Cold Turkey? Give Me Hot Lamb!

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Contrary to what I posted last week, starvation is unnatural and definitely not for me.  Starving myself of my Adam fix just didn't work.  If there's something tasty lying around, I'll eat it.  Although it truly disturbs me how much of my waking hours are occupied by Adam Lambert, I can't break free from his captivation.  Rather than stay away from all the forums and and fansites, I actually ended up joining and participating.

A few things in the news this week are a reported feud with Kris Allen which is pretty ridiculous, Adam kicking ass on iTunes downloads, Upright Cabaret's Adam night, where he sang a bit of 'Feeling Good' on speakerphone, and his eagerly awaited Upright Cabaret performances of 'Kiss From a Rose' and 'How Come You Don't Call Me?' on YouTube.  They've given me plenty of viewing pleasure, a welcome bonus after a long week but have still left me wanting for more.  I love all the Upright performances for many reasons.  It's not a huge venue and so the atmosphere is relatively personal and Adam seems relaxed in himself, chatting away.  The performances are more heartfelt because he's much more expressive, but if he were to repeat these to the big audience on American Idol, it would probably be labelled 'dramatic' or 'cabaret'.  Another thing I love about the performances are the improvisations and ad-libbing.  You feel that Adam and the pianist Gerald Sternbach are two phenomenally talented individuals just jamming together and making things up as they go along, but they manage to come up with something brilliant and flawless each time.  I also love the simplicity of the arrangements where there's nothing to detract from the emotion of Adam's breathtaking voice.  When Adam does his riffs and runs, they are always spot-on.  For that reason, I'd like to hear Adam sing some soul/jazz/blues with just a piano accompaniment some time.  We got a taste during 'Some Kind of Wonderful' where his riffs were outstanding but I really want to hear more.

Luckily aided by the theme of Rat Pack songs this week, I've done quite well in terms of avoiding over-analysing and trying to second-guess what Adam's going to do next.  The songs that fall into that category are quite plentiful and they've been re-recorded and re-interpreted so many times that the choice of song and style are pretty broad.  I've tried hard to not go through all the different scenarios, so that I'm still able to be surprised and feel the impact of Adam's performance.  I'll be going in with as open a mind as possible, not weighted down with too many expectations.  I was even going to try to see if I could maximise the impact of Adam's performance by waiting until Thursday (Thursday!) when it's aired on UK TV rather than on a slightly dodgy streamed version tonight, but the temptation is overpowering.  I'd prefer sizzling Lamb to hot Lamb, but give me hot Lamb over cold turkey any day!