Andrew Fenlon speaks! Former Eli Reed trombonist on what you didn't see in his American Idol performance

For those of us who braved the rain at Foxboro to mingle with several thousand AMERICAN IDOL wannabes last summer, the Boston auditions show was mostly, well, a wash. With one notable exception: ANDREW FENLON, the bespectacled, belligerent gent who got a starring role at the end of Day One. It wasn't a particularly great acting job, but Fenlon's verbal jousting with Kara Dioguardi and Simon Cowell became the new season's first breakout moment. ("I really don't like you," Dioguardi told Fenlon, midway through the bit. "You need a spanking.") And the segment brought even more chuckles from local rock folks who know Fenlon as the former trombonist in Eli "Paperboy" Reed's backing band, the One True Loves. As Eli himself posted on Facebook last night, "Fenlorama is about to begin."

This morning, thanks to Idol, Fenlon is practically a household name, and today he's being blurbed by everyone from the LA Times to the Fort Wayne Indiana Journal Gazette.If you'd like to spend an amusing hour or so, do a quick Twitter search and troll away. But Fenlon, instead of seeking the spotlight, turned down national interview requests and gave an exclusive last night to an friend's college radio station show: the long-running WMBR weekly "Generoso's Bovine Ska and Rocksteady." You can download the entire show here; the interview starts at about the 40 minute mark. 

"I feel a little bit overwhelmed," Fenlon told Generoso. "I thought that I was going to be decimated by the judges on the show through the editing process. Although in my own memory I maintained my composure all the way through it. But you never know -- especially when there's a FOX prime-time ad that calls you the most arrogant person in the world -- what's gonna happen when the show actually airs. So I'm a little bit relieved, but I'm also a little bit shocked, just because of the level of exposure and how quickly everything has gone down."

Asked if he was happy with how he sang, Fenlon said, "I feel OK about it. I felt like I was performing to a pack of wolves. What wasn't really shown on the show was that they started insulting me right away, right off the bat. And it threw me off a little bit. But I felt that it wasn't my best performance, but it wasn't so bad that I should be overly embarrased about it."

For the best rundown of Fenlon's past, check out the Lemmingtrail thread that was, at least for a time last night, one of the top-5 Google results for a search on Fenlon's name. According to one poster, Fenlon's angry-young-hipster routine almost went even further -- in footage that never aired, the Idol crew evidently interviewed someone they thought was Fenlon's father, but was in fact the proprietor of an Allston antique-furniture shop.

ANDREW FENLON links: 

Andy Flop on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/andyflop

Andrew Fenlon on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Andrew-Fenlon/1709246

Pics of Andrew Fenlon's group Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at Orgy of Noise: http://www.orgyofnoise.com/inc