Rock Star: INXS
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The premise is this: 15 singers are brought to a Hollywood mansion where they socialize, participate in clinics, and rehearse. Every week, each performs a cover in a rock club in front of a live audience; former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, their “rock mentor”; and a panel made up of the surviving members of INXS. Viewers in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Australia pick their favorites online or via text messaging, and then the three contestants with the fewest votes perform INXS songs for the INXS guys, who decide who goes home.
Obviously the model for the show is American Idol, but what makes Rock Star compelling are the ways it’s different from Idol. Idol has age restrictions–originally contestants had to be 16-26, though last season the cap was raised to 28–while most of the singers on Rock Star are in their late 20s or their 30s. They’re rock-club veterans like Tara Slone, a Canadian vocalist whose band the Joydrops was briefly signed to Tommy Boy in the mid-90s, or Chicago’s Marty Casey, whose band the Lovehammers has been a Double Door fave for most of the past decade. Some of them even list their day job as “musician.” Auditions, good or bad, aren’t part of the show; there’s no time wasted lampooning the pathetic.
