So, here I am milking an Orson Scott Card article for another post. OK, so the riff yesterday on F42 was just a bit of (well-earned) dissing, not such a much. But further on in the same article Card notes a couple more things that are more than worth commenting on. The first is something I’d heard about but not seen/heard. View the clips below, then my comments.
And…
The show’s the British talent show that American Idol is based on, but it’s apparently quite different to American Idol in that all sorts of talent, not simply pop singing, is welcome. Read Card’s comments on that aspect. As far as Potts’ talent, well, Card’s exactly spot on there as well. Yeh, it’s been about 40 years since my bachelor’s degree in voice, but I agree that while Potts’ singing quite likely was a “breath of fresh air,” as was said, that was probably due more to the quality of the music itself and the lack of quality in other performers’ offerings than to Potts’ presentation, which was good, but not as good as described by Simon Cowell and the other judges.
But please do not mistake me: I think the guy has a very, very good raw talent. I do believe the defects Card and some YouTube commenters note are more defects of training and experience than fault with Potts’ talent. I’d seriously like to see/hear what he could do with good training. I’ve listened to old recordings of Enrico Caruso and John McCormack that were of comparable recording quality to the streamed YouTube recordings, and Potts’ showed nearly as much voice as those two greats could in the low-quality recordings made of them, so I’m not too quick to write Potts off as not having the instrument required to make it in his chosen music venue. I sincerely hope he gets some good training to go with a very nice instrument.
But on another subject. I have been completely turned off by American Idol and other so-called “talent” shows because of the crappy performances overall, along with the crap “music” often featured. So I was, very much like Card, completely surprised when I absently CLICKED through “So You Think You Can Dance?” and… CLICED back to see what the heck was going on… and was HOOKED.
Everything Card says about the show is true in spades. I have NO formal dance training, NO real experience, and yet I’ve been called on to do simple (very, very simple) choreography of a few shows (yeh, and some of them were with grade school kids) and teach what little of “interpretive movement” *heh* I’ve picked up over the years.
This show has been a complete joy to watch, except for the fact that some completely brilliant, wonderful dancers/entertainers must be cut each week for the show to progress. This may be the ONE show I buy DVDs of. Seriously. (OK, I’d buy DVDs of the OLD Dr. Who episodes or the Jeremy Brett “Sherlock Holmes” but that’s about it). This is one of the very few shows I have seen that is really worth my time to SCHEDULE to see it. Of course, a couple of my very fav dancers were cut this week, but those who are left are (mostly) brilliant talents. (OK, one dancer I just do not understand. “Weird” is the word I think of when I see him move. Don’t get me wrong, though: I do like his dancing; I just don’t “get” it. And that is very weird. :-))
Check the show out, if you have not already. Sure, it’s in the final few weeks, now, but that means you’ll see only the good stuff (though, after the initial tryouts, pretty much all of it has been “the good stuff”–so very, very different to American Idol, et al.)
[Oh, and I simply forgot to add earlier… ]
Card ends the “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything” article with a change of pace: some wonderfully snarky observations about my two “favorite” *cough* OSes:
Running a machine that runs Windows is like buying a car – only it comes with a chauffeur, and he’s the only one allowed to drive your car, and he will only take you places he thinks you ought to go, and you have to sit in the seat he tells you to sit in, and he takes days off without any advance notice to you.
The only difference between Windows and Apple, by the way, is that Apple’s chauffeur takes fewer days off, but goes to even fewer destinations, and only one of the doors has a button. So don’t tell me how I should switch to Apple and all my problems will be solved.
*heh*
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Magical Rose Garden, The Random Yak, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Everyone in my house but me is riveted to that show… literally riveted. I like it okay, but my husband and kids are so into it that they know everyone’s name. Durnedest thing I ever saw.
Well, I’m rarely “captured” by a television show. Most are PDW (Pretty Darned Worthless). Rare, exceedingly rare, is the show that has any artistry at all, let alone the level of artistry that is the norm for this show. And the critiques! From the years when I enjoyed (and that is definitely the word) critiques of voice profs who were genuinely interested in helping students improve both their technique and artistry (I absolutely LOVED “juries”), I have rarely found any matching experience of constructive criticism of that level. These “judges” show much of that sort of thoughtfulness, and their expertise within their field shows as well.
That, for me, is the artistic icing on a very well baked cake.