Culture clash

Adam Lambert, Shaun White, and Sarah Palin appear tonight on the second night of Leno's return to the Tonight Show. Here's a little video of the guests backstage.

Update: Whisper1111 on Twitter names Shaun/Sarah/Adam "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe".

Update II: Adam's performance here (illegitimate) and here (legit Leno video, but takes forever to load).

Update III: Embedding from Hulu:

Acoustic Whole Lotta Love

At a concert on Saturday at the Fantasy Springs resort, Adam performed this acoustic, bluesy, jazzy rendition of Whole Lotta Love (video courtesy of anthrogeekPF):



Update: I can't stop listening to this. Have always suspected that he could sing the bejeepers out of the blues with one vocal chord wrapped around his uvula, but this exceeds my expectations.

Update II: The keyboard player deserves a mention. It's Zac Baird (of Korn).

Update III: You can download a very high-quality audio recording (better than in the video above) of this here. The file is a .wav file. It'll play in iTunes. (You can convert it to mp3 in iTunes too.) All of the songs from that concert are available at that link. The middle section of the concert (#5 Soaked through #9 Whole Lotta Love) was acoustic and stunning.

Update IV: And here's a link to the open post at Hoopla Magnet, prepared by drcat83, in which all fan videos, photos, etc. from the Feb. 27 Fantasy Springs concert are collected and organized.

Update V: Rockstar Weekly reviewed the Fantasy Springs concert and said this about WLL:

In the most stunning moment of the night, Lambert abandoned himself to passion’s fire with an acoustic blues-rock interpretation of Whole Lotta Love; lithely unraveling the driving beat and frenetic energy of the song into a seven-minute sensual burn. Kneeling, surrounded by a turquoise bliss of chunky bass lines, sitar-like twangs and languid drumbeats, Lambert reached into his inner depths, drawing out a primal query of desire from his soul; a powerful, spiritual offering of love and sex. Electrically-charged emotions flowing, man and music melded seamlessly as he arose, licking heated cries up to the stars, torso rippling fluidly. Stretching out the pace of the song to render breathing space to the band’s sultry vibe, he warbled with lingering intensity, vocal echoes reverberating in the air as if he stood beneath the Palm Canyon walls. Lambert then bore down with fevered thrust into a cascade of lilting moans, while the absorbed crowd’s screams of pleasure swelled and receded around him. Throating desire to the darkened sand, he slipped back to his knees, fervent wails surging forth in waves. Then, spent and satiated, he caressed the sonic dream to its end with a naked whisper tenderly laid to rest beside a final wistful guitar twang. As the elated crowd roused themselves from the spell, Adam confided the mesmeric compilation had been sparsely conceptualized and virtually unrehearsed. The thunderous response to this conveyed to the gifted chameleon that he and his band had successfully coaxed a funky, impromptu enchantment of raw love as oral art out of the iconic Zeppelin tune. Lambert’s unique artistic integrity from that performance ought to educate critics who dismiss him as merely a “reality star” devoid of lasting substance.

Update VI (March 8): Replaced the embedded video with one that has been edited together by lambosessed from the best audio (cos2mwiz, mwilson3235, tinafea) and video (anthrogeekPF, cos2mwiz, lekispop, Merrycello1, mwilson3235, myspencer50, suz526, TALCvids) sources.  Here is anthrogeekPF's video.

New fav commercial

Love the sock puppet and the robot doing the robot!