Idol Watch

David Cook "lights up" iPhones and iPod Touches

American Idol winner David Cook launched the Light On interactive lighter application for iPhones and iPod Touches. The "Light On" App is now available for download from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod Touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/

In a press release, Cook said, "I am really stoked about this application. I think it gives a different dynamic to the single and it is much safer than practicing pyromania. Not to mention, you won’t burn your thumb!"

For those unfamiliar with what this App (application) does, when you download it (for $1.99) it turns your iPhone screen into a flickering flame and plays Cook's new single. Hence, your iPhone is

a "virtual" lighter while playing Light On.

Of course, this is such a marketing gimmick. On my iPhone I have the myLite Flashlight and Colored Strobes App and it was free. In addition to giving me the flickering flame, I can also turn my iPhone into a road flare, mimic the flashing lights of a police car and fire truck or alter the strobes for a nightclub experience. And, again, it was free. Many paid Apps are just .99 cents, too, the same price as Cook's Light On single download. So this gimmick adds $1 to the bill.

That said, from a marketing sense, these days when it's hard to sell new music, and Idols removed from the show are no exception, this is a smart way to link to his coming album and generate some chatter.

Suspect in Hudson family murder case had drug record

The suspect in the murder of American Idol Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother and nephew had a drug record for cocaine possession, reports the AP. Read the report here.

Neil Diamond concert review: So good! So good! So good!

    My wonderful stepdad, George Armet, passed away late Friday night in Montreal. Mom and I are going to miss his kindness, his spirit and presence greatly. George came into my life late, yet he loved me enough to consider me a son. That's a special gift.

One event this weekend was at least positive. Sunday's Neil Diamond concert. Every time George would visit Miami we'd take him to events like this. He would have loved it. Somehow, the lyrics of Neil's song, Done Too Soon, took on greater meaning Sunday on stage.

Read my review of Sunday's Neil Diamond concert at Sunrise's BankAtlantic Center by clicking here.

Carrie Underwood made a wax figure

Carrie Underwood has been made a wax figure at Madame Tussauds New York.

And here I thought Carrie was already a wax figure.

Read more on the American Idol site.

Jim Croce reissues are gems

American Idol fourth season runner-up (shoulda-been-winner) Bo Bice repeatedly cited '70s folk singer-songwriter Jim Croce as one of his formative influences. Fans -- and newbies -- should be delighted by Rhino's new reissues of Croce's three studio albums,  You Don't Mess Around With Jim (1972), Life and Times and I Got a Name (both 1973), the latter originally released a day after the singer's death in a plane crash.

All three have been out of print on CD in America (in Jim's case, this chart-topping album was supposedly never on CD -- I've seen imports of the latter two in an HMV store in Montreal, Canada once). The three, released in tribute of the 35th anniversary of Croce's untimely death, sound crisper and louder than previous compilation CDs which have gathered these albums' many Top 40 hits or key album tracks such as Time in a Bottle, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song, I Got a Name, Alabama Rain, Lover's Cross and One Less Set of Footsteps.

Musically, Croce's acoustic-based storytelling songs hold up remarkably well and what is most amazing is that he crafted such an enduring body of work in less than 18 months' time. His albums reportedly sell a million copies per year to this day. He had a terrific ear for a pop hook and his characters -- Leroy Brown, Rapid Roy the stock car boy, the hard time losin' man -- are every day American archetypes. Better yet, Croce had a way of plumbing interpersonal relationships with depth, compassion, tenderness and an empathy that could break your heart.

My favorite? All three are pretty equal in terms of quality but the edge goes to I Got a Name. I can still remember being 10 years old in the fall of 1973, in the car on the way to a friend's birthday party on Miami Beach's Palm Island, and hearing the news on WQAM-560 AM (then a great pop music station) that Croce had been killed in a plane crash right before the DJ played the title track. I'm still moved. That song spoke to the need for an identity and it still resonates. It's also impossible to hear the beautiful and reflective closing track, The Hard Way Everytime, knowing Croce would not live to see the album's release or see his 2 year old son, AJ, grow up, without feeling the proverbial lump in the throat.

These are essential albums for fans of singer-songwriter craft, folk music fans, Jimmy Buffett's Parrotheads (Croce and Buffett shared a label, ABC Dunhill, and in Buffett's more sensitive songs you can hear Croce's influence) and Bo Bice/Idol fans who want to hear timeless music that will never fade.

It's out! Listen to the new Guns N' Roses track and vote here

Heard the new Guns N' Roses track yet? Chinese Democracy has hit radio and is the title track to the first studio set of originals from GNR (only Axl remains) since 1991's fab Use Your Illusion sets. The new CD is a Best Buy exclusive, out Nov. 23.

Listen to Chinese Democracy by clicking here. And then vote below.

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Neil Diamond to work with Rick Rubin again

There will be at least one more pairing in the studio with producer Rick Rubin, Neil Diamond said in an interview with yours truly for The Miami Herald. Fitting, given that the first, 12 Songs, garnered Diamond's best reviews and the second, this year's Home Before Dark, became Diamond's first No. 1 album a couple weeks after he served as a guest mentor on American Idol and previewed its first single, Pretty Amazing Grace, on the reality show.

   "We'll do more together,'' Diamond says. "We like working together, we like what the albums are sounding like, and I've even started writing again for the next album. The focus makes itself known over a period of writing. I'm not going into it with any hard rules of what I want. I let [the songwriting] marinate and come up as it wants to. I'm just as interested as anybody to see what happens.''

Read more of my interview with Neil in Thursday's Tropical Life and also a People page feature on Friday. Neil performs Sunday at BankAtlantic Center.

Photo: (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Album review: AC/DC crank more of the same on Black Ice

AC/DC, Black Ice (Columbia). A Rolling Stone critic recently praised AC/DC's first album in eight years with this astute observation: "AC/DC offer a vision of the [Rolling] Stones if Keith [Richards] had won every argument: no concept albums, no keyboards, no disco, no ballads, no gospel choirs.''

In other words, Black Ice, like its 1980 namesake Back in Black, is typical AC/DC: A whomping, metronomic Phil Rudd drum beat, Angus Young's meaty guitar riffage and Brian Johnson's uncanny vocal shriek. At 61, Johnson remains the world's oldest, horniest, most single-minded teenager. The world may be going into an economic landslide, but long live rock and roll these Aussie lads proclaim on album after album (even if these albums come but twice a decade now). No less than three songs have "rock n roll" in the titles, four if you count the ode to the thrill of the good ol' power chord in Rockin All the Way.

At 15 songs, Black Ice is certainly overlong and could easily be trimmed to 10 songs. In so doing, AC/DC would have a disc nearly on par with Back in Black, which, at 22 million shipments, is one of the best selling albums in U.S. history. As it is, Black Ice, crisply produced by Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam) is nevertheless AC/DC's best album since the halcyon early 1980s. The songs may have little to say but they feel good cranked on a good stereo. AC/DC, like the resurgent Metallica (although Black Ice is not comparable to Metallica's impressive Death Magnetic), sound like they care again. Some of the tracks, like Rock N Roll Train, Big Jack and War Machine are terrific rockers, primo AC/DC. Given that we haven't been inundated with AC/DC albums of late (the last, Stiff Upper Lip, came in 2000), Black Ice doesn't feel stale and with a Wal-Mart exclusive deal -- not unlike last year's lucrative Eagles partnership -- AC/DC's latest will finds its way into plenty of homes. It'll tide us over quite well until the follow-up in, oh, 2016.

-HOWARD COHEN / hcohen@miamiherald.com

Album review: Kenny Chesney cruises back to the islands

Kenny Chesney, Lucky Old Sun (Blue Chair/BNA). Kenny Chesney has taken awhile to reflect on his failed marriage to actress Renee Zellweger. Two mediocre albums came and went in the wake of his divorce but, on Lucky Old Sun, which takes its title from the 1940s song that also gave Brian Wilson the title track for his bright new CD, Chesney is in full reflection mode on songs like I'm Alive, Spirit of a Storm and Way Down Here.

For Chesney, this means lamenting that he is cursed with the "spirit of a storm" as he grabs the captain of his boat to pilot him away to the Caribbean to basically do ... nothing. Maybe he's in vogue, practicing the popular concept of mindfulness, where meditation and tuning out the chatter of a conflicted mind grows the soul. Maybe he's just a lazy slug. Those looking for great insights into interpersonal relationships from singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan or Carly Simon won't find anything similarly profound here. Modern country is not given to deep analysis of the human heart and Chesney is among its most shallow observers. "Nowhere to go, nowhere to be,'' is Chesney's modus operandi in escaping from a broken heart, mental exhaustion or the pressures of pop stardom.

That said, Lucky Old Sun, which is patterned after, but slightly more commercial than, his mid-2000s island music acoustic set, Be As You Are, is one of Chesney's most engaging albums yet and infinitely more distinctive than his generic country output of the 1990s. The music is laid-back singer-songwriter fare, not unlike James Taylor's, mostly devoid of country accents, but pristinely recorded, with sun-kissed acoustic guitars, lazily-rolled piano chords and Chesney's solid tenor in exceptional shape. It's hard to ignore the simple pleasures of well-crafted pop tunes like Way Down Here, Down the Road, The Life or Key's in the Conch Shell. Unlike his last few disappointing albums, Lucky Old Sun is focused and free of filler although the album could use more backbeat muscle from the drummer and a bit more percussion.

Still, lessons learned while producing Willie Nelson's sublime Moment of Forever serve Chesney well on the mellow title track duet with the elder statesman. The Wailers are an after-thought tacked to the end of the otherwise likable reggae-pulsed No. 1 single, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Chesney makes better use of guests like Nelson, Dave Matthews (I'm Alive) and songwriter Mac McAnally (Down the Road).

Ten With a Two, an amusing and upbeat tale on the risks of one-night stands when you're picking a bed mate with beer goggles on ("I walked in a two with a 10 and at 10 woke up with a two") is the sort of lively trip the earlier Be As You Are desperately needed.

"Boats ... and oceans ... and islands ... and the sun moving across the sky. It is a whole other way of life, and a whole other way to live,'' Chesney writes in the CD liner notes. "You can't know ... how peaceful sitting on the front of a boat, feeling the waves hitting the bow and watching the clouds do much of nothing is until you've been there, yet somehow I think we all sense it.''

If you agree with Chesney's island-life assessment, Lucky Old Sun will be your soundtrack and escape from the election season noise and coming holiday hysteria.

-HOWARD COHEN / hcohen@miamiherald.com

Classic Albums Live is music's best bargain

In today's economic climate -- and when established acts like Gloria Estefan and Rod Stewart are pricing top seats at coming Hard Rock Live shows at $254 to $502 -- Paradise Live's Classic Albums Live presentations are a major deal.

I wrote about Classic Albums Live in the summer in the Herald and on this blog. To recap, CAL is a group of expert musicians who painstakingly recreate, on stage, the sound of a generation's favorite albums and then follow with an hour set of that featured artists' greatest hits for shows of about two hours in duration. These concerts take place Thursday-Saturday nights at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino's Paradise Live venue for $20 general seating, $25 for booth seats.

I wrote about CAL's performance of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours this summer. It was incredible, though very difficult to approximate the exact tone of Christine McVie's alto. Saturday night, I caught them doing the Eagles' Hotel California. They had told me that tackling this 1976 landmark LP had proven difficult and they had abandoned it for awhile but tried again. The original album had so much production polish and overdubs and layering it was not easy to get its sound right live. Aside from a sound mix that seemed a bit too bright on the lead guitar and a bit of echo on that title song, CAL quickly fixed the mix and sounded great on the rest of Hotel California and 10 other songs -- including The Long Run, Take It to the Limit, Lyin' Eyes, Seven Bridges Road, Take It Easy, One of These Nights, Desperado and Heartache Tonight.

While they got the music of Fleetwood Mac dead-on, that group's three-part harmony blend of McVie, Buckingham and Nicks proved harder to nail than the Eagles' glorious harmonies. Two male singers, Rob Phillips and Nick Hildyard, proved uncannily adept at nailing Don Henley's, Glenn Frey's, Joe Walsh's and Randy Meisner's vocal timbres and a female vocalist, Leslea Keurvost, lent luster to the backing harmonies (and soul on a sole lead vocal run-through of Timothy B. Schmit's I Can't Tell You Why).

CAL's Eagles-Hotel California closed its run Saturday. Next week we get Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. It's really worth checking out and Paradise has bar service.

Click here for the band's website and list of all of its North American shows and local Paradise Live dates.