Norwegian Idol and the Battle of the Delusional

Watched the Idol tryouts from Trondheim and Bergen, and I've got to admit that watching the first couple of shows gives plenty of entertainment. One would be hard pressed to find any larger congregation of delusional people and shattered parental expectations outside of beauty pageants and congress. Also, the vast majority of these people must have the worst friends ever, since they haven't intervened and told them that "Yo; you's kewl and all dawg, but check it; yo' ass can't sing worth a DAMN. I've heard cats f**k with more rhytm and harmony than that, you know wha' I'm sayin'".

This year, peeps were allowed to bring instruments, but quite frankly, based on what little I've seen so far, the presence of the instruments only serves to demonstrate that the vast majority of guitar strummers have no idea how to tune up, and I can't say that the accompaniment helped out significantly. Those who could sing and perform well were allowed to continue, and those who couldn't sing were invariably the ones who couldn't play either. So it turns out to be a correlation between musicality and singing/playing capability. Who'd have thunk it, eh?

I must say that of all the Norwegian Idol judges so far, nobody's been as qualified to evaluate vocal qualities than Benedicte Adrian, so kudos on that. Of the other mooks in the current panel, you've got Jan Fredrik Carlsen - arguably merited by past experience and the fact that he's a reasonably successful manager, that overhyped chick from Surferosa, and Asbjørn Slettemark, a "music journalist" whose only qualifications appear to be epic bitterness and having memorized a slew of demeaning Dangerfield-esque one-liners. Also, he has the beginnings of a brutal ponytail so as to hide his emerging Hulk Hogan ca 1985 hair density. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, Brother.

Which brings me to the eternal question of what qualifications you need to have in order to be a music journalist. Obviously, you don't need to know anything about music theory, and you don't need to have perfect pitch, as painfully evident by grunge bands being praised in the mid 90's. One should probably be a bitter bastard with a background either from a failed garage band who never made it to open mic night at Garage or some bedroom strummer who broke down in the transition from open to barré chords. With this failure comes an onset of cognitive dissonance, in which you're the best judge of musicality and talent despite being a massive failure. Other qualifications probably include a large record collection and a Rain Man like mind for who was the engineer on every Dylan record ever made. Essentially, you're Comic Book Guy from Simpsons with slightly different interests. And being a music journalist is a great way to become one of the Idol judges.

Still; despite the quality of some of the judges being somewhat dubious, the contestants who are summarily dismissed by the entire panel and cry about how cruel the judges are, obviously have nothing to do in show business. Also, they should check out the feedback given to contestants in American Idol.....