nice mix of rock and falsetto and the facial expressions are priceless. He’s ace. I think so and so do the judges. Kyle says nothing about Chris being a little heavyset but the boys bring it up. You can still see Andrew G seething.

I’m having Lavina put on suicide watch, because she’s SINGING EVANESCENCE. Doesn’t she read my blog? Doesn’t she know that she shouldn’t ever do that? She comes out and stands before the microphone with her hoodie pulled up (someone’s seen Dilana’s performance of Lithium on Rockstar) and she soprano’s the first bit before ripping the hoodie down and snarling the rest and is fucking brilliant. She comes to the edge of the stage and . . . it’s like she’s summoning the dark forces to come do her bidding by infusing with magic these monkeys she has given wings to so they can go pick up this young girl in gingham who dropped a house on her sister and stole her ruby red slippers. Damn. That is all I have to say. DAMN. Marcia and Kyle loved her, but Mark is so eaten up with hate and bile that her sister didn’t win last year – you can see it bubbling up inside him, it sits there, just at his larynx - that he can’t see past it.

Dean then proceeds to completely phone in the last performance of the night - seriously, he’s sitting in his dressing room with his mobile talking to his nanna - by singing Fuel’s ‘Shimmer’, a staple of every cover band that ever played a gig since this song was released. The cheese quotient is once again, fairly high. I don’t get the hysterical girly screams about this guy. Scary eyebrows aside, I think Ricky is the prettier of the two, even if my own personal tastes run more to Irish. Mark and Kyle actually call him out on the bland-y McBland performance and he stupidly owns up to not having a strong voice! Stupid stupid move! Marcia adores him, yeah, he’s young, cute and a Christian – of course she loves him.

All in all, a much better rock year than last years. Top three were Jessica, Lavina and a tie between Chris and Irish. I would assume bottom three to be Reigan, Lisa and maybe Mutto or Klancie, with Reigan my tip to go. Now excuse me, I have to go write some hate mail to Sandilands, the tubby fucker.

TallulahBelle out.