American Idol Rocks!

Or tries to. Of course, it's not a rock show; it's a pop music star they're looking for and rock is only one of the genres they put the contestants through so the rock performances are no more genuine than any other of the genre performances. I don't mind that. What counts is what the contestants make of it. Overall, I'd say they did a pretty good job. The biggest surprise? Slash as their mentor. Who woulda thunk he'd be a fan? Who'd tweet about it? See, hardcore rockers are just like you and me?

Adam started, of course, and won the praises of the judges but I wasn't thrilled. He'd either knock it out of the ballpark like he's done before or take too much of a chance and go down in flames. He did neither. The girls weren't watching with us so I don't have anything to judge against but for me it was just more of the same ol' Adam. Oh, sure, he's very good, but he also creeps me out and he was pretty high on the creep out factor.

Alison did quite well. Once again, it's hard to believe she's only 17. Could she have picked better songs? Maybe. Joplin was the obvious pick as would have been her other pick, Jefferson Airplane's Somebody To Love but, well, what can you do? It's not like there are a lot of female rock singers out there to emulate.

Kris chose poorly. The Beatles Come Together has been done well only by Aerosmith and though he did well enough, this was out of his league.

As was Danny's take on Aerosmith. A good song but clearly not his genre.

Not to say I was disappointed with the performances. I enjoyed all of them and I'd be hard pressed to choose who's going home. But I'll take a chance and say Adam will, based on his ranking last week and his non-new groundbreaking performance from last night. He may have peaked and may not have been able to attract new voters.

An aside - odd, wasn't it, that the rock songs they chose to perform were, in some cases, 40 years old? Imagine a pop singer in 1968 crooning a popular song from 1928. Have there been no decent rock songs released within, say, the last 10 years?