Fizzling Out

Rock Star: Supernova wrapped up last night. Lukas the humunculus won. Unsurprising, seeing how Tommy Lee and especially Dave Navarro practically fellated this singing haircut every episode.

Lukas's ascention is also unsurprising, seeing how Gilby Clarke criticized Dilana’s lyric-writing skills as “literal and unimaginative” while praising Lukas. Here’s the chorus from Lukas’s cretinous original tune, “Head Spin” -- “I don’t know why you make my head spin/Why, why?/No one’s perfect.” Yeah, Gilby, Lukas is a regular Bob Dylan.

If you can’t tell, I’m disappointed by the outcome. Of the final four contestants -- Lukas, Dilana, Magni and Toby – the only one I actively loathed was Lukas. I realize that musical tastes are completely subjective, and what sounds good to one pair of ears sounds bad to another pair, but Lukas is a special kind of no-talent, a wee little poseur whose “originality” came entirely from the sale rack at Hot Topic.

And his singing? Nigger, please. As Jason Newsted regularly pointed out during the season’s run, Lukas’s vocals were always strangulated and forced, and not in a good way. Lukas can pull off a passable Thom Yorke imitation – like when he sang “Creep” 80 times on the show -- but when left to his own devices, he bellows like a walrus, thinking he’s conveying emotion when he's merely conveying increased volume. Plus, he suffers from Alanis Morrissette Syndrome, wherein a singer adds extra vowels to words, puts emphasis on wrong syllables and otherwise tries to be “quirky” and “original” but just comes off as mannered and trite.

My theory is that Tommy Lee figured he’d get more pussy on the road if he had a guy that was uglier than him singing for the band. Welcome aboard, Lukas.

Of course, what did Lukas really win? The original material Supernova trotted out during the show’s run was uniformly bland and forgettable (in that regard, Lukas is a perfect fit), so if he’s expecting fat royalty checks from Supernova’s multiplatinum album sales, he’s going to be very disappointed when the record drops. And also, it’s highly unlikely that Lee is going to give up his day job in Motley Crue for Supernova. Ditto for Jason Newsted with Voivod. Ditto Gilby with… whatever the hell it is he was doing before this show came on the air. Which means that Lukas's future doesn’t lie with Supernova.

Best of all, Lukas will forever be known as somebody who won a job on a reality show, which means any claims he ever might have had for artistic cred are over, and legitimate musicians will avoid him like the plague once this Supernova business is finished.

Except they won’t be called Supernova:

Court rules that television’s ‘Rock Star’ band can’t use the name Supernova

By SANDY COHEN / AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The band from the reality TV show “Rock Star: Supernova” cannot call itself Supernova when it takes its act on the road, a judge has ruled. A Southern California rock band that has called itself Supernova since 1991 and recorded three albums under the name sued CBS, the show’s participants and Mark Burnett Productions in June claiming unfair competition and trademark infringement.