I’m already beginning to miss following all the singers every week in Rockstar: Supernova. So one of the things I’m doing now(to tide over my withdrawal symptoms !) is to look back at some of the performances. I realise now that this Supernova song is the one with which they try best to fit in with the Glam rock 70’s kind of sound. Also the lyrics are probably similar to songs of that era with lots of sexual double innuendo. Must admit that one of my perverse thoughts seeing the video again now was to see Lukas on stage with all the go-go dancers on this song and (accidentally ?) kicking one of them off with his Mick Jagger impersonations drunk-but-not-dead swagger

Leave the Light’s on( Rockstar: Supernova)

Yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah

(Oh, oh, oh)
I’d like to say for the record that I like how you walk
And how the other guys all shut their mouths and talk
And your body’s so black and your skin is too
I wanna make a good connection when I plug into you

So come on and leave the lights on that’s your thing
It’s better for the cameras if you know what I mean
So come on and leave the lights on if it’s all that you see
Coz everything else in the room is gonna be off

Yeah yeah yeah yeah

I wanna feel like the kingdom when I burn into you
I wanna kneel at the altar your body dances to
I wanna speak three languages… tell us how I feel
That I am unbelievable… I love the way that you move

So come on and leave the lights on that’s your thing
It’s better in the cameras if you know what I mean
So come on and leave the lights on it’s all that you see
Coz everything else in the room is gonna be off

Yeah yeah yeah yeah

(Oh yeah! C’mon!)
(Oh I feel oh…)
So come on and leave the lights on that’s your thing
It’s better for the cameras if you know what I mean
So come on and leave the lights if you wanna see all
Coz everything else in the room is gonna be off

So come on and leave the lights on that’s your thing
It’s better for the cameras if you know what I mean
So come on and leave the lights if you wanna see it all
Coz everything else in the room is gonna be off

Some news about the band came out recently with an update on RollingStone about the court case. Seems that the band will now be known as Rockstar: Supernova to avoid the legal suit. Talk about silly names ! On the other hand with songs like the one above maybe it does desperately need some sort of recall from the loyal viewers of the reality show for the record/live tour to sail through. They have moved fast for that very purpose by already releasing It’s all Love and Be Yourself & 5 different cliches as singles in Yahoo music(Link here). And this recall thing does work for now coz even with all my scepticism about the band I’m almost tempted to buy… just to see how Lukas compares to Magni on It’s all Love’s studio version.

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

I’ve been listening to Magni singing It’s all Love with Tommy Lee’s SuperEVS(my name for the band formerly known as Supernova) a little more closely these days. I did think two weeks back that it was a real strange decision to allow Magni to have the first take on a proper rock ballad before whomever SuperEVS finally picked as their frontman. Made me think that the band didn’t think as highly of Magni’s vocal prowess as I did. Well now that Lukas did sing this song on the day of the finale, the results are there for everyone to compare. Even hardcore fans of Lukas(if they listen for once rather than continue to droll over his stage act) will agree that he totally messes up the song bigtime. Not only did Lukas forget the lyrics to the first verse he also sounded like he was singing with marbles in his mouth (again!). And this is inspite of the band slowing down the song a bit to suit Lukas’s range. The lyrics themselves are not bad though I’m not sure they are particularly memorable in the I only remember silly choruses T. Lee way.

It’s All Love(SuperEVS)

Everybody likes an easy way out
Nobody tells it like it is no more
You took a hit when you blew it out
The light inside that shined before

Never had to have to love this much
Never felt enough to call it hate
If you can let a thing mess you up
It’s not too late

It’s always so close
Then you pull it away
And anything goes
Then it goes astray
Now what are you left with at the end of the day
It’s all love, it’s all love, it’s all love

Nothing left but the sound of doubt
A pouring out of how did you live in
No one tried to help you figure it out
Does anybody see the signs you’re given

Never had to have to love this much
Never felt enough to call it hate
If you can let a thing mess you up
It’s not too same

It’s always so close
Then you pull it away
And anything goes
Then it goes astray
Now what are you left with at the end of the day
It’s all love, it’s all love, it’s all love

Is anybody listening to what I’m trying to feel
Is anybody feeling anything that’s real
Is anybody really gonna help me feel this soul inside of you

Recently in an interview Tommy Lee, the de-facto band leader, talks about their band aspiring to have a David Bowie meets T. Rex kind of sound. I figure that probably means an early 70’s glam rock kind of music. Now that would explain why Lukas’s stage act does fit in reasonably well with the band. Unlike Tommy and the band however I’ve no clue what a typical David Bowie sound is supposed to be! After all Bowie’s music has evolved so much throughout the last 4-5 decades and has actually led to inspiring many sub-genre’s of popular pop/rock music. It’s tough nevertheless to place this particular song into anything quite of that era. To me it appears more of a unpolished rock ballad left over from one of Live’s albums a.la The Dolphin’s cry. It’s all Love probably still is the most radio friendly of the SuperEVS songs put out so far. So hopefully they’ll re-arrange it a bit while recording to suit Lukas’s vocal range. Or else they’ll have the rights but no longer quite own the song

Dilana finally found her sweet pop voice in yesterday’s performance night singing her version of Police’s Roxanne[video link below]. And it’s a good full throated impressive voice, something that comes naturally since she used to sing in that way in her pop career for so long. I don’t know why she’s been singing in an unnatural(fake?) raspy voice on the show so far… maybe it was to sound more edgy(rock-like ?). I didn’t care for her arrangement too much(lots of more knowledgeable people did!) but she did capture the emotion behind the song. So that’s a first for her as far as I’m concerned. Her original is lousy but she sang and performed it better than before.Lukas did reasonably well on a re-arranged version of Coldplay’s Fix You which was dedicated to his estranged father.[video link below] His voice was nice on the slower parts of the song but loses it’s way a bit when the tempo picks up. I’m disappointed Lukas didn’t quite manage to do the falsetto of the original that well. I didn’t particularly like his accoustic version of Headspin much either, last week’s version with the houseband was lots better. He sang well so I give him full credit for that but it was not quite angst… just all a bit too weepy for my tatse.Toby did a nice version of Radiohead’s Karma Police[video link below]. For a change one got to hear his voice on a slow song with emotions and he managed far better than I would have thought. His original too had several nice touches on the stage including writing EVS on Magni’s head(very poetic that considering Magni’s icy cool mood). But he looked visibly nervous maybe coz he now believed that he could actually win this.In the end it was again left to Magni to do what I thought naively everyone would(should?) do all the time while auditioning for a band that included ex-members of GNR and Metallica. And today he was absolutely on fire maybe realising his time on the show is ending soon. He crushed decimated Deep Purple’s Hush so badly that I won’t be able to listen to the original without hearing his voice on it.[video link below] Magni also played better guitar solo’s on this than Gilby’s done so far in the S…whatever’s original songs. I really loved his vocals last week on the original but today Magni stepped it up even higher singing it in a different emotional tone … with a lot more anger and power.[video link at the bottom] Anyone complaining(like Gilby did last week about needing to step it up) should listen carefully this week and be ready to be really rocked. Magni simply crushed his own performance of last week and his voice and guttaral screams near the end were absolutely awesome… almost Judas Priest-like. Jason Newsted should know a hard rocking vocal performance when he hears one & he loved it.Tommy Lee was smarting from Magni’s last week snap(which was deserved) and stupidly asked the audience if they remembered the chorus. So that’s how he judges songs I guess. How stupid of me to not know. I wouldn’t try that test on any of S…whatever’s songs in the future if I were him. Magni’s cool response(though he looked visibly shocked by Tommy’s harsh words) was typical of the man “The bottomline is that I love my song… and it’s music not everyone’s supposed to like it.” But it was a real cheap shot from Tommy especially near the end of the season and that too on a fellow musician’s composition. It was also totally misplaced musically speaking since Magni’s original really rocked. Guess Tommy just wanted to get rid of Magni by whatever means but it was such a sick attempt… even if it’s his pet project and he likes the others better(for whatever reason). With this lowly act he’s only reminding me again to never buy any of S…whatever’s cd’s. Also before I forget Fard’í rassgat” to Tommy Lee on Magni’s behalf…Bottomline: It’s all reality TV drama now. So just guessing. Going by all the positive editing and this weeks improved performance(from last week it was a walk in the park!) Dilana’s now back in the running and must be neck to neck with Lukas now. Not sure if Toby is in the same league as far as S…whatever’s love goes. Also Magni might actually refuse if they give him the gig So they better be careful that doesn’t happen. And Tommy Lee better be careful  or he’d get a bloody nose(or more) soon coz my favourite viking might be a quiet guy but even he can take only so much disrespect.

Now they will have to change their name if they want to release any records. According to a Tuesday (September 12) ruling by San Diego Judge John Houston, the producers of CBS’ “Rock Star” are going to have to come up with an alternate name for Supernova. The full news story is available at this link.

Wonder what names they’ll come up with now ? Have some snarky suggestions but better not write much now since I’m in yet another I loathe Tommy Lee mood.