Post by Inside Australian Idol on Jul 2, 2005 0:16:47 GMT 10
My way
July 2, 2005
Reporter Sunanda Creagh at the auditions.
Photo: Fiona-Lee Quimby
Armed with little more than an eyepatch, a sense of humour and a streak of bravado, Sunanda Creagh joins the nervous throng of hopefuls at auditions for Australian Idol.
I step out of the cab on a chilly Saturday morning looking like something left over from Friday night. Short skirt, eye make-up, tight top and flashy earrings. Oh, yeah, and an eyepatch. The plan was hatched at Friday afternoon drinks, half story idea, half dare: I'll audition for Australian Idol wearing an eyepatch.
And lo, at 7am the next day I'm clip-clopping in my heels towards Darling Harbour Convention Centre, sure that I'm early enough to beat the queues. I'll get in, warble a few lines and be laughing about it by lunchtime.
I round the corner to see my fellow Idol brethren lined up in a queue that stretches from the door around two sides of the harbour, six or seven thick and a kilometre long. Judging by their tired, bedraggled and bored expressions, I estimate these people must have been here since 4am. Then I see the sleeping bags, duvets and mini-tents and realise they've been lined up since yesterday afternoon.
I start walking and five minutes later reach the end of the queue. I'm surrounded by young girls brushing hair, applying lip gloss, straightening their sexy boots. Far from being embarrassed by it, in a way my eyepatch keeps me company - it reminds me that this is not serious, that there's something really funny and amusing about standing around in the cold on a Saturday morning preparing to sing in front of strangers.
Nervous energy drives people to chatter and conversations strike up all around me. "So, what are you gonna sing?" and "Were you here last year?" There are all sorts here. A guy dressed as Batman is talking on his mobile phone, looking deadly serious despite his chiselled abs and silly codpiece. The girls next to me, however, are not amused. If you're not serious about Idol you shouldn't be here. "It's not fair," one of them complains. "We wait all day for all these other people to audition, but they aren't even serious about it." I nod conspiratorially and try to stare down Batman with my good eye.
We're all bored. An Asian boy in a giant silver hoodie listens to songs on his mobile phone. A group of Islander girls croons a love ballad of which Alicia Keys would be proud. Beside me, someone writing a text message calls out: "How do you spell testicle?" We answer in chorus. Plenty have brought friends, girlfriends, boyfriends and family. Someone's dad offers me a blanket for my chilly legs.
A security guard, looking a little like an agent from The Matrix, hands out forms that we all sign greedily - waiving all our rights, handing over our souls to Grundy Television. A woman ahead of me notices that contestants must be aged between 16 and 28. "I am 28 today. Can I still audition?" she asks. "Sorry, love," says a man wearing a walkie-talkie headset. "If you're not under 28, you can't go in." The woman shuffles off dejectedly and we all shake our heads sadly. It's a tough game.
A Channel Ten camera sidles up to me, followed by an impossibly bouncy presenter who announces she just "lurrrves" my leg warmers. They want to film me opening my coat, flasher-style, wiggling suggestively and uttering something about how much I want to be the next Australian Idol. I resist for a moment, then realise that she who agrees to wear an eyepatch and sing for reality TV has little left to lose. I mustn't be good talent - after four takes of arse-wiggling, the presenter loses interest and the crew moves to its next victim.
Two hours later, we spot Idol hosts Andrew G and James Mathison working the crowd, asking us to do a Mexican wave for a cameraman chugging round the harbour in a little boat. After about the seventh take, Andrew G patiently calls out for us to wave one more time. A girl next to me hurls an expletive instead. I like her.
At 9.30am, the doors open to the exhibition centre. They let in groups of about 20 at a time, so the line inches along slowly. Closer to the front, we encounter hairstylists who are taking perfectly fine hairdos and ruining them with litres of product. The results are greasy and bubblegum flavoured - very Idol. An hour later, we're in the final holding pen, stamping like racehorses. Then we're herded into a huge auditorium, full of would-be stars. I'm not sure how many people are here, but I'm handed a wristband marked number 70645 - and we were the early group. As I find a seat, I hear number 70040 called. Only 600 to go.
A Maybelline stall is doing great business to our right, patting powder on young faces, doing eyelashes, making 16-year-olds look glamorous beyond their years. A team of roving hairstylists continues to pounce on heads. Staff are handing out Telstra fake tattoos and Oz Idol merchandise. At the back, pies are for sale.
Despite our boredom and fatigue, the mood is amiable. We all have a long time to wait and friendships form quickly. The corners of the room are filled with faces singing to the walls, maximising the acoustics. Outside, the high ceilings fill with the sound of a boy practising scales with his singing teacher. Behind the pie cart, another would-be Idol sleeps cradling a guitar. Someone next to me pores over a hand-written lyric sheet.
I get to work making friends.
I start with Batman. Why is he dressed like that? "It's a dare off people at work," he says, deadpan, long bored of the joke. I hear ya, brother. He's singing Spider-Man to win a $120 bet.
Over yonder is a boy with pink spiky hair, tight black jeans and studded belt. What would a punk sing, I ask him. "Sugar by Britney," he says in a fey little voice. He has a J.Lo number prepared as a backup song, which is lucky because I can't think of a Britney Spears song by that name. No Ramones or Fugazi? "No, I'm just dressed this way because if you want to be on TV you need to make a statement."
In front of me is a couple who trucked in from country NSW after work on Friday, then camped for a freezing night on the shore of Darling Harbour. "We had about 20 minutes' sleep," she says, blaming the nervous chatter of co-campers for her insomnia. Unlike me and Batman, this girl can really sing: she's the Shannon Noll type, the winner of an RSL competition, and she plans to impress today's judges with a rendition of The Shoop Shoop Song.
We're joined by another couple. Again she's the singer; he's here for moral support and has chosen the unlikely Go the Mighty Panthers as his tune. "If you get in and I don't, I'll never speak to you again," she laughs, poking her boy in the belly.
We start to see people leaving the audition rooms. A girl with frizzy hair weeps hysterically, comforted by her family. Even her little brother looks respectfully sombre. Others burst out clutching blue and pink cards, indicating advancement to the next level of auditions. "I got a 'wow' out of them," one girl says, and people she's never met cheer. The girl from the country emerges, looking brave but beaten. She hasn't made it. "Oh, well," her boyfriend says. "Let's go home and get some sleep."
The day passes excruciatingly slowly. This is real reality TV: slow, boring, occasionally nerve-wracking, but mainly banal. Tantrums, teary episodes and bitching provide temporary entertainment. In the toilets, a girl calls out: "I can't believe they didn't pick Tracey." The voice in the next stall replies: "I can."
The dulcet tones of my fellow Idol hopefuls were entertaining at first, but grow tiresome when I realise how many of the voices sound the same. Most popular are those whimpering Mariah Carey-style songs that trickle up and down the octaves. I begin to long for a solid melody, not so much wailing around a limited range. I wish someone would just sing the national anthem. And it looks like I'm not the only one tiring of the same tunes: at one stage, a producer mounts the stage and announces: "If you're gonna sing a gospel song, you better have a pop song up your sleeve. We are hearing a lot of gospel in there."
I befriend a medical officer, who rattles off a list of conditions he was anticipating today: headaches, cuts, hypothermia, panic attacks, asthma. He's treated only headaches so far, but his team is prepared for anything. I fall asleep with my eyepatch on. At the rate people are entering, I calculate that I might make my audition debut about 6pm. The light begins to fade.
Suddenly, I'm on next. I rush to the bathroom to smear on some lippy and totter back just as my number is called. I'm herded into an anteroom. Unlike the cattle-class auditorium, here it's quiet, hallowed. Producers scurry about whispering and shooshing excited contestants, and the silence is punctuated by trills and Mariah-howls. We sit on a line of chairs and a kindly producer thanks us for waiting and explains that we'll be assigned to one of four audition rooms.
It's then that I'm struck by nerves. I try to remind myself I'm here for a joke, that I'm not really auditioning, but the reality of singing in front of strangers - wearing a miniskirt and an eyepatch - is giving me a sick, heavy feeling and my legs feel weak. "Be calm," I tell myself. "They'll be kind and it will be over quickly."
A producer emerges, clearly bored by such a long day and so many bad singers. He starts monkeying around in front of us, eliciting nervous laughs as he lip-synchs to the voice of the poor girl belting it out behind the closed doors of audition room one. As she strains to reach the top notes, our producer starts laughing. "Sounds like a bloody cat being tortured," he says, seemingly unaware of how unnerving it is for us to think that we are next to sing and be ridiculed.
I'm tapped on the shoulder. I'm up! I stumble into the room and two judges look up from a pile of papers: a man with glasses and a silver ponytail and a slight woman with her hair piled up on her head. I guess they are singing teachers, they are tired, they have had a long day and are in no mood for jest. I, on the other hand, am wearing an eyepatch, can't sing and am here in jest. This probably won't be as funny as it seemed on Friday night.
"Why are you wearing an eyepatch?" the woman asks politely.
"I have an eye infection," I lie. "It's very contagious." The judges wince.
"Uh, OK," she says slowly. Pause. "Now, you don't need to introduce your song, just start singing."
The moment is upon me. I stare. My mouth goes dry. I forget the words. I need to pee.
"When you're ready," she says kindly.
I adjust my eyepatch, take a deep breath and begin. "I can see clear-ly now the rain has gone," I squeak. "I can see aa-all obstacles in my waaaaaay."
To my horror, I notice that I'm swaying and clicking my fingers, stretching out my arms as I wail about obstacles. I feel disembodied. I'm possessed by the spirit of Idol! "Gone are the daaa-aark clouds that had me blind ... S'gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny daaaay."
Buoyed by my success so far, I sneak a peek at the judges to gauge their reaction. The grey-haired judge has his head in his hands. The woman has a grimace-smile plastered on her face. I wrap up verse two and stand back, waiting to be told there's nothing funny about wearing an eyepatch and singing I Can See Clearly Now.
"That's an interesting choice of song," the female judge says, finally. "It's not really an Australian Idol sort of song. Do you have anything else?" I shake my head. I feel six years old.
"You have a very little voice," she continues. "Do you want to try it again and give it a bit more oomph?"
Amazingly, it seems they are taking me seriously. They don't get the eyepatch joke. I mumble something about that being all the oomph I had.
She takes a deep breath. "Well, thanks."
It's over.
I offer a tight smile, resist the urge to curtsey and rush out. My face is hot. I'm so glad it's over. Outside, I'm secretly thrilled to find that even real singers have fared as poorly. A serious singer-dancer was cut off three lines into her Bette Midler number and one of the girls I befriended earlier is looking equally miffed.
"No luck?" I venture. She shakes her head. It emerges that, although she didn't make it, her boyfriend - singing Go The Mighty Panthers - made it into round two of auditions.
With my pride dashed, I bid farewell to my new friends, wish them the best of luck and totter out.
"See you next year!" someone calls out to me.
I shudder at the thought.
BIRTH OF ANOTHER IDOL
* More than 6000 people auditioned in Sydney for Australian Idol over three days last month.
* 180 were selected and subsequently culled to 49. Those 49 joined the successful contestants from other state auditions to form a final audition group of 153.
* They auditioned in front of Kyle Sandilands, Marcia Hines and Mark Holden at the Sydney Theatre Company last week and 30 were selected.
* Those 30 sing in the semi-final episode and nine will be chosen. Then the judges select their personal top three, making a total of 12 finalists.
* The third Australian Idol, starting with the semi-final episodes, goes to air at the end of this month.
* Business Review Weekly lists the winner of the 2003 Australian Idol, Guy Sebastian, as Australia's 35th-highest earning entertainer, raking in about $2.1 million a year. The former Adelaide singing teacher lives in a $1.1 million home in Palm Beach.
* The 2004 Australian Idol winner, Casey Donovan, is signed with Sony BMG, but has enjoyed less success than runner-up Anthony Callea.
www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/my-way/2005/07/01/1119724800302.html
July 2, 2005
Reporter Sunanda Creagh at the auditions.
Photo: Fiona-Lee Quimby
Armed with little more than an eyepatch, a sense of humour and a streak of bravado, Sunanda Creagh joins the nervous throng of hopefuls at auditions for Australian Idol.
I step out of the cab on a chilly Saturday morning looking like something left over from Friday night. Short skirt, eye make-up, tight top and flashy earrings. Oh, yeah, and an eyepatch. The plan was hatched at Friday afternoon drinks, half story idea, half dare: I'll audition for Australian Idol wearing an eyepatch.
And lo, at 7am the next day I'm clip-clopping in my heels towards Darling Harbour Convention Centre, sure that I'm early enough to beat the queues. I'll get in, warble a few lines and be laughing about it by lunchtime.
I round the corner to see my fellow Idol brethren lined up in a queue that stretches from the door around two sides of the harbour, six or seven thick and a kilometre long. Judging by their tired, bedraggled and bored expressions, I estimate these people must have been here since 4am. Then I see the sleeping bags, duvets and mini-tents and realise they've been lined up since yesterday afternoon.
I start walking and five minutes later reach the end of the queue. I'm surrounded by young girls brushing hair, applying lip gloss, straightening their sexy boots. Far from being embarrassed by it, in a way my eyepatch keeps me company - it reminds me that this is not serious, that there's something really funny and amusing about standing around in the cold on a Saturday morning preparing to sing in front of strangers.
Nervous energy drives people to chatter and conversations strike up all around me. "So, what are you gonna sing?" and "Were you here last year?" There are all sorts here. A guy dressed as Batman is talking on his mobile phone, looking deadly serious despite his chiselled abs and silly codpiece. The girls next to me, however, are not amused. If you're not serious about Idol you shouldn't be here. "It's not fair," one of them complains. "We wait all day for all these other people to audition, but they aren't even serious about it." I nod conspiratorially and try to stare down Batman with my good eye.
We're all bored. An Asian boy in a giant silver hoodie listens to songs on his mobile phone. A group of Islander girls croons a love ballad of which Alicia Keys would be proud. Beside me, someone writing a text message calls out: "How do you spell testicle?" We answer in chorus. Plenty have brought friends, girlfriends, boyfriends and family. Someone's dad offers me a blanket for my chilly legs.
A security guard, looking a little like an agent from The Matrix, hands out forms that we all sign greedily - waiving all our rights, handing over our souls to Grundy Television. A woman ahead of me notices that contestants must be aged between 16 and 28. "I am 28 today. Can I still audition?" she asks. "Sorry, love," says a man wearing a walkie-talkie headset. "If you're not under 28, you can't go in." The woman shuffles off dejectedly and we all shake our heads sadly. It's a tough game.
A Channel Ten camera sidles up to me, followed by an impossibly bouncy presenter who announces she just "lurrrves" my leg warmers. They want to film me opening my coat, flasher-style, wiggling suggestively and uttering something about how much I want to be the next Australian Idol. I resist for a moment, then realise that she who agrees to wear an eyepatch and sing for reality TV has little left to lose. I mustn't be good talent - after four takes of arse-wiggling, the presenter loses interest and the crew moves to its next victim.
Two hours later, we spot Idol hosts Andrew G and James Mathison working the crowd, asking us to do a Mexican wave for a cameraman chugging round the harbour in a little boat. After about the seventh take, Andrew G patiently calls out for us to wave one more time. A girl next to me hurls an expletive instead. I like her.
At 9.30am, the doors open to the exhibition centre. They let in groups of about 20 at a time, so the line inches along slowly. Closer to the front, we encounter hairstylists who are taking perfectly fine hairdos and ruining them with litres of product. The results are greasy and bubblegum flavoured - very Idol. An hour later, we're in the final holding pen, stamping like racehorses. Then we're herded into a huge auditorium, full of would-be stars. I'm not sure how many people are here, but I'm handed a wristband marked number 70645 - and we were the early group. As I find a seat, I hear number 70040 called. Only 600 to go.
A Maybelline stall is doing great business to our right, patting powder on young faces, doing eyelashes, making 16-year-olds look glamorous beyond their years. A team of roving hairstylists continues to pounce on heads. Staff are handing out Telstra fake tattoos and Oz Idol merchandise. At the back, pies are for sale.
Despite our boredom and fatigue, the mood is amiable. We all have a long time to wait and friendships form quickly. The corners of the room are filled with faces singing to the walls, maximising the acoustics. Outside, the high ceilings fill with the sound of a boy practising scales with his singing teacher. Behind the pie cart, another would-be Idol sleeps cradling a guitar. Someone next to me pores over a hand-written lyric sheet.
I get to work making friends.
I start with Batman. Why is he dressed like that? "It's a dare off people at work," he says, deadpan, long bored of the joke. I hear ya, brother. He's singing Spider-Man to win a $120 bet.
Over yonder is a boy with pink spiky hair, tight black jeans and studded belt. What would a punk sing, I ask him. "Sugar by Britney," he says in a fey little voice. He has a J.Lo number prepared as a backup song, which is lucky because I can't think of a Britney Spears song by that name. No Ramones or Fugazi? "No, I'm just dressed this way because if you want to be on TV you need to make a statement."
In front of me is a couple who trucked in from country NSW after work on Friday, then camped for a freezing night on the shore of Darling Harbour. "We had about 20 minutes' sleep," she says, blaming the nervous chatter of co-campers for her insomnia. Unlike me and Batman, this girl can really sing: she's the Shannon Noll type, the winner of an RSL competition, and she plans to impress today's judges with a rendition of The Shoop Shoop Song.
We're joined by another couple. Again she's the singer; he's here for moral support and has chosen the unlikely Go the Mighty Panthers as his tune. "If you get in and I don't, I'll never speak to you again," she laughs, poking her boy in the belly.
We start to see people leaving the audition rooms. A girl with frizzy hair weeps hysterically, comforted by her family. Even her little brother looks respectfully sombre. Others burst out clutching blue and pink cards, indicating advancement to the next level of auditions. "I got a 'wow' out of them," one girl says, and people she's never met cheer. The girl from the country emerges, looking brave but beaten. She hasn't made it. "Oh, well," her boyfriend says. "Let's go home and get some sleep."
The day passes excruciatingly slowly. This is real reality TV: slow, boring, occasionally nerve-wracking, but mainly banal. Tantrums, teary episodes and bitching provide temporary entertainment. In the toilets, a girl calls out: "I can't believe they didn't pick Tracey." The voice in the next stall replies: "I can."
The dulcet tones of my fellow Idol hopefuls were entertaining at first, but grow tiresome when I realise how many of the voices sound the same. Most popular are those whimpering Mariah Carey-style songs that trickle up and down the octaves. I begin to long for a solid melody, not so much wailing around a limited range. I wish someone would just sing the national anthem. And it looks like I'm not the only one tiring of the same tunes: at one stage, a producer mounts the stage and announces: "If you're gonna sing a gospel song, you better have a pop song up your sleeve. We are hearing a lot of gospel in there."
I befriend a medical officer, who rattles off a list of conditions he was anticipating today: headaches, cuts, hypothermia, panic attacks, asthma. He's treated only headaches so far, but his team is prepared for anything. I fall asleep with my eyepatch on. At the rate people are entering, I calculate that I might make my audition debut about 6pm. The light begins to fade.
Suddenly, I'm on next. I rush to the bathroom to smear on some lippy and totter back just as my number is called. I'm herded into an anteroom. Unlike the cattle-class auditorium, here it's quiet, hallowed. Producers scurry about whispering and shooshing excited contestants, and the silence is punctuated by trills and Mariah-howls. We sit on a line of chairs and a kindly producer thanks us for waiting and explains that we'll be assigned to one of four audition rooms.
It's then that I'm struck by nerves. I try to remind myself I'm here for a joke, that I'm not really auditioning, but the reality of singing in front of strangers - wearing a miniskirt and an eyepatch - is giving me a sick, heavy feeling and my legs feel weak. "Be calm," I tell myself. "They'll be kind and it will be over quickly."
A producer emerges, clearly bored by such a long day and so many bad singers. He starts monkeying around in front of us, eliciting nervous laughs as he lip-synchs to the voice of the poor girl belting it out behind the closed doors of audition room one. As she strains to reach the top notes, our producer starts laughing. "Sounds like a bloody cat being tortured," he says, seemingly unaware of how unnerving it is for us to think that we are next to sing and be ridiculed.
I'm tapped on the shoulder. I'm up! I stumble into the room and two judges look up from a pile of papers: a man with glasses and a silver ponytail and a slight woman with her hair piled up on her head. I guess they are singing teachers, they are tired, they have had a long day and are in no mood for jest. I, on the other hand, am wearing an eyepatch, can't sing and am here in jest. This probably won't be as funny as it seemed on Friday night.
"Why are you wearing an eyepatch?" the woman asks politely.
"I have an eye infection," I lie. "It's very contagious." The judges wince.
"Uh, OK," she says slowly. Pause. "Now, you don't need to introduce your song, just start singing."
The moment is upon me. I stare. My mouth goes dry. I forget the words. I need to pee.
"When you're ready," she says kindly.
I adjust my eyepatch, take a deep breath and begin. "I can see clear-ly now the rain has gone," I squeak. "I can see aa-all obstacles in my waaaaaay."
To my horror, I notice that I'm swaying and clicking my fingers, stretching out my arms as I wail about obstacles. I feel disembodied. I'm possessed by the spirit of Idol! "Gone are the daaa-aark clouds that had me blind ... S'gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny daaaay."
Buoyed by my success so far, I sneak a peek at the judges to gauge their reaction. The grey-haired judge has his head in his hands. The woman has a grimace-smile plastered on her face. I wrap up verse two and stand back, waiting to be told there's nothing funny about wearing an eyepatch and singing I Can See Clearly Now.
"That's an interesting choice of song," the female judge says, finally. "It's not really an Australian Idol sort of song. Do you have anything else?" I shake my head. I feel six years old.
"You have a very little voice," she continues. "Do you want to try it again and give it a bit more oomph?"
Amazingly, it seems they are taking me seriously. They don't get the eyepatch joke. I mumble something about that being all the oomph I had.
She takes a deep breath. "Well, thanks."
It's over.
I offer a tight smile, resist the urge to curtsey and rush out. My face is hot. I'm so glad it's over. Outside, I'm secretly thrilled to find that even real singers have fared as poorly. A serious singer-dancer was cut off three lines into her Bette Midler number and one of the girls I befriended earlier is looking equally miffed.
"No luck?" I venture. She shakes her head. It emerges that, although she didn't make it, her boyfriend - singing Go The Mighty Panthers - made it into round two of auditions.
With my pride dashed, I bid farewell to my new friends, wish them the best of luck and totter out.
"See you next year!" someone calls out to me.
I shudder at the thought.
BIRTH OF ANOTHER IDOL
* More than 6000 people auditioned in Sydney for Australian Idol over three days last month.
* 180 were selected and subsequently culled to 49. Those 49 joined the successful contestants from other state auditions to form a final audition group of 153.
* They auditioned in front of Kyle Sandilands, Marcia Hines and Mark Holden at the Sydney Theatre Company last week and 30 were selected.
* Those 30 sing in the semi-final episode and nine will be chosen. Then the judges select their personal top three, making a total of 12 finalists.
* The third Australian Idol, starting with the semi-final episodes, goes to air at the end of this month.
* Business Review Weekly lists the winner of the 2003 Australian Idol, Guy Sebastian, as Australia's 35th-highest earning entertainer, raking in about $2.1 million a year. The former Adelaide singing teacher lives in a $1.1 million home in Palm Beach.
* The 2004 Australian Idol winner, Casey Donovan, is signed with Sony BMG, but has enjoyed less success than runner-up Anthony Callea.
www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/my-way/2005/07/01/1119724800302.html