Fickle Soul Finger of Fate

Fickle Soul Finger of Fate - I hate American Idol. No, really, everything about it.

I've watched a grand total of maybe half an hour of the show during its entire run, in addition to hearing innumerable bits of highlights in the past couple of years, and unlike most "reality" TV, it doesn't merely bore me. I actively detest this program.

Part of it is that the fix is so obviously in. Everyone knows Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken have been the judges' favorites all along. It's got all the drama of watching my goatee grow.

But the worst part of "American Idol" has always been the music itself, the dreck the would-be Idols are forced to sing; the worst dregs the the last thirty years of American pop and "R and B".

"Idol" brings into grotesque relief how far "Rhythm and Blues" has fallen in the last thirty years. How far, exactly, I realized when listening to Nick Spitzer's American Routes on NPR. Yesterday's show (click to hear it in RealPlayer format) was on the Stax Music Museum in Memphis.

Forget Motown - Stax/Volt Records in Memphis was the greatest R'nB label in history. Sam and Dave, Booker T, Otis Redding, the Staples Singers, the Bar-Kays and Rufus Thomas, among many others, recorded on Stax/Volt; the label's hallmark was raw, unpolished, pure soul.

And listening to the rare chestnuts that Spitzer uncovered (Otis' "These Arms Of Mine"), it whacks you over the head what incredible, banal crap "Rhythm and Blues" is today. It's neither rhythmic nor blue.

And, in the hands of our would-be "Idols", it's banal, slick, and has no place to even put any genuine soul (as opposed to the Michael Bolton-y hyperemoting that passes for "soul" these days).

Wake me up when it's over. I'll be curled up listening to my Sam and Dave anthology 'til then.