Monday, December 12, 2005

Honeys Love The Honey Brothers

Some friends invited me to join them at Spaceland last night to check out The Honey Brothers. I was intrigued by their website and its mention of the The Village Voice's description of the band as "glam ukele rock", so I decided to check it out. The friend in the know left us to be surprised by the fact that this band has a celebrity drummer - Adrian Grenier, (aka Fluffer Honey) the dreamy star of Entourage. Adrian mingled his way through the crowd of Silverlake hipsters (mostly chicks, drooling) during the entertaining opening set by Everybody Else. There's another actor in The Honey Brothers - Ari Gold aka Hoyt Honey (he's got the same name as Adrian's Entourage agent as played by Jeremy "Let's hug it out, bitch" Piven - coincidence?). When the band took the stage, we were underwelmed. They didn't seem very together on their opening songs. Things improved when they brought out their plugged-in ukelele and played some tunes that reminded us of a mix between the Talking Heads, Don Ho and Cake. Their rock-ish tunes succeeded more than their country-ish tunes, but all songs were hurt by less-than-tuneful singing. We left early, parting a sea of swooning groupies. All drummers should get so much attention, I thought, and I bet Peter Criss and Alex Van Halen would concur. Don't worry if the band doesn't make it big, Adrian - you've still got Aquaman!

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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

But Can They Sing? Finale - 12/4/05

There wasn't quite the hoopla that surrounds an American Idol finale, but the kids of But Can They Sing? sang their final chorus last Sunday. We expected from the beginning that it would come down to a battle between the two teen idols - Michael Copon and Carmine Gotti Agnello - and so it did. Morgan Fairchild took third place, but it was as if the producers realized Bai Ling should have been ahead of her. They let Bai come back and strut and strip her way through "I Touch Myself." It was amusing to watch the largely 'tween audience stare at Bai, unsure of how to react to her performance art spectacle. Another highlight was the opening number which reunited all the contestants (except for Joey Pants - did he get whacked?) for a "Bohemian Rhapsody" that was nearly as funny as Wayne's World. In the end, justice was done, as Michael Copon, who can sing a little, triumphed over Carmine. Fortunately, Carmine had his brothers, who had joined him onstage during his performance of "Gold Digger", to console him.

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