The Grammys

Every year the Recording Academy doles out its music awards, the Grammys.  According to the Academy, “The GRAMMYs are the only peer-presented award to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position." In other words, these are claimed to be on the basis of quality and not merely commercial success.

This year LL Cool J was the MC, and English singer Adele cleaned up the awards. By the time she was up on stage accepting the last Grammy, and rapidly losing words to say, she seemed visibly embarrassed, as if being the fortunate beneficiary of a rigged competition.  Let’s face it:  the majority of the Grammys went to acts which actually did perform that night.  Lady Gaga did not perform: and lo and behold, although present, she won no Grammys (I understand she knew it was Adele’s night and wasn’t going to pull a Zoolander and embarrass herself).  Bruno Mars needs to pay the estate of James Brown some heavy royalties.  Though I thought Smurfette Perry was just as hot as ever.

 The problem with this is that the awards appear to be given on the basis of popularity and (official denial notwithstanding) commercial success.  Let’s look at a few examples.Of the so-called classic rock albums, only Sgt. Pepper won a Grammy; no other Beatles album has won – and that includes the White Album and Abbey Road.  The Rolling Stones, whose peak was in the late 60s to early 80s, won for Voodoo Lounge (?).  Dark Side of the Moon?  Nope.  In fact, Pink Floyd’s sole Grammy is for “Marooned”, an instrumental from Division Bell (1994).  No Grammys for Deep Purple.  No Grammys for Jimi Hendrix (!!!).   No Grammys for the Doors or the Grateful Dead.  

 As for harder rock bands: No Grammys for AC/DC – not even for Back in Black.  Van Halen’s sole Grammy is for the F.U.C.K. album – not David Lee Roth era material. No Grammys for Led Zeppelin.  Black Sabbath won only recently for live performance of “Iron Man”.  Remarkably, even Def Leppard has failed to win a Grammy.  High quality progressive acts such as the Moody Blues and King Crimson, whose virtuosity is unchallenged, and rarely matched, are completely ignored.   Frank Zappa, whose output is immense, won only two Grammys.  Even Rush have no Grammys.

When “hard rock/metal” was finally recognized in 1988, the award went to Jethro Tull for Crest of A Knave, although Metallica’s …And Justice For All album was much better esteemed.   Why didn’t Aqualung win a Grammy?  Metallica’s black album finally won some recognition in 1991. 

The music awarded with Grammys typically winds up as the most bland, flavorless, universally appealing product for people who really don’t care much about music.  For them, music is for the background, mood music for sex, or danced to (which may lead to…mood music for sex), but not to be listened to on its own merits.  It’s the musical equivalent of fast food.  Imagine a Food Awards where the winners are typically “McDonald’s for the Big Mac,” or “Wendy’s, for a Big Chicken”, or “Taco Bell, for Crunchy Quesadilla,” – and restaurants and producers of fine food are ignored. 

To make matters even worse, the televised awards ceremony ignores many actual categories, including the heavy metal category and of course, any spoken word or classical music.  Betty White won the spoken word award this year.  Did anyone see her at the Grammys?  

I’ll leave this on a good note.  For all their commercial appeal, the Foo Fighters aren’t half bad.  And the night included a Beach Boys tribute which included the Beach Boys themselves – Brian Wilson and Mike Love on stage together for the first time since the 60s; it’s too bad both Dennis and Carl Wilson are dead and could not join in, except perhaps in spirit.  And Paul McCartney finished up the night with an all-star jam on the appropriately named final track from Abbey Road, “The End” (no one noticed the irony that that album had not been recognized back in 1969).