Finally, a Good Show

Shout-out to JC for reminding me that The Next Great American Band premiered last night. I remembered this show being touted as the last American Idol season drew to a close, and now it has finally arrived. And I dare say that my husband and I were loving it!

If it's not obvious already, TNGAB is basically American Idol for bands. Except there is a different host and different judges. Although I feared that they would be extremely annoying, they weren't at all. Dominic Bowden typically lives down in New Zealand with Frodo and Gandalf, where he is the host of New Zealand Idol. He is now trying to be the next Ryan Seacrest (which he pretty much admitted) by hosting TNGAB. We are exposed to another awesome accent courtesy of Ian "Dicko" Dickson, who is the Australian version of Simon Cowell - "the mean judge." Sheila E. (remember her from back in the day with Prince?) is much nicer to the contestants, but also actually knows her music and seems like a very cool person. The last judge was the worst part of the show for me - Johnny Rzeznik from the Goo Goo Dolls. I never liked his band and I cannot STAND his haircut or his wishy-washy personality. He needs to cut his freakin' bangs, stop sounding like a Valley Girl and grow a backbone.

The premiere lasted two hours and spanned three days of auditions out in the desert near Lake Las Vegas. It was 107 degrees! I remember being in Vegas when it was 110 degrees and I could barely stand walking outside between air-conditioned casinos for 5 minutes. To be up on stage, mostly clothed, playing a song like your life depended on it in that kind of heat? I couldn't do it.

Early on in the show, my husband and I groaned as a band of bare-chested, long-haired thirteen-year-old (and one twelve-year-old) boys were introduced. They were called Light of Doom, which I'm sure was intended to sound hard-core, but instead left me in stitches. However, when they busted out Flight of Icarus by Iron Maiden, the judges (who I could tell had also been prematurely writing LOD off) snapped to attention. These kids were good. They even did high-kicks while playing guitar, a move that we had to rewind and slow-mo to marvel at again after the show was over.

Another impressive band was The Clark Brothers, who reminded me of a cuter, older, country-version of Hanson. They didn't have a drummer or a bass player, but did play a mandolin and a dobro.


Finally, we also liked Sixwire. This group already had a recording contract in the past, but then their albums didn't sell, so they're hoping that being on national television changes the situation for them a bit. My husband commented that their sound was "tight," but all I could think about was how the lead singer looked like he could be Sawyer from Lost's older brother.


A much more in-depth recap and review of the show (which I agreed completely with) can be found here, if you want to be caught up for the next episode. MTV's review of the show includes some interesting information as well, and focuses on a few of the zaniest bands that were kicked off already.

If you enjoy American Idol and like music in the slightest, I highly recommend this show. It's in an unfortunate time slot on Fridays at 8 PM EST, but with Tivo it doesn't really matter, now does it?

Time to go sign up for the Light of Doom fan club...

- e