20 CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 5, 2005 | SECTION ONE

ROCK STAR: INXS

By Jake Austen

T here was once a sitcomabout a talking orangutanwho becomes a

Washington political adviser. ARoseanne Barr children’s cartoonwas produced. One recentlyaborted reality show featuredthree white, Christian,Republican families eliminatingminority households as potentialneighbors. With such stiff com-petition out there, it wasastounding when CBS last yearannounced what sounded like ashoo-in for worst idea for a TVshow of all time: a competitionto find a new lead singer forINXS, the 80s band whose frontman, Michael Hutchence,hanged himself in 1997 in whatmany believe was an attempt atautoerotic asphyxiation.

It sounded so bad I had towatch it at least once. And muchto my surprise, it was good. RockStar: INXS, now in its fourthweek, comes closer to capturingthe energy of live rock ’n’ rollthan any other program I’ve everseen on television. UnlikeAmerican Bandstand and its ilk,where the fun is partly in theabsurdity of lip-synching, unlikeSaturday Night Live, where themusicians are disconnected fromthe studio audience, this is ashow built around dynamic livemusical performances.

The premise is this: 15 singersare brought to a Hollywood man-sion where they socialize, partici-pate in clinics, and rehearse.Every week, each performs acover in a rock club in front of alive audience; former Jane’s

Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro,their “rock mentor”; and a panelmade up of the surviving mem-bers of INXS. Viewers in the U.S.,the UK, Canada, Singapore,Thailand, the Philippines,Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong,and Australia pick their favoritesonline or via text messaging, andthen the three contestants withthe fewest votes perform INXSsongs for the INXS guys, whodecide who goes home.

Obviously the model for the

show is American Idol, but whatmakes Rock Star compelling arethe ways it’s different from Idol.Idol has age restrictions—origi-nally contestants had to be 16-26,though last season the cap wasraised to 28—while most of thesingers on Rock Star are in theirlate 20s or their 30s. They’rerock-club veterans like TaraSlone, a Canadian vocalist whoseband the Joydrops was brieflysigned to Tommy Boy in the mid-90s, or Chicago’s Marty Casey,

whose band the Lovehammershas been a Double Door fave formost of the past decade. Some ofthem even list their day job as“musician.” Auditions, good orbad, aren’t part of the show;there’s no time wasted lampoon-ing the pathetic.

Rock Star dangles the pre-dictable carrots in front of its con-testants: they’re served chocolate-covered strawberries and cham-pagne, and they’re shown mon-tages of INXS performing for mas-

sive crowds. (Bizarrely, Hutchencehas mostly been edited out of thefootage.) But the main fantasiesthe show promotes are the samefantasies engaged in by anyonewho plays in, or goes to see, localacts at local clubs: All the bandsare gonna be good tonight. I lookcool in what I’m wearing. Smokingwon’t give me cancer. Drinkingmakes me more charming. (Onestiff Rock Star performer was actu-ally encouraged to consider hard

Television

Reviews

Chicagoan Marty Casey, the whole cast

A Kinder, Gentler RealityOn Rock Star, CBS’s show about finding a new singer for INXS, everyone’s talented, everyone’s nice, and nobody’s too old to rock ’n’ roll.

Television Movies Music BooksRock Star:

INXSREVIEW BYJAKE AUSTENa

20a24

Jarmusch’sBroken Flowersand Bergman’sSaraband

REVIEW BYJONATHANROSENBAUM

Sex, violence, and alienationfrom Poland,Russia, and JapanREVIEW BY RYAN BROOKS

When Gospel Was Gospeland the Marion Williams comp

Remember Me

REVIEW BYNOAHBERLATSKY

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CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 5, 2005 | SECTION ONE 21

22 CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 5, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Television

liquor.) As a result the show mostlyends up being about the visceraljoy of being onstage or in thecrowd at a rock show at a human-scale venue. The performances areshot from the perspective of thefront row of a packed club, and thecameras capture the energy of thecrowd as well as the performancethey’re watching. When Aussiepretty boy Mig Ayesa punctuateshis version of the Kinks’ “Lola”with some Axl Rose strut and adramatic drop to the knees, theaudience erupts with excitement.

Also, instead of being backedby anonymous studio hacks (inseason two, American Idol hadRuben Studdard singing “SweetHome Alabama” over backing

tracks thatmight aswell havebeen ema-natingfrom an icecream

truck) the Rock Star contestantsget to front an amazingly talent-ed live band. That they can evenplay Queen’s “We Are theChampions” convincingly is

getting e-mails that say things like‘I hope he doesn’t win it, I likeyour music better than INXS’s.’”

With its positive, even maturevibe, Rock Star is an aberrationin a television landscape thatmarkets cruelty to teenyboppers.The show’s biggest problem isn’tits absurd premise but rather itslimited appeal. Everyone wantsto be famous, but to be 36 yearsold and still playing Wednesdaynights at the Empty Bottle is afate unimaginable by most teenviewers. And older viewerswho’ve never been part of amusic scene may wonder why onearth everyone’s being so nice toone another. If the show is goingto make it through this seasonand into the next (Rock Star:Nirvana? Rock Star: TheCrickets?), it may need toembrace one more rock ’n’ rollcliche: sadly, this Rock Starmight need to get itself a bad-boy attitude.

Jake Austen is the author of TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV FromAmerican Bandstand toAmerican Idol, out this week fromChicago Review Press/A Cappella.

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Jordis Unga

impressive, but these dudes canalso sing the harmonies. They’resome of the industry’s top hiredguns (their resumés includestints with huge mainstream actsas diverse as Whitesnake, Cher,Natalie Cole, and Pink) but theydon’t sound slick or clinical. Notonly does the show not comeacross as a karaoke contest, itdoesn’t even feel like you’rewatching a cover band. Since thesingers often work out their ownarrangements (Mig’s “Lola” wasslightly reggaefied), it’s more likewalking in on a real band that

happens to do a few covers.Whether by design or accident,

the show has little of the cutthroatattitude of The Apprentice orSurvivor, two successful realityshows from some of the samepeople behind Rock Star. Whenthe would-be Hutchences on theside of the stage rock out as theirrivals perform they don’t seem tobe masking jealousy or fakingenthusiasm. Grinning ear to ear,banging their heads, pumpingtheir fists, these people who havespent countless hours in rockclubs watching shitty bands seem

to genuinely appreciate how goodtheir colleagues are. When theINXS members offer feedbackbefore reciting the least-likely-to-catch-on catchphrase ever(“You’re just not right for ourband . . . INXS”), they seem sin-cere; at their most critical, they’reconstructive. What they are seek-ing is so specific (no matter howgood, should a woman or amohawked black giant frontINXS?) that they can earnestlypraise and dismiss someonesimultaneously. And when thedischarged singers graciouslyrespond by thanking the show forthe exposure, I don’t think they’rebullshitting. These are pragmaticprofessional rockers. They seemto understand that a few weeks onnational TV has likely turned a$200-in-your-pocket club giginto a $400-in-your-pocket clubgig. “If he doesn’t win,” saysLovehammers bassist DinoKourelis of his bandmate, “Iassume we’ll make more money.But what’s happening already isthat we’re getting a lot of coolattention. Over 700 people a dayare checking out our Web site andlistening to our songs, and we’re

Rock Star: INXSWHEN Mondays 9:30PM, Tuesdays 9 PM,and Wednesdays 8 PMWHERE Channel 2

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