Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.07.2006, Síða 8

On Wednesday July 5th, the news in Iceland was full
of Magni Ásgeirsson, who would be competing on the
reality television show Rockstar: Supernova on a direct
feed from the CBS American broadcast that night. The
attitude was a cross between optimism and bewilder-
ment. At one point, in fact, local DJ and fantastically
clueless music commentator Óli Palli was brought on
the air, where he explained that while Icelanders just
shrug at Magni, we do so only because he has been
caught in a role, and that no doubt had we had the eyes
of the producers who came to Iceland, we would have
seen his true talent.
Had I only watched Icelandic news, I would have
believed that the producers of Rockstar had vetted out
Iceland’s greatest talent. This would have been curi-
ous, because the goal of the reality television show was
to match a singer with a band made up of Tommy Lee,
an admirable porn star, but a musician who has never
recorded a decent drum track, the man Metallica fans
refer to as Cliff Burton’s crappy replacement, and the
guitarist Guns N’ Roses fans refer to as Izzy Stradlin’s
crappy replacement. By trying out for a C-Class band,
an Icelandic B-Class singer was getting more attention
than any other artist in the country.
Only one Icelander pointed out what was about to
happen, and he told me under his breath as he was leav-
ing work that day: “We watch Rockstar cause it’s like
karaoke from hell. It’s so brutal. But now, you know, it’s
Iceland up there. It’s not going to be funny.”
If only these words could have been spoken by a
public figure before the broadcast.
At midnight on Wednesday July 5th, I reported to
a Gaukur á Stöng packed to absolute capacity. About
600 people were crammed into the two stories of the
building, jammed together shouting “Ísland! Ísland!”, as
Rockstar got going.
There were five acts to go until Magni, each
remarkable, the strongest of the night we would later
find out, and each booed relentlessly by an obviously
hostile crowd. And then we saw Magni’s familiar face,
and “Ísland! Ísland!” was shouted so loud, that it almost
prevented us from laughing when Magni explained that
he was “one of the ten most known singers in Iceland,”
a figure that may have been true within Magni’s own
family in Egilsstaðir, in the east of Iceland, but hardly
true anywhere else. And then he explained, brief ly, that
he was singing for the whole country, which drew a
hefty ovation.
Before I describe the performance, let me point
out that Gaukurinn had never been this full before. A
live music club, everyone from Björk to the Shins have
played the place, and no music has ever packed it as well
as the cover song that Magni was to sing on the most
brutal of American reality shows.
There were 600 people shouting “Ísland” at a set of
TVs early on a Thursday morning.
And then it started: “I can’t get no, satisfaction.”
And then, the crowd went silent.
Heads went down. A chair scraped.
The song went on, though Magni had, for some curious
reason, put the mike to the crowd on the second line of
the song for a sing-along, like Mick Jagger might if he
had even more of an ego than he does. And Magni kept
going, and even though it was quiet, it got quieter.
The camera on Rockstar switched to a close-up of a
frowning Dave Navarro, the host, and a bored ugly-guy-
who-can’t-play-bass-to-save-his-life from Metallica, and
the crowd got more quiet.
When Magni had gotten through Satisfaction,
Gaukurinn was down to 300 people. A woman, passing
me on the way out, held her hand in front of her face as
though holding a microphone, limply, and said, “He was
just standing there.”
The club was one-third full when a wretched singer
gave the chance for one of the cast members to deliver
a quick second blow to Iceland. Describing a pitchless
performance, a producer described a young woman’s
singing as sounding “like a cross between Björk and
Mazzy Star.” But nobody in the room really cared any-
more. Most were ashamed.
Truthfully, Magni had done decently, considering
he was singing English-language material, live, in front
of millions of viewers, with a band he didn’t know, on
a show voted on by people who likely don’t care about
music. The disappointment of the 600 most loyal fans
indicated how much hope they must have had.
The look on the faces of the few remaining patrons
was absolute revulsion. As I passed them, on the way
out, into the 1:00 am sunrise, I couldn’t stop staring at
their faces. Outside, the whole street was full of people
with the same look.
I decided to put my head down and get home.
Mercifully, a noble Icelander grabbed me by the
chest. “Don’t go down that street,” he said.
Gaukurinn, overrun by more customers than it
had seen in 20 years, had lost its sewage system. Or at
least had a failure. As a result, gallons and gallons of
raw sewage, faecal matter clinging to toilet paper, was
f looding Tryggvagata, the large street in front of the
Reykjavík Art Museum.
A crowd had formed to stare at piss and shit filling
a street. The look on their faces was indistinguishable
from the look on the faces of the defeated fans who
watched Magni compete on Rockstar: Supernova. This
was Iceland on reality television.
“He Was Just Standing There”
Magni pulls Iceland into reality television
by bart cameron
superstar
r e s t a u r a n t
L a u g a r v e g i 5 5 b
www. v i n o g s k e l . i s
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