Adam is on tour

I can hear you all asking, "What's Adam Lambert up to these days, Steph?" Happy to oblige. He's been on tour with the other Idols for the past couple weeks and will be through the middle of September. They visit about 50 cities this summer, including Dallas this Thursday.

Adam's five-song set is (with links to fan videos of varying quality - UPDATED to add second video links):

1) Whole Lotta Love (also here and in Newark)
2) Starlight (Muse) (also here; and in Dallas and in Newark)
3) Mad World (also here and in Newark)
4) Slow Ride (duet with Allison Iraheta; in this video, Adam demonstrates his skills at handling fan-tossed undergarments) (also here and in Newark)
5) Bowie medley (and in Newark).

Update II (8/9/09): Added the links to the Newark videos which are good quality.

I must admit that Adam's dancing in the Let's Dance portion of the Bowie medley gives me a little secondhand embarrassment. It's more Richard Simmons than rock star.

Reviews of the tour have been uniformly enthused about Adam.

There has been just a teeny tiny bit of protesting by the crackpot Westboro Baptist Church at tour venues on the grounds that "fags" are an abomination to God. Avowed-Christian and admittedly-formerly-not-so-cool-with-gay-guys-but-has-been-learning-tolerance Michael Sarver, Texas resident and 10th-place Idol contestant, stuck up for Adam via Twitter: Sort of akin to "Don't mess with Texas." (It's really an oddly defensive slogan for a state. What's up with that?)

We'll get a single from Adam in September and an album in November. (Winner Kris Allen and Allison Iraheta will also have albums coming out in November.) Adam's album will be a solo album (i.e he's not forming a band right now), with songs that have resulted from collaborations with Linda Perry (who was a singer in 4 Non Blondes and who wrote that 4 Non Blondes' song that Adam sang at the Upright Cabaret and who has written some great songs for Christina Aguilera), RedOne (producer for Lady Gaga), Sam Sparro, Ryan Tedder, and Kara DioGuardi (gulp; here's hoping for something better than the Idol anthem this year). Every time Adam describes what his album will be like, he mentions something about it being synthy and dancy. So I'm afraid that I won't be able to bear it and I'll have to listen to my compilation of his Idol recordings for the remainder of my days.

We may also get an unofficial Adam album ("On With the Show") in September that will be a compilation of things he recorded prior to Idol. It will include some songs that are songwriter demo tracks like Want (a bad song that Adam still manages to turn into something I've listened to many times) and others that are songs Adam co-wrote with Monte Pittman (Madonna's guitar player).

Since Scooter was unimpressed with Allison's No Doubt song during the season, I have to point you to her tour performance of Cry Baby where she more than competently channels Janis. Reminder that she's 17 years old. (I'll keep an eye for a tour video with better quality audio.) The girl is a musical savant, I tell you.