The One Where Heejun Gets Told To Shake It Out again

"At this moment in time, there's an awful lot you haven't seen yet. A great many you haven't seen yet." said Nigel Lythgoe earlier this week. So, with over 300 still hopeful entering Hollywood week, those that we are shown can be expected to be a bit of a hint as to who to look out for in future - with a few disasters thrown in for good measure. (Blink and you'll miss 13 of the Top 24!)

It's never easy writing about this part of the series as all we get is a line or two from selected auditions and a very few very brief comments from the judges as they whittle the 300 down by about 50%. We really don't get much to comment on ourselves so the best I can do is give you my own take on what we saw in the first hour.

Johnny Keyser is one of those confident guys that are difficult to reject but seem a bit bland. Good-looking bloke and he sounds great and gets through easily enough but you're left wondering whether he's really Live Show material for all that.

Heejun next. "Shake it out," the judges say as the Korean stands looking distinctly odd and wobbles his arms around like a duck that thinks it's a penguin. You get the feeling that it's the distinctly odd bit that will mean we see him around for quite a while. He sings OK and has some nice tones in there somewhere but his pronunciation of words jars, especially those beginning with a P and he'd better not choose Papa Don't Preach for a future audition. Is he an American Idol? No. Icon for people to wish well in the Live Shows? Probably.

We hear that someone called Gabi gets through too but we're none the wiser as to why or how.

Elise Testone has an energetic and earthy attitude and is sufficiently different to all the Steven Jones hareem that will be advancing soon enough. You wonder whether she should be called Elise Testoserone as she certainly seems to have plenty of balls and it'll be interesting to see how the make-over people present her for the Live Shows which I'm sure she'll reach.

Baylie Brown has everything the show needs: she's gentle, country but not just country, pretty and experienced, just doing her thing and doing it well - the kind of girl the producers can rely on both to perform and attract viewers.

Hallie Day has the added benefit of a back story that no doubt we'll be regularly reminded of. She's a natural and performed well, looking lovely and, in the brief glimpse we get, packing in enough emotion to show that she means what she sings and she will do well.

A pile of others appear to get through but we get no names or anything. So far there are no new names getting through, though.

Jen Hirsh is beautiful and another experienced, reliable performer that should be in the Live Shows. A little more mature than some of the others, she is already in the business and has an album out so is familiar with the environment she's in and you get the feeling that this audition was a breeze for her with no sign of the nerves many of the others show. She wasn't as tuneful, though, as I might have expected so, whilst she'll get through, much will depend on what she gets to sing as to whether she can really compete with her young rivals.

Lauren Gray gives the audition all she's got and is really trying too hard to impress. She's quite impressive but inclined to shout a bit.

Phillip Phillips reminds us that there are some males in the competition. You'd think he'd be a good ol' country boy but he has a jazz feel with lots of individual style and puts his own interpretation on what he does. He's though safely.

Reed Grimm is naturally confident too and has an exhuberance that people will like for a while, as long as he doesn't overdo it. He sang about a Golden Ticket which was pretty weird, with a scat style and, like the previous guy, is original and can certainly sing and perform. Lots of experience too.

Travis looks like he's going home with a hang-dog expression even before he starts. He hit the right notes and seemed reasonable enough but, despite all the sympathy for his back story, he's neither one thing nor another. He doesn't get through and we get the sad tv bit. You do tend to feel sorry for the chap.

Adam Brook makes it four guys in a row. He's a bit heavy on the ears - so far there hasn't been any normal male singer that you can really say is modern and a potential winner and this guy, whilst OK and through, isn't an Idol either.

Jane Carrey gets included because her dad's famous. She gives us a nice version of a CCR number but it isn't exactly brilliant and that's the end of her road.

David Leathers is more like what I expect to see in Idol-land 2012. He's cheeky and comes across well. Nice range and does a good job. He's young, though, and how long will the chat up lines keep him going?

Shannon MacGraine gives one of the best auditions of the night and has to be a certainty for future rounds if she can maintain that standard. There could be some fascinating battles to come if she's up against the other talented and pretty girls already through and those yet to come.

Jessica Phillips has a nice voice but some notes were way off. The footage of her back story was unnecessary and I'm not sure we'll see that much more of her anyway.

We don't get to see Angie Z or the impossibly good-looking Britanny Kerr (a case of That's enough pretty girls, Ed.) but they're through.

We do see Erica Van Pelt who is another strong contender that will make the voters' choices difficult if she carries on performing as well as this.

Creighton Fraker is yet another slightly off-beat guy who is doing well in this series. He made a good job of this audition and joins several others who will also make choosing tricky later on.

Aaron Marcellus is the music teacher. He over-sung his number, trying to impress too much but he did hit all the right notes and sails through, one of the few vaguely normal likely male Live Show possibilities.

Lauren Minck does a nice performance of Heart's Alone. Not an easy song but she gets it dead right. Nice performance.

Jeremy Rosado has a cool personality, the sort of likeable guy you can see making the Live Shows but going out pretty smartly afterwards. He's no Idol and his vocals are very strained at the top end but there is a nice tone in there if he can stay in the best range. He'll survive for a while yet.

Symone Black is the last act we see in Part 1 and she has a nice tone, sings well and presents Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay well. Unfortunately, she seems to faint and falls off the stage at the end and we get the dramatic medic call as the credits run. I'm not so sure that was the most sensitive way to end this section - you sort of felt putting this on last as some sort of cliff-hanger was wrong. "Tune in tomorrow to see if Symone survives". No, this is American Idol, not some soap opera. Obviously, she recovers or they'd never have dared end that way.

It's the really annoying group round next. I'm dreading having to try and stay calm and avoid rude language when I write about that round when we learn precious little about the contestants, get scene after scene of people wandering around, arguing, panicking and generally either being really lucky to get in with some good guys or left to put something together with a bunch of others. Still, Scotty couldn't find a group last year and that didn't do him much harm. I just think it's all a bit pointless viewing.

Let's hope I'm wrong!

Up Town Planking In Pittsburgh

Auditions Part Two. Pittsburgh. We get told it's AI's first visit to this town where Ryan tells us they have their own language. Cue some folk going yousall. Obviously they've never been to Scotland. Or maybe they have. I'm sure the good folk of Pittsburgh must have been delighted that their next entry in the AI Charts was a complete prat called Heejan Han (name nowcorrected, sorry) who doesn't come from Pittsburgh or Scotland for that matter but Korea. With some strange arm wobbling that seemed to induce the same effect in the judges (was that North Korea?) the guy with the big face then takes us all by surprise by not being as bad as we thought he would be. Having said that Hee bo was no Subo but, inexplicably, he gets through to the Hollywood round. Why???

The next guy is Reed Grimm. He doesn't come from Pittsburgh either, but Wisconsin, and sounds like what an illustration to one of his great uncle's tales might sound like, should illustrations have audio. Oh dear, he gets through too. We might have guessed - as there was the video of him as a two year old playing.

Then two more zoom through before I get a chance to figure out who they are.

Photo from You Tube

As if the show hadn't already got slightly silly - there had also been two mentions of gazillions for a pretty average-sounding guy - we get some girl doing planking. Luckily she wasn't the one doing the singing but it was still a bizarre sight of her laying flat out in front of Samantha Novacek. Now this girl can sing well. She desperately needs some advice on what to wear but then that seems to be the case for many of the hopefuls in this town. Surely Pittsburgh isn't that far from the shops that they only shop once a decade?

Reinforcing, possibly forever, the image Pittsburgh is getting for bad clothes and strange names is Creighton Fraker (shown on TV as Fwaker, the w possibly being a subconcious thing what with all that planking and getting Samantha's dress off). Crikey looks and sounds a bit bonkers but then so have quite a few so far and it hasn't done them any harm. Eventually, after being persuaded to sing something we might vaguely recognise instead of a self-penned ditty a duck would be embarrassed to have written, he puts in a decent track and we see someone worth paying attention to. "Let's big this thing down." suggests Randy, whatever that meant. And we get another gazillion which is definitely well OTT but he's through anyway.



And now, for something completely different. Eben Frankowicz. Yes, OK, not that different as he does have a strange name and it's difficult to imagine his school chums yelling "Hey Eben!!" across the school yard but what is different is that he looks normal. A cute kid with helicopter parents. Sings Ain't No Sunshine brilliantly. If AI11 goes down the neat choirboy route then he'll be in the live shows. My first potential winner.

Next up is Travis Orlando, back from last year. "Who remembers Travis?" asks Jennifer. Silence. "I do." she continues. That says it all. Obviously a Hollywood rounder. He didn't need the big and quite sad story to get through but it might have the useful effect of the whole of Pittsburgh now out hunting down his mum. He sang OK but isn't a sure-fire guy to get that much further, for all the emotional stuff.

Another 8 or 9 fly by. No idea who they are.

Shane Bruce. A good ol' coal miner and coal miner's son. He says the sort of things that you can imagine his parents saying at the dinner table. He wants "a stable life". You might be tempted to wonder why he's auditioning for something that would give him almost precisely the opposite but there's probably a cliché his mum would come out with to explain. We see, unusually, a video of the guy performing underground - it's not the underground bit that's unusual; I don't recall seeing many videos of contestants singing recently before their audition being shown. We get plenty later but not on the auditions show. Anyway, he sounds pretty good in that so when he struggles a bit with some notes on the ill-advised choice of Hallelujah you hope they'll give him another track like they did for many others. He had started off with the odd question about whether they knew the song from a film which may not have helped his cause. And when, obviously annoyed with himself for not performing at his best, he appears to have more or less given up and comes out with another of dad's abbreviated comments along the lines of 'gave it my best shot only got one chance' which might also have been followed by 'shall I go now or wait for you to judge that?', you shout at the TV "Shut up! You were OK. Sing something else." Too late. He looks like he's given up and the judges almost don't have any choice, despite his being far better than many others they had let through. So we watch him drift off with his clichés, expecting Randy or Steve to come chasing after him like Simon would have asked someone to do had SYCO been producing the show. Sad.

Hallie Day was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. Until she met Idol. We get a lot of this girl's back story so it looks like we're going to get something special. She's also the last on tonight so that's another hint as they like to leave us with something good to remember till next week. It seems she joined a band and went to New York a while back but didn't make a great deal. Somewhere along the line she got really low and this girl sure shouldn't need to pretend the emotions when the time comes to perform. I was pretty underwhelmed by I Will Survive but that's mainly because I hate the song after it's been done to karaoke death ever since someone brought karaoke over here and even before that, especially by annoying, usually fat and unattractive women that you might prefer that they didn't. I was totally agreeing with Steven Tyler who wanted another song. "Why?" ask the other two. "I like watching you when you sing." he announces. Classic. I would like her to have blown us away with something else but then that may have reduced her odds with the bookmakers. She is another potential winner - but still a long shot. I'm just guessing but the Debbie Harry looks and obvious talent and passion ought to mean good things for her.

38 get through from Pittsburgh. That's 80 so far. another 220 to go. One of whom is Hollie Cavenagh. This was her in April 2011. Wow.