LINK Posted 3/20/2006 11:23 PM Updated 3/21/2006 12:18 PM
'American Idol': Season five
Blog: 'Idol' chatter
Gallery: Sizing up this year's finalists
Sky isn't falling on 'Idol's Covais
'Idol' coaches sound off
'Idol' down to a dozen
'Idol': The pre-show
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'American Idol' coaches sound off
The limited patter of the judges — "You brought it, dawg!", "You're a star!", "Appalling!" — stirred us to seek broader and more constructive assessments of American Idol's contestants. Four opinionated veterans of the entertainment industry agreed to keep tabs on the show (8 p.m. ET/PT Tuesday on Fox) and provide weekly analysis and tips. Meet the coaches:
Rona Elliot, left, Gene Sculatti, Don Waller and Rich Martini will watch and analyze American Idol.
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
Skip ahead to the critiques of Idol's Stevie Wonder night
'American Idol' coach bios
Rona Elliot
On hand for most of the rock era's pivotal moments, Elliot handled local public relations at Woodstock and watched Bob Dylan plug in at the Newport Folk Festival. She hosted and produced shows at one of the first underground radio stations in San Francisco and later joined the NBC Radio Network in New York in management and on the air to present live rock broadcasts. She traveled around the globe with musicians in her post as music correspondent for NBC's Today Show. Today she is a contributing editor for U.K.-based Genesis Publications, known for its rock art books on rock legends, and teaches UCLA classes on the music industry. She also plays bass and sings back-up in a band of parents from her kids' school. (Related item: What do you think of the coaches' advice?)
Rich Martini
Martini, a pianist and a former music critic for Variety, has spent the bulk of his career in film. He made his directorial debut with 1988 comedy You Can't Hurry Love, featuring the debut of Bridget Fonda (Daryl Hannah made her debut in his USC student short film). He wrote the Charlie Sheen comedy Three for the Road and co-wrote and directed Limit Up (starring Nancy Allen) and Point of Betrayal (Rod Taylor and Dina Merrill), which he also scored. Johnny Depp and John Malkovich appeared in his wry Cannes Man, a send-up of the film fest's frantic networking. He recently wrote and co-produced My Bollywood Bride, starring Jason Lewis of HBO's Sex and the City, and shot a documentary featuring Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman, Journey Into Tibet. Martini has written a miniseries for HBO about the Medici family and is developing a film about Amelia Earhart.
Gene Sculatti
A music critic and author, Sculatti is the former special issues director at Billboard and editorial director for Warner Bros. Records. He was most recently managing editor of the music monthly Ice and has written about pop music for Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times and defunct and revered rock magazines Creem and Crawdaddy. Sculatti held positions at A&M Records and CBS Television and is the author of San Francisco Nights, The 100 Best-Selling Albums of the '60s, The Catalog of Cool and Too Cool. The latter pair are the subject of his website, www.catalog-of-cool.com, a compendium of hipster entertainment options with "subzero stylishness."
Don Waller
Waller is the author of The Motown Story, an unauthorized history of the legendary record label, and has contributed chapters to L.A. punk-rock history Make the Music Go Bang and The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats. He's written for USA TODAY, the Los Angeles Times, Mojo, Billboard, Radio & Records, Spin, Guitar World and Variety as well as the Playboy, Amazon, eMusic, Napster and iTunes websites. A former musician (the Imperial Dogs), Waller co-founded the Back Door Man fanzine and indie record label and co-wrote the Blue Oyster Cult's This Ain't the Summer of Love. He's a spoken-word artist, a club DJ (known as Agent 00 Soul) and probably the only U.S. music critic sporting a royal blue tailor-made Chinese silk suit. He's a voting member of The Recording Academy and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cooking is his hobby; music is his life.
The 'American Idol' coaches comments on Stevie Wonder Night
Elliott Yamin
Sculatti: This guy needs to take it further out to left field. He's got a good strong voice, often Stevie-inflected, but he has a tendency to be a little amorphous. Why not do a Righteous Brothers or Walker Brothers song, or maybe Burt Bacharach's Make It Easy on Yourself, the way Jerry Butler did? Ballads that have really defined melodies rather than big torchy songs.
USA TODAY
Elliott Yamin
Martini: He was a touch too reverential to his own idol's tune, and the performance barely showed what he can do. He's got the chops, but he needs to find tunes that highlight his power. The unshaved look he was sporting helped to edge him up.
Elliot: Singing comes effortlessly for this guy, and he has an impeccable musical sensibility. But it's not enough to make him a standout. Knocks Me Off My Feet has a complexity that made it tough for him to get in the groove, and I think his nerves made him hold back in his delivery, his personality and his natural movements. He needs a song with melodic simplicity that displays the exquisite subtlety of his voice. He needs to relax, breathe, let out the playfulness and find the security to dig deep into that God-given voice.
Waller: When you wear a sport coat, big guy, tuck in your shirt. He's closest in tone to Stevie's vocals, but his performance was closer to Robert Goulet.
Ace Young
Sculatti: He's basically a ballad guy who tends to be static and tentative. I'd suggest he do more upbeat stuff and show a little more stage presence. Maybe his hair needs a change. That Karen Carpenter look is a little soft, but that might endear him to some people.
USA TODAY
Ace Young
Martini: Ace entertains like a seasoned croupier, but the breathiness he added to his last rendition made him seem a tad manufactured. (Remember how Justin Guarini winked one too many times to the camera?) Rather than playing to the lens, he needs to focus on reinterpreting the tunes.
Elliot: For a guy pegged as the heartthrob, he displayed a lot of wisdom and humility when he talked about Stevie. He may have more going on that we've seen onstage. He's cute, really cute,and he can sing. He's the non-threatening type that guys can identify with as a good bud and girls just swoon over. But I can't see him past being an opening act unless he finds a way to rev up his motor. Sweetness radiates from him, but not the edgy rock narcissism that makes David Bowie so mesmerizing. The raw material is there, though.
Waller: He has yet to prove he can do uptempo material, hold a note or sing with power. His diction was poor and his overall performance was desperate. That eyeball-loving-the-camera act gets old real quick. Interview sequences led us to believe that if someone threw a stick, he'd fetch it. He has a Keanu-like quality of perpetually looking like he just walked into a plate glass window.