Worse Things Have Happened

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

For starters, I didn’t make it past the first audition. That’s good news/bad news, for had I made it, I would have had to swear to refrain from commenting on any social media about the entire process (It was part of the signed agreement). Six of one, half a dozen of another to me. I mean really, how could I keep my mouth shut for up to nine months about that? I’ve always been proud of my ability to sing on key and to have a vocal range of close to five octaves, but there’s a certain quality I don’t have, an X Factor if you will, and that’s really what “The Voice” and probably every other singing talent show is looking for.

I arrived at my audition at around 10:30, about 10 minutes early. They were being held at a Hilton Hotel near Wembley Stadium, and would be going for three days (I think that’s what I heard) for about 12 hours each day. I was impressed by how close they were to punctuality, as my wait from the outside queue to actually being inside the building was only about 20 minutes. This was not one of those X Factor auditions, where 1000’s of people line up so an overhead copter can get a nice shot of those 1000’s crossing their arms for the camera and screaming “(Designated city)’s GOT THE X FACTOR!” For many of those people, that’ll be their only TV exposure.

In contrast, “The Voice” ran pretty smoothly. The queue I joined was probably less than 100 when I got there, and they were letting people in about 20 at a time every 5-6 minutes. Once inside, we were then led upstairs where there was a queue for signing in. This took a bit longer, as there were only two or three people manning those stations. Still, I was shuffled along with about 15 others into a holding room where we waited for about 10 minutes. Happily for me, nobody in there was doing loud vocal warm-ups, though there was one strangely-dressed guy with an extremely loud, almost sounding forced, cough. More on him later. Eventually, a group of 12 of us were moved to a hallway where we waited to be called to an audition room.

After another 5-10 minute wait, we moved into a conference room where a voice coach and an assistant producer for the show would be deciding who stays and goes. This was a relief, and Coughing Man somehow self-remedied his condition once we were inside. Looking around, I could see I was easily twice the age of nearly everyone in the room, in some cases probably thrice, but I consoled myself by remembering that one of the finalists in the last series was approaching “Bus Pass” age, so I didn’t trouble myself over it.

Our first order of business was introductions. We were each asked to say our name, and something interesting about ourselves. I thought being a US ex-pat doing stand-up in UK was interesting enough, and most were impressed until the voice coach said, “Oh, tell us a joke.” Why the hell do people do that?? If I’d said I was an actor, would they have asked me to recite some Shakespeare? I answered that request by saying, “Actually my favorite jokes are all kinda dirty,” and that was the end of that.

Sitting next to me was Coughing Man, who was rather tall and dressed in hot pink shorts and a matching beret and shoes to go with a rather loud Hawaiian shirt. He claimed to run a recording studio and showed some pictures from a gossip magazine with a cover photo of some boy band that I never figured out whether he was a former member of, or what the fixation was. I sympathize with the two judges, since they must treat the lunatic fringe with the same level of encouragement as they would the serious aspirants who might be in the same room. One other contestant claimed to be singing for some revue at Disney World in Florida. Most had no show biz experience at all.

Even though I was first in their running order, the judges picked arbitrarily from the list, but before we started the auditions, the coach ran us through vocal exercises, which in this instance were actually beneficial. Our final exercise was singing along to a portion of the Ed Sheeran/Pharrell Williams collaboration entitled “Sing,” which became one among many songs running through my head the rest of the day.

For our first (and for most of us our ONLY) song, we were expected to sing a capella. As we each took our turns, I was surprised by two things: 1) How there was nobody, even the Disney singer, that I thought totally stormed it, and 2) The mediocre song choices by so many of them. One of the better choices, other than my rendition of Joe Cocker’s version of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” was one girl singing Gladys Knight’s “If I Were Your Woman.” She botched it up largely due to nerves, but I gave her props while we waited outside for the verdicts. Otherwise, how much can one do with “Kiss From A Rose” or “Open Arms?” Coughing Man sang an original tune which I expected to be awful, but actually wasn’t, plus he sang it reasonably in tune.

After a relatively short time outside, the judges called us back in to say who was going through to sing a second song, and only three were chosen. Disney-man was picked, along with the girl who sang “Open Arms” (which she credited as being by Mariah Carey, but to me it’s equally as annoying as when Journey sang it) and some other female I can’t even remember. Presto, I was done, and I had only been there a total of about two hours.

I have no explanation of what failed me in this audition, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it either. They may well have decided that if I really was a comedian, I might well have been there just for a piss-take, and not “serious” about it, and they wouldn’t have been completely wrong. My choice may have been trite, and I had Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness” waiting in the wings, but I really needed to have backing to sing that one. I had borrowed an acoustic guitar with a case that didn’t fit it, so I had the bottom of it covered by a recycle bag, which probably looked really low rent. Since I didn’t make it past the first audition, I carried that precarious thing around for virtually no reason. No chance to redeem myself, my dreams are over, my journey ends here, or any number of other overused talent-show clichés.

Actually the worst thing about the whole day was that not only the Ed Sheeran song, but “Open Arms” and “Kiss From A Rose” were stuck in my head most of the rest of the freaking day!! Otherwise, my life goes on, and I’m doing what I do best in Cambridge on Saturday!

June 26th, 2014



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