The Grimmies

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Heard an interesting article about the Grammies the other day on NPR.

NPR Audio

And here's the full list of nominees. Looking over this list I have to say it's absurd to contend (or pretend) that "commerciality" is not a consideration. It's like saying the Miss America Contest isn't really about beauty because the winners can usually tap dance or twirl batons too. Most of the categories look like a simple case of the music industry congratulating itself for picking the right things to saturate the airwaves, barely sprinkled with exceptions.

Some of these exceptions are mysterious, but some are obvious, such as Warren Zevon's nomination for Song of the Year for Keep Me in Your Heart, who's nominated again for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance along with George Harrison's Any Road and a number of other nominations. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

In Category 12, Best Dance Recording, Cher (for chrissake) Madonna and Kylie Minogue are duking it out with Groove Armada and Telepopmusik, which is a good thing since I'm sure they can all fight better than dance. Ouch! Eye Cramp!

Funnily, Category 13, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, finds Rod Stewart exactly where he should be, between Bette Midler and Barbara Streisand. (She's still alive?)

Category 15, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, almost looks reasonable until you consider that none of the nominees are actually "rock artists." David Bowie... pop. Bob Dylan... folk. Lenny Kravitz... hmm, as far as I can tell he's in the tight pants and shirtless with sunglasses genre. Dave Matthews... Tom Waits...? True, Tom Waits does sometimes inspire me to mosh, but I'm weird.

As far as I'm concerned, Category 21, Best Rock Album, looks like next year's SUPER PRICE cutout bin, but then I still can't tell Nickleback from Creed. I think Evanescence shows some promise strictly on the basis of having an interesting female vocalist and hopefully, since their guitarist walked out of the band and returned to Little Rock right in the middle of their European tour, they might have a chance to evolve into something more tasty.

Amazingly, Category 22, Best Alternative Album, features three recordings by bands I dearly love. Far from being heartening, this makes me feel certain that something is terribly wrong with me. The Flaming Lips, Radiohead and Sigur Ros are all great bands, but I do fail to see exactly what's "alternative" about them. But then I lost track of what was supposed to be "alternative" before REM passed away--then I was certain "alternative" meant "people singing melodies to a beat with occasional harmonies and possible mandolin" but now I just don't know anymore. And don't get me wrong, I like The White Stripes ok... sorta... I'm just not that excited about bands that sound like what's eminating from every tenth garage in the midwest... but maybe that's what "alternative" means now.

Category 75, Best Spoken Word Album, pits Don Cheadle, Al Franken, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nikki Giovanni and Bill Maher against one another. Hopefully by next year Annorexic Coulter will get into this action, it would be something the ATF could play 24/7 over loudspeakers to drive out the perpetrators of hostage situations.

Category 79, Best Score Soundtrack includes two entries for John Williams pitted against Phillip Glass (Hours), Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) and Randy Newman (Seabiscuit). Personally, I hate John Williams, he sounds like a piece of computer software that's been fed the algorithms of every popular piece of classical music in history and churns out variations that all sound roughly the same. Having said that, Phillip Glass has a great tendency to sound the same from recording to recording too, but at least his style is personal and interesting.

Which brings us to Category 80, Best Song from a soundtrack, which includes Ludacris, U2 and Eminem. These categories are a bit infuriating because there's so much great music in films, usually by unknown people, but Hollywood's developed this theory that filling a movie with established hits is a good substitute for actual soundtrack composition. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but I always feel hearing something you've never heard before and noticing that it's poignant and sensitive is always a more powerful phenomenon.

In Category 88, Best Engineered album, non classical, surprisingly Radiohead pops up for Hail to the Thief. I think some of Radiohead's engineering is astounding, the spooky production of Kid A for instance, But Hail, though I like it a lot, is so.... typical. It just seems a strange choice, and I'd like to know how Daniel Lanois' Shine, (among a number of other albums), is missing. Radiohead is also nominated in category 89, Best Production.

Category 104, Best Short Form Video, pits Johnny Cash's Hurt against OutKast's Hey Ya, among others less mentionable. I think dead people always win, and I love Cash's rendition and video, but I'm not sure what's being judged here, video or music. The point being that I also really like Hey Ya, musically, but the video is trash IMO.

Anyway, my commentaries here are largely meant to be satirical so no one needs to get mad, and just remember, as I will when I review the winners list, there's no accounting for taste.

[theknife]

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
In Category 88, Best Engineered album, non classical, surprisingly Radiohead pops up for Hail to the Thief. I think some of Radiohead's engineering is astounding, the spooky production of Kid A for instance, But Hail, though I like it a lot, is so.... typical. It just seems a strange choice, and I'd like to know how Daniel Lanois' Shine, (among a number of other albums), is missing. Radiohead is also nominated in category 89, Best Production.

well, thank goodness there's no accounting for taste, coz RadioHead is a band who's appeal completely eludes me...

i mean, i just don't get Radiohead. i've listened to lots of their songs, people love 'em, there's even a cd of Radiohead songs that have been done with a full symphony, but if there's something special in their songs, lyrics, melodys, compositions, whatever, i just don't hear it.

[tambourine-man]

Cool post, Ramona... the first post I read today. What you said about John Williams, being a random-classical-music-generator is bang on.