Idol Chatter & Voice Views

American Idol wraps up its audition episodes tonight from Denver.

But, first, some unfinished business from the Dallas episode.

Hey, we saw some talented singers that night didn’t we?

Of course, we should have. Idol judges gave out no fewer than 31 golden tickets in Texas.

Two guys we didn’t see in the show (well, maybe a glimpse, but we weren’t introduced to them, and they sure weren’t featured) are Michael Castro and Alex Lambert.

Idol fans will be familiar with Michael. He’s the brother of Jason Castro, who finished fourth on season seven of Idol. Michael tried out for the first time in season eight as something of a lark and made it to Hollywood.

“Not many people can say the first time they sang was in the Kodak Theatre,” Michael says in his Idol video. As for his return … “This season, I’m actually trying.”

Apparently, the former cage fighter has truly been bitten by the singing bug.

Sorry I failed to alert you to this bit of news earlier, but Michael has a six-track EP that’s available on iTunes. In fact, it has been since August.

You can listen to the six tunes here. Hey, I’m not a big fan of Michael’s voice, but some of the songs aren’t half bad, including the lead track, “Be Yourself Tonight.” You can listen to more songs on his MySpace page.

As for that voice, guest judge Joe Jonas apparently told Michael it’s “unique” during his Idol audition. One of Idol’s real judges agreed. Michael thinks it was Kara, but couldn’t remember which one for certain.

This year on Idol, each of the golden ticket recipients is asked to talk about his or her favorite American Idol moment on video.

Alex Lambert’s favorite Idol moment?

Watching Jason Castro play the ukulele while performing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Hey, Alex, thanks for the perfect segue.

Anyway, Alex lives in North Richland Hills, Texas. He’s either 18 or 19. You can’t really trust the ages Idol flashes on the screen during the audition episodes, because those auditions were filmed during the summer.

Anyway, in his Idol video, Alex says his mom had been bugging him to audition for Idol for a couple of years, and he finally did. By the way, he is not related to Adam Lambert.

What else do we know about Alex?

That he has six brothers and plays football, even though he’s on the small side. That he classifies his music as acoustic, crunk, indie, according to his MySpace site. That on MySpace, next to “sounds like:”, he wrote “a dream you wish you could have.” That he loves to wear sunglasses, even indoors while performing, judging from his MySpace photos.

And he’s rumored to have done well in Hollywood. The fact that music has been scrubbed from his MySpace seems to back up those rumors.

Prior to Idol, Alex performed with a band called Hands That Hurt. Based on videos of the group performing that you can find on YouTube, he has experience singing cover songs.

That never hurts on Idol.

Below is Alex and Hands That Hurt performing “Twist and Shout.” Head to YouTube and search for HandsThatHurt and you’ll find a couple of other videos.

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