As a big fan of Magni, the last few weeks I was torn between wanting to see him perform one more time and thinking that the exposure was already sufficient for him to strike out on his own. Magni clearly already knew by then that the band wasn’t right for him and he (very rightly!) didn’t seem willing to mould himself into what fits in with them. I didn’t follow last years Rockstar:INXS show so was not sure how big a boost the career of other indie singers exactly got by participating. In any case I guess the main benefits of being in the show will trickle in slowly and it won’t be as dramatic a change in career path like the winners. The important thing is that many people in the industry would have noticed them and with some luck most of these people will have a better career after the show.

In the Rockband forums there is now a separate thread related to Magni’s career which should help me track how he goes about things(Permanent Link here in my Music links) There is a host of new info there already – a lot of translated from Icelandic stuff that can only be found there. Thanks to the Magni fans from Iceland and all over the world there including Evilpiggie, Youskinnybitch, Finley, Babe_Magni and so many others. In fact I’ve been so busy reading those interesting messages that there was no time to post about the finale last week! Well to be truthful since it was so predictable I’m not so sure there were any new insights to write about anyway. The post result interviews did confirm one of my earlier thoughts. All of the 3 band members did have their own picks and in the end it depended on who was the most stubborn in having his way. Tommy Lee wanted Lukas Rossi right from the start, Gilby Clarke thought Dilana was the one midway through the show while Jason was cheering for my viking Magni. Since (like I noticed) Jason’s favourable comments on Magni were totally blanked out in many recent weekly performances the writing was pretty much on the wall.

Anyway found out from rockband forums that Metallica is apparently one of the reasons Magni took to music with Jason being his personal childhood hero. Magni mentions actually shaving off the side of his head as a kid to emulate Jason So not surprisingly these guys seem to have hit it off very well professionally too. Jason whose house is just across the mansion the rockers lived in, spent 5 1/2 hours jamming with Magni last week before the finale. Both alternately played bass and guitar with Jason even trying out the drums. Magni says they wrote about 30 part songs in that session! None recorded of course. Jason when asked after the results if he ever considered Magni as their frontman had this to say.

For me, yes, absolutely. I will tell you now, now that everything has been exposed. Today, when we had our final final meeting, we were pulling our hair out, trying to figure it out. The question we asked each other was: If you were starting your own band and we weren’t forced into this unorthodox way of putting together this band on TV, which person would you take for your own band? If Tommy and Gilby wasn’t in it, who would I take? I said, well, I’d take Magni. Cause he’s the best instrumentalist and he and I could go for hours, we could jam, we could write songs, we could… he’s one of us, he’s one of me, I’m one of him type of thing. So I knew that it would be the most fruitful with him. Tommy chose Lukas, cause that’s his boy, if Gilby and Jason weren’t in, he’d want Lukas in the band. Gilby said, if Tommy and Jason aren’t in, I want Dilana. So we all three went that far apart. At like, four hours ago, five hours ago, that’s where we were, facing each other in a room, saying these words, so Magni was my boy.”

Well Jason Newsted’s presence in the band was the main reason I first (wrongly) took SuperEVS seriously and decided to follow the show. Now after the show I’m still left wondering why he’s in a band like SuperEVS. I’m no musician but Jason Newsted like the rest of Metallica were heroes of my teenage years too. And he sure doesn’t belong in a band like SuperEVS as far as I can see. Hopefully fans of Jason’s earlier work will be disappointed enough to actually voice their thoughts by carrying Save Jason banners or something similar to SuperEVS shows