Reality TV Sniper Pegs Another Victim

Damn it!

All this time, through Survivor and Amazing Race and Big Brother and Wife Swap and Nanny Whatever, I've maintained a stance that I was above the Reality Television craze. Reality.....ha. Packaged goods for the lowest common denominator, I'd say to people. The only reality series I watched all the way through was that fucking Joe Millionaire train wreck just because I bought into the premise of a show that actually was out to humiliate money grubbing, 15 minute getting, ready for my teary-eyed close up airtime whores. But after feeling like I needed a shower (okay, screw the shower--I need a baptism) after each episode, I swore that I would never buy into the reality sales pitch again.

Then I had a beer in a hotel bar in Rockville, Maryland.

My wife and I stayed in a decent hotel in Rockville while my mom recuperated in the hospital following the surgery mentioned in an earlier post on this site. A mere fifteen minutes away and much more affordable than even a dump in pricey Bethesda, we retired one night to the hotel's bar to get a sociable drink before bed instead of a can of beer in front of the telly. It was dead that night in the bar with just two people sitting at the bar and the bartender playing pool with another patron to pass the time between pouring rounds.

Mary and I took seats at the bar, nodded to our neighbors and flagged down the bartender. He walked behind the bar and asked us what we'd have. What we'd have, he did not. No Coors Light in a bottle for me and no Bushmill's or Jameson for Mary. Settling was in our immediate future; Lite Beer from Miller for me and a whiskey sour with Maker's Mark for Mary. Settle on a cheaper hotel and you get a bar stocked just slightly better than a picnic.

Our bartender had an accent I could not place and I'm normally close on that, so I was quietly frustrated as I listened for clues. As we all chatted, he charmed us with stories of his travels through our great country. He once stayed and worked in San Francisco for a few months, the guest of a crazy American woman that wanted him to do things to her that he could not do in good conscience. I told him that while I don't know what the woman looked like, being a male concubine in The City didn't sound all that awful. My wife raised her eyebrows at that statement, but after the bartender said that it wasn't all bad, she shrugged and ordered another Maker's Mark sour. I pointed to my two-thirds empty bottle and he raked the cap off of another Lite.

As he went to serve the two other customers, Mary and I absentmindedly turned our attention to the television that was suspended above us. The sound was down as is appropriate in a bar with a jukebox playing, but the signature strobing lights and quick cut editing of a live music performance caught my attention. Mary asked what was on and I told her I wasn't sure but that it didn't look horrible, but in fact looked like some rocking shit. Definitely not the Grammys or Country Music Awards, which can fool you for a moment before you realize that you're watching musical pablum. We watched for a minute and when the performance ended and the cameras turned to Tommy Lee, I realized what we were watching. Rockstar: Supernova.

I'd heard about this show, but never watched the "replace the guy from the '80s Aussie band who hung himself while jerking off" season. I remember hearing things from respected sources that stated as far as reality television was concerned, it was compelling. Feh, I thought. What's next, Rock Star: Bananarama? INXS was not, is not, and will not be relevant to me or most people except in the most nostalgic way. I like what I remember from INXS and I could see myself enjoying some sort of post-game concert at my local Triple A baseball affiliate stadium or perhaps a county fair show, but as far as trying to sell me on the fact that a new album and/or tour with a game show winner at the helm would appeal to me or the general public was a bit sad. A few months after the "show" ended, I saw that most of their tour dates included just such venues, including a local Indian Casino stop. Indian Casino concerts, for the most part, fill haggard bands' schedules in between county fairs and Tower Records acoustic performances. That's not to say that Indian Casinos don't book viable bands. My wife and I saw Heart play at a local casino last year and they were as hot or hotter than when we saw them way back in '85, and their most recent album Jupiter's Darling is as strong as most in their catalog. But the sad fact is that the majority of folks in the crowd were there to hear nothing more than the hits from their mid '80s MTV resurrection and maybe Barracuda.

When we caught the bartender gazing up at the TV as well, we asked him if he could turn it up. With nobody really listening to the jukebox, he turned it off and found the remote to the TV. A contestant was singing a Stone Temple Pilots song and doing it pretty well. We watched a few more and then my wife recognized one of the singers. "That's Storm", she said excitedly. I leaned forward and squinted a bit and told her that it looked like Storm, but I was pretty sure that these contestants were all unsigned amateurs, much like on American Idol.

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We had been turned on to Storm after I read a review of her album, The Calm Years (2001 Taylor Made Records) and picked it up one day. I loved it and listened to it a lot. Even with its heavy sound and aggressive vocals, Mary dug it too. She tends not to enjoy the heavy stuff, but forgives the crunch if the vocals are clear and not shrieked. We have many albums that we both enjoy, but not many heavy ones. Tool, Masters of Reality, Living Colour, and Storm being among the few exceptions. We played the album for friends and relatives and they all liked it but hadn't heard of Storm before. The interest usually died there. Many of these folks are radio listening drones and not interested in an act unless it's been force fed to them by a monopolized mass media outlet. But we kept up with her activities via the Internet and hoped that she would hit it big someday.

We even saw Storm perform live once. After lamenting the fact that she had come through Fresno and played a small club only a few months before we discovered her music, we found out that she was to play at a big annual outdoor music festival in Sacramento called The Sacramento Heritage Festival. This great event takes place over two days and features a huge line up of mostly unsigned or up and coming Northern California acts on several stages in a park setting. We had seen and enjoyed many bands at past festivals including Ozomatli and Mother Hips, so we were very excited to see Storm in that setting. As it turned out, she was to play the "unplugged tent" with just her guitarist on acoustic guitar as accompaniment. Initially, we were disappointed that we wouldn't hear the blunt force trauma attack of her tunes in all their electric glory, but she wowed us all with her dynamic range, stage presence, and overflowing sex appeal. With a bit of raunchiness running through her tunes, she even censored herself due to the little kids dancing and playing in front of the stage. She even played to the kids, encouraging them to sing along and raise their hands. Later, while she was signing autographs, I remember thinking she was very sweet to make sure that kids got stickers and autographs before any of us leering adults.

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Anyway, we watched the end of her performance on Rockstar: Supernova and I wasn't quite convinced it was Storm we'd just seen. After all, we were watching a '80s model 19 inch color TV perched at a height of 8 feet that was at least 15 feet away from us. The (mono, natch) speaker was as tinny as a Victrola and didn't carry well past the smack of billiard balls on the table behind us. But then the singer stepped up next to the host, another cookie cutter, generic hot chick holding a microphone who tries oh so hard to feign a glimmer of intelligence and not sound like her banter isn't phonetically spelled on a teleprompter. The host spat out some information that we couldn't make out except for something about a vote. Then a phone number and the word Storm appeared below them on the screen. Mary and I were both excited to see that it was her after all. It was decided then and there that we had to watch the rest of this series.

When we returned to California later that week, I programmed the series into our DVR, another one of those "how did I get by without this before?" contraptions. Since that night in the bar in Rockville (and how appropriate that we were in a town called Rockville?), we have been glued to the idiot box watching and debating the worth of the performances. I suppose the show is not that different from other reality genre programs, but at least this one is right up my alley; live rock and roll. I usually call the voting correctly and the band members, Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted, and Gilby Clarke, along with uh, helper/co-host (?) Dave Navarro normally echo my comments seconds after I make them following each contestant's performance--albeit much less articulately of course (I'm polishing my fingernails on my chest as I type that).

So, now I'm watching and enjoying a reality television show. Or a game show. Or a new version of Star Search. Or complete shit. At this point, I'm able to enjoy it on face value. I don't see Supernova as the next Led Zeppelin. Trust me as a fan of "supergroups". I've loved and lost many; The Firm's first album (out of an abundance of two) fought very hard in the pecking order of the soundtrack to my senior year in high school. Jimmy Page's post Zep project beat out Dio's Last In Line, Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers, and narrowly overtook Iron Maiden's Powerslave, but lost in a photo finish to Whitesnake's Slide It In. And yes, I wore a mullet.

Supernova will get a very talented lead singer and much press. I believe they'll play high profile theater sized venues promoting the subsequent album. After that? It's hard to say right now, but I can't see anything long term coming from this sort of format. With the hand picked and pumped up audience, careful and clever editing, and the diminishing effect of people actually being real on reality television, this has all the makings of an utterly forgettable experiment. How long do you think the new INXS will last? If this were a more realistic, documentary style of program that showed true auditions in some sort of practice studio not in front of an audience, I would put more credence into it.

But credence or not, I'll be there next week rooting for Storm and trying to put a hex on that damn Zayra.