Trivia Time: The son of a baseball Hall of Famer made the final 12 in American Idol’s fourth season. Name the singer and the baseball star.
By MARK FRANKLIN
Is Simon going soft?
I mean, earlier this year, Idol’s crankiest judge was his crabby self. After one contestant bombed during the auditions in Louisville, Ky., Simon pointed to the Churchill Downs race track and?spouted these words: “To put it into horse racing terms, imagine 22 horses and a donkey on that track. You just wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Where was that Simon last night?
After a contestant bombed, he phoned her boss to ask for her job back. She had resigned, sure her Idol dreams would work out.
And he gave a Golden Ticket to another contestant not because she had a sweet voice, but because she had a sweet younger brother he didn’t want to disappoint.
What the heck? Was I watching the right show? And is it just me, or are lots of marginal singers making the trip to Hollywood this year?
Well, we got to meet a couple interesting characters during the San Juan and New York auditions. There was Melinda Camille, who talked about how much she likes to dance naked, then sang very well. There was Jackie Tohn, who has appeared in enough second-rate movies and failed TV pilots to merit a Wikipedia entry. Now she’s threatening to be the next Amanda Overmyer (remember season seven’s female rocker). And that ain’t good. And we got a very tiny glimpse of 23-year-old Texan Kendall Beard, who sounded great and has a four-track CD in her musical past.
Next week, it’s on to Hollywood, where Idol becomes more of a reality TV show than a singing competition. The clips promise lots of drama.
Let’s get on with the singing. Please.
Now it’s flashback time. We’re up to season four runnerup Bo Bice, (above right) and he’s due a huge thank you from season seven Idol winner David Cook. (Remember, tickets for his Penn State York show go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m.)
Why, you ask? Because it was Bo Bice and Constantine Maroulis who introduced rockers to an Idol competition that had been way too overloaded with pop singers heading into season four.
Bo hardly sounded disappointed with his second-place finish on Idol during a 2005 interview in Rolling Stone. “People ask me, ‘What were you thinking while you stood there waiting for them to announce the winner?'” Bice told the magazine. The answer: ” ‘Please, God, don’t let me win this thing.’ … The label ‘American Idol’ was not for me. I’m not a pop person. It would have been even harder to play my kind of music if I had won.”
As it was, Bo released his first CD, “The Real Thing,” near the end of 2005 and watched it go gold. But when he appeared on Idol in an interview last season, he seemed far prouder of album number two, “See the Light” though it hasn’t been a commercial success.
“The biggest difference between ‘The Real Thing’ and the new album is I really got back to my roots,” he said. “Southern rock is what I do, and it’s like, do what you love, genuinely, give it all you’ve got. That’s what ‘See the Light’ is all about.”
You can listen to full-length versions of four of the?10 songs on “See the Light” on Bo’s MySpace page. And if you don’t mind traveling a ways, you can see Bo in concert next month. He’ll be playing at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, Md., on Feb. 28.
Here’s a look back at some of Bo’s more memorable performances on Idol.
Bo Bice talks about getting fired, and sings “Whipping Post.”
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Bo sings “Freebird,” a perfect match of singer and song. And Simon proves he doesn’t know Skynyrd.
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Bo, just Bo, on “In a Dream.”
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Trivia answer: The singer was Nikko Smith, who qualified for the finals only after another contestant dropped out, citing personal reasons. Nikko is the son of Ozzie Smith, star shortstop for the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals. Nikko finished ninth in the competition.
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