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The X Factor takes over saturday night viewing in our house and to be honest its getting to a point now with six "performers" left where the cream is rising to the top and the dross is struggling - or at least that is the theory.
On Saturday night there were two outstanding acts, Leona who has been consistently the best singer bar none right through the rounds, and Robert who has been very shaky some weeks and twice has had to sing for his supper at the end.
They were both head and shoulders above the rest and were both rightly voted through to the next round but all six of the acts are now showing themselves to be fairly un-versatile one trick ponies, even Leona who should be declared winner right now has not performed in anything other than a Whitney/Maria clone stylee.
The rest of them are just the best of a poor bunch.
Raymond, the twelve year old with a seventy year old's love of swing music will struggle to perform in any other genre, I predict that he may be the next one to go if Simon Cowell persists in introducing a big band element into his performance next week - he will then tour the UK's nursing homes performing for old ladies would will pinch his cheeks and tell him what a lovely little boy he is.
Robert can belt out a soul song as he showed on saturday, but as he has also shown, when he performs a song that is outside his skill level he wallows in complete confusion and embarrasment and he also sounds far too much like Frank Bruno to ever be taken seriously by an audience, he will not make the final and will disappear from the TV radar , appearing in panto as a Frank substitute.
Ben is starting to annoy me now, I wish he would stand upright when he sings instead of bending double on stage as if trying to force out a particularly wide and nobbly turd. His voice is suitable only for a "stadium soft rock" band of the sort favoured by mid-american college students, but he is twenty years too late in his application form, a return to a career erecting marquees while singing to himself is what he should be focussing upon.
And then we come to Louis Walsh's two groups, and deary me are these two scraping the bottom of the talent barrell.
Eton Road are right up Louis Walsh's street, another poor impression of a boy band, several years after the last of the boy bands were thrown on the scrap heap of pop stardom by the twelve year old girls who once worshipped them. The big difference between Eton road and (for instance) Westlife is of course that Eton Road are crap but dear old Louis can't see it - he chose the Beatles song "From me to you" on saturday for them and it was quite frankly appalling, a terrible choice of a song in the "love" genre where he could have chosen anything. When The Beatles had a hit with the song in '63 it was new and fresh and only two minutes long, on Saturday it was corny and badly delivered by a group of young boys who had no idea of what they were doing - they could well be the next ones to go if Louis makes another terrible decision like last saturdays.
And finally, the McDonald Brothers. Words fail me. Prior to X Factor they were making a few quid every weekend singing at weddings and their ambitions should have stopped right there, where drunken guests never actually listen to them and would dance to a screaming cat when they've drunk the bar dry. The Scottish vote has kept them in the competition so far and will continue to do so right through (I fear) to the final and if that happens then they could actually win the competition - this is not as stupid as it sounds, remember Michelle Mcmanus the zeppelin sized scottish bird who won X Factor a couple of years ago ? No ? Well its not suprising really, the Scottish vote won her the competition then, and she sunk without trace, which isn't that difficult to do when you're 35 stone.
The competition should be about talent, there is one talented singer in there at the moment, but now its about young girls and old ladies voting for the act that they'd like to meet in a shopping mall or in the common room of their residential home.
It'll be worth the Wedding SIngers winning it just to watch Simon Cowell storm off stage in the final though.
I actually sat through the whole programme on saturday night, a feat not normally endured by someone like me - someone with taste.
I normally watch the auditions phase if only to shake my head in wonder at the disallusioned talentless no-marks who bring everlasting shame and embarassment on their familes by appearing on national tv at the peak viewing time to wail the wrong words to "Flying without Wings" or random lines from that weeks random chart topping act who no-one else has heard of.
But on saturday night I watched the second of the knock-out live rounds - it was "Rod Stewart night".
Now when ah wor nobbut a lad I was a bit of a fan of Rod Stewart, right from the "Every Picture" album up to somewhere around the start of the eighties when he went too Los Angeles disco crap for me and I left him for a diet of Terry Wogan inspired rubbish.
So I awaited the "Rod Stewart night" with anticipation.
And my anticipation is still waiting.
It was crap.
For a start, two of the songs weren't what any sane person would label as "Rod Stewart songs" - "Try a little Tenderness" and "What a wonderful World" (yes Louis Armstrongs song) aren't instantly and inextricably linked to Mr Stewart although I acknowledge that the recent releases from him have tapped into the awful genre of "lets sing the old songs" and that it is feasible that he may have recorded Mr Armstrongs swansong, if it is so then I don't want to hear it by the way.
Putting the song selection aside though, the performers were just poor - with one excepton.
Ashley McKenzie should win the competition now, simply give him the prize and give him a recording contract and show some Tom and Jerry cartoons at 7pm on a saturday night until christmas - he is head and shoulders above the average club turns that remain in the competition right now and is the only one with anything like a unique voice and a unique image - his performance of "I'd rather go Blind" was inspirational and bore a remarkable similarity to the original recording by Etta James rather than Rod Stewarts version.
Down at the bottom of the pile was a truly appaling rendition of "Sailing" by two pimply scottish youths under the name of "The MacDonald Brothers" - they were awful, just awful, and yet they were voted straight through to the next round without having to perform in the "last two playoff", although with hindsight it was a relief as I couldn't have sat through them singing "Sailing" again.
The rest of the competitors are simply bland - looking at them on the X Factor web site I cannot remember their performances at all, if they were a colour they would be beige, if they were a vegetable they'd be heavily stewed cabbage - they are all unmemorable.
Which seems to be the point of the whole programme. in past years they have produced such superstars as Michelle McManus (see photo above), who as everyone knows, has sold lots of records to her family since she won, or Steve Brookstein, a pub singer who, erm, is a pub singer now (he's not very happy about it either) or last years winner who is so famous that he has completely slipped my mind, and apparently Googles mind too as I can't find any reference to him/her at all.
My cousin was a professional session guitarist and now produces musical tribute shows and for a long time he has explained to us how the music business takes aspiring young acts (such as the recent ten year long phase for boy bands), eats them up, milks them dry then spits them out the other end, skint.
He has dozens of tales of working in studios on backing tracks for 17 year olds who thought they had made it when they signed a "million pound record deal" - unfortunately no-one explained to them that they do not get the million pounds personally. he would love it when these precocious "talents" would keep everyone wating in the studio because they had just returned from spending some of their advance payment in a night club somewhere, whilst all of the session musicians sat around earning overtime until they were ready.
He had tears of mirth in his eyes as he explained that at the end of the first year an accountant would sit down with these young kids and explain that they had spent all of their million pound recording contract on studio time, musicians overtime, hire of those limos that they insisted on, 300 nights in a night club buying everyone drinks and the rent on that apartment in central London that they had insisted on, in fact, the accountant would explain, you owe us money now and so your second album (which will always be crap with no money spent on it) will have to be done for free to repay us. And when the second album sold only to their families then they were out of the door, passed in the reception by the next 17 year old with stars in his eyes and a million pound recording contract.
X Factor is just the starting point of that conveyor belt its just that, like cattle waiting in a field outside an abbatoir, the performers have no idea.
