I missed most of the show this week because we were driving around the neighborhood with the kids looking at Christmas lights, including more than a few tributes to Clark Griswold. However, between the spoiler and the fan club email, I knew that Denver and the Mile High Orchestra had advanced again this week, making it into the top 5.
After last week’s Rolling Stones theme, the bands played Rod Stewart songs this week. Next week, the final four bands play songs by Queen and then allegedly David Bowie after that to see which three bands make it into the finale.
DMHO played “Baby Jane“, a song I’m not familiar with as I’m not a huge Rod Stewart fan. After getting to watch the performance on YouTube, I think they’ve found a good balance between vocals and horns. Past weeks’ performances have had a very dense sound, with the horns constantly on the level of the vocals for presence. That gets tiring to listen to and the judges quite fairly were critical of the homogeneity. This week they backed off the horn arrangement and allowed the vocal and rhythm section to come to the forefront; it worked very well.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-74zPLTrcI]
There will come a time in the competition that DMHO will have to pull all the stops out and do an overpowering “wow, cool!” performance, e.g. the saxes and trumpets playing two horns at once – as they’re known to do, to keep going. Hopefully they’ll stay around long enough to save that for the finale in a few weeks.
Finally, the tension between the secular music competition and DMHO’s identity as a Christian band is starting to bubble up. The spoiler notes that in the introductory segment (which I missed), they talked “about how hard it was to find a Rod Stewart song with nonsexual lyrics”. That topic came up again in the post-performance critique and Denver deflected an opportunity to speak directly to the faith issue, instead talking about “the perfect song”. I hope that “being Christian” isn’t a card that they’ll lay down later to appeal to the voters, but I’d hoped to hear that theme a little more than I have to this point. That said, what we see on television is highly edited from live performances earlier in the week, so who knows what the show’s producers are choosing to cut out.
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Next Great American Band: DMHO, Round 6
After last week’s Rolling Stones theme, the bands played Rod Stewart songs this week. Next week, the final four bands play songs by Queen and then allegedly David Bowie after that to see which three bands make it into the finale.
DMHO played “Baby Jane“, a song I’m not familiar with as I’m not a huge Rod Stewart fan. After getting to watch the performance on YouTube, I think they’ve found a good balance between vocals and horns. Past weeks’ performances have had a very dense sound, with the horns constantly on the level of the vocals for presence. That gets tiring to listen to and the judges quite fairly were critical of the homogeneity. This week they backed off the horn arrangement and allowed the vocal and rhythm section to come to the forefront; it worked very well.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-74zPLTrcI]
There will come a time in the competition that DMHO will have to pull all the stops out and do an overpowering “wow, cool!” performance, e.g. the saxes and trumpets playing two horns at once – as they’re known to do, to keep going. Hopefully they’ll stay around long enough to save that for the finale in a few weeks.
Finally, the tension between the secular music competition and DMHO’s identity as a Christian band is starting to bubble up. The spoiler notes that in the introductory segment (which I missed), they talked “about how hard it was to find a Rod Stewart song with nonsexual lyrics”. That topic came up again in the post-performance critique and Denver deflected an opportunity to speak directly to the faith issue, instead talking about “the perfect song”. I hope that “being Christian” isn’t a card that they’ll lay down later to appeal to the voters, but I’d hoped to hear that theme a little more than I have to this point. That said, what we see on television is highly edited from live performances earlier in the week, so who knows what the show’s producers are choosing to cut out.