Last Night’s Grammy Awards

 

 

Here’s everything you need to know about the giant music biz boondangle called the Grammy Awards.

 

Last night, the winner of “Album of the Year” was a couple of guys dressed up in white robot costumes from France named “Daft Punk.”  They won two awards and even performed a song.  And they didn’t say a fucking word all night long.  Not even in French.

How’s that for bizarre?

Among the presenters was a legendary singer/musician you might recognize.  Which leads to my next question:  How did Yoko Ono even get inside the building?  Isn’t this a celebration of music?  Yoko Ono is to music what Khloe Kardashian is to astrophysics.

This leads to another question:  How many Grammys has Yoko Ono won in her storied musical career?  The answer is 1.

Here’s another:  How many Grammys have been won by Public Enemy, Depeche Mode, Guns N’ Roses, and the Talking Heads?  The answer is 0.  Combined.

That’s right, zippo.

Wait, it gets worse.  The Talking Heads haven’t ever been nominated.  Not once!  Can you fucking believe that?  Even that narcissistic little twit Justin Bieber was nominated for two Grammys, one year.  What does it say about an award that nominates Bieber not just once but twice, yet doesn’t even let David Byrne sit up in the balcony?

It says the award is basically an ass plug.

Plooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopp.  There you go, Taylor Swift.  Enjoy.

Look who else hasn’t won a Grammy — Queen, The Who, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Run-DMC, En Vogue, Chuck Berry, The Grateful Dead, Diana Ross, The Pretenders, CCR, and Sam Cooke.  Ever heard of them?

There’s more.  What about Queens of the Stone Age, Snoop Dogg, Björk, The Beach Boys, ZZ Topp, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Rush, Boston, The Ramones, The Everly Brothers, Patti Smith, The O’Jays, Motley Crue, Deep Purple, Toby Keith, The Kinks, Morrissey, The Smiths, ABBA, Curtis Mayfield, The Byrds, and Dave Brubeck.  Zippo.  Not a single Grammy.  I could go longer, much longer, but you get the point.

Now, take a look at the Grammy count of these winners.  Toto has won six.  Fucking Toto!  SIX Grammys!  [See Footnote 1]  Convicted tax cheat, has-been Lauryn Hill has won five.  FIVE!

Call the shipper, quick.  Five ass plugs, please.

The Grammys have been a farce since year one.  Since the beginning.  Go all the way back to 1968, one of the greatest years in music history — an absolute golden age and monster year for all forms of modern music including Rock n’ Roll, R&B, Motown, Jazz, Blues, and Country.  [See Footnote 2]  Take a look at the Billboard Top 100 that year.  What do you think won “Song of the Year” at the Grammys back then?  I’ll give you a hint as to songs and singers that were nominated in that category, but lost:

— Tom T. Hall for “Harper Valley PTA” performed by Jeannie C. Riley
— John Lennon and Paul McCartney for “Hey Jude” performed by The Beatles
— Bobby Russell for “Honey” performed by Bobby Goldsboro
— Paul Simon for “Mrs. Robinson” performed by Simon and Garfunkel

And the winner that year was….“Little Green Apples.”

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.  I had to look that one up, too.

Given their abysmal track record for picking music with lasting value, let’s call this award what it is — a hub cap.  No, wait.  A tin-plated ass plug that essentially no one cares about or respects once TMZ covers the weekly celebrity scandals and after all the blow’s been snorted off the mirror tray on the vanity.  It’s the music industry’s equal of a bowling trophy, for rolling a 200 game.

The Grammys is a giant wank fest, a three-hour infomercial of 5-minute guest appearances, hopelessly embarrassing moments, gaffes, fashion nightmares, and a collection of freaks who mostly can’t stand each other and otherwise wouldn’t be found in the same city, let alone same arena except that television cameras are blinking and it’s the chance to appear to be a “somebody” even though most of the ex-stars in the audience haven’t been relevant in a decade, and a similar percentage of this year’s nominees will be irrelevant by the time Obama is touring the country doing honorarium speeches for a living.

Yeah, come together and all that — I get it.  How nice.  But as soon as lights go up and the limos race off, band members will be back to suing each other with most of the money going to jackal lawyers, backup singers will be performing the art of fellatio on slimy record producers, and Taylor Swift will still be trying to convince anyone over the age of 18 she’s a talent.

Brrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Indeed, much like the music industry they purportedly honor, the Grammy Awards are a cesspool of chaos and confusion.  It’s not exactly the Oscars, is it — you know, which the stars actually take it seriously enough to dress up and look their finest, when many of the winners break down and cry in acceptance speeches because they know that award actually means something.  The only people crying at the Grammys last night were those sitting at home with our jaws on the sofa who wasted more than three hours of their lives watching in bewilderment and wondering to themselves, “holy fuck, if it’s this bad now, what’s music going to be like in another ten years?”  

A comparison to the Oscars is fitting.  You know, the Academy Awards — something which actually does its best to dismiss what’s popular at the box office and reward actual artistry and creative vision rather than what sells faster than Big Macs.  Make no mistake, the Grammys are entirely about what the music industry wants to happen and who the public is expected to digest.  Like trailer trash addicted to junk food, they keep on buying whatever goes out, bouncing from one fame-starved boy act and pop princess doing a stripper act to the next before everything inevitably falls apart and ends up as the next segment on Behind the Music.

Want me to prove the Grammys have no lasting merit?  Quick.  Name me the winner of the “Song of the Year” category last year?  Or the year before that?  Or before that?  The only music I hear right now is a symphony of crickets.  [See Footnote 3)

What’s most troubling is that plenty of good music is out there.  It’s all over the place.  In clubs.  On the Internet.  At concerts.  Collaborations.  Electronics.  To be fair, last night’s winner Daft Punk is actually pretty good, I must say.  While untold numbers of great musicians — you know, those who can actually play instruments and write songs — struggle to make a living or play for coins and an occasional crumpled-up dollar tossed into a guitar case at a subway stop, we get stuck have the likes of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift shoved down our throats.  Wait, shouldn’t it be the other way around?  Think about that for a second.  It will come to you.

One thing we learned last night is rock n’ roll is now officially dead.  It’s become big band music.  When the rock song of the year category comes down to Paul McCartney (albeit with Nirvana), the Rolling Stones, and Ozzy Osborne….that’s not a list of nominees, that’s the shortlist for the next crop of Depends pitchmen.  Good grief, aren’t there any 25-year-old rockers out there anymore?  I guess not.

But at least rock was a big part of the last night’s show, although most of it was a gross embarrassment.  Utterly forgettable, except for a few moments of flash brilliance by the great Carol King and Metallica.  By the way, whatever happened to jazz and blues?  Hasn’t the Grammys ever heard of either jazz or blues?

Speaking of the blues, can we cut out all the ass-kissing weepy-eyed tributes to The Beatles?  Enough already.  I revere them as much as anyone, and I plan to write more about this as we approach the group’s 50th-anniversary landing in America next week.  But it’s time to hang it up for chrissakes.  Watching Ringo Starr onstage doing what amounts to a bad karaoke act worthy of the Holiday Inn lounge at the Milwaukee Airport isn’t nostalgic.  It’s fucking pathetic.

Fortunately, the night did produce a few highlights courtesy of Carol King, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Lord, Metallica, and a few others.  But even the high energy of those acts wasn’t enough to save the sunken ship.  By then, even the iceberg had melted.

Here’s an idea:  How about doing a live show and actually taking a few risks?  Offer the great violinist Itzhak Perlman the chance to go up on a stage in a collaboration with Jay-Z.  There’s a novel idea.  Have Fatboy Slim perform with Diana Krall.  Let’s see Snoop Dog and Stevie Nicks do a duet together.  Guitarist John Bonamassa riffing with Nicki Minaj.  I know, crazy-sounding, isn’t it?  But any of these wacky ideas would have been fun, exciting, must-see television that would have been talked about long-afterward and reinforced the real purpose of music, which is an expression of the soul.

My distaste for the Grammys has nothing to do with age.  Music is a young person’s game now, and I’m perfectly willing to accept that.  But when Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift are the industry’s two biggest stars, then face it — your product is shit.

Stay tuned next year for the 2015 Grammy Awards.  Now ordering — 42 more ass plugs.

Whhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoooooooooooooo.

Footnote 1:  I vaguely remember the rock group, Toto.  Their big album and song was “Rosanna,” a decent melody but hardly worth a Grammy.

Footnote 2:  The 1969 Grammy Awards actually honored songs from the previous year.  But take a look at the top 100 songs from that year alone.  CLICK HERE

Footnote 3:  In 2013, the Song of the Year went to “We Are Young,” by a group called Fun.