The country's foremost traveling karaoke show, "American Idols Live," hit Savvis Center on Tuesday night, showcasing a diverse array of singing almost-knowns performing others' classic songs in typically overzealous fashion.

Will "American Idols" never end? Apparently. The reality TV series was the summer sensation as viewers voted on which undiscovered singers would stay in the contest and which would be eliminated until there was one left standing, the cheery Kelly Clarkson. Since then we've seen the release of the "American Idol Greatest Moments" CD and the signing of three of the singers, Clarkson, Justin Guarini and Tamyra Gray, to recording contracts. Clarkson has scored a hit single, "A Moment Like This," while Gray landed a part on "Boston Public." A second season of "American Idol" is on the way.

But for now, it's this new tour, a feel-good, sound-bad celebration of ordinariness that gave fans another dose of queen Clarkson and her court of also-rans. The tour reunites the top 10 contestants, who remain trapped in the same sticky situation they were in on the show. They can't perform original songs in front of this hits-demanding crowd, yet the classic songs they're doing are often out of their reach.

After a video segment opened the show , "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson, also on video, promised the best singers in America. The "American Idols" performed one-by-one, in descending order, beginning with No. 10 contestant Ejay Day with "Black Cat." It was an excitable opening, but also an embarrassingly androgynous one suffering from style over substance. Who let Day get on stage with that harshly cut wig and thick makeup?

Jim Verraros was up next, rising up from beneath the stage sprawled across a park bench for a version of "Easy" that must have Lionel Richie's career rolling in its grave. A.J. Gil, introduced as the next Latin sensation, served up "My Cherie Amour," which broke into a cha-cha twist that made one wonder how this could be a top 10 anything.

Things started looking up with Ryan Starr on "If You Really Love Me" and Christina Christian on "Ain't No Sunshine" (despite the swerve into reggae on the latter). RJ Helton was respectable though far from dynamic on "Lately," as was Gray on "I'm Every Woman." The best of this bunch came from the trio of Clarkson, Guarini and Nikki McKibbin on songs they made their signatures on the show, "Respect," "Get Here," and "Piece of My Heart," respectively.

It's not clear which famous singing clan the show's second half more closely resembled - the Bradys or the Partridges. This chaotic, corny half went crazy with medleys like the Motown mix of "Dancing in the Streets," "Get Ready," "My Guy"/My Girl" etc., and funky disco nuggets like "Boogie Wonderland," "We Are Family" and "Ain't No Stopping Us Now," featuring the entire cast. The men laughably teamed up for "Pop" in what looked like an unintentional boy band parody. The women showed them how to do it on "Free Your Mind." A couple of solo highlights included McKibbin on "Rhiannon" and Gray on "A House is Not a Home."

The biggest surprise was not how wholesomely bad much of this was; we already knew that. It was the absence of Clarkson's "A Moment Like This," one of the year's top-selling singles.