Ahh, the great dilemma of the Grammys.
The prime-time Grammy broadcast placates the corporate music industry by shoveling forgettable acts into our faces because they have nice legs and move units at Wal-Mart.
It’s a fashion show littered with so much horrid, disposable R&B, hip-hop and syrupy country, that it should depress any rational human being who ever had a soulful or original thought.
Pink performs at Sunday’s Grammys. They’ve asked George Jones to do this maneuver next year.
Sometimes sublime artists win Grammys, but it typically doesn’t happen on the main broadcast or with the biggest awards.
So very often, Grammy just misses it completely.
Consider that artists like The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Buddy Holly, Queen, The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin and the Doors never won a Grammy. (Well, the Dead finally got a lifetime achievement award. The association sometimes does make-up calls.)
It took Neil Young 50 years, but he finally won a Grammy this year (they put him on the pre-broadcast). Mariah Carey, however, has won five Grammys.
They gave the Black Eyed Peas five minutes of performance. They gave Jeff Beck, honoring the recently departed Les Paul, two minutes. (So what if Les Paul invented the electric guitar and multi-track recording. He never could dance like Beyonce.)
I think you get the point.
However, it’s hard to ignore a nearly naked Pink doused in water, hanging upside down, spinning and singing. Now I’m going to rush out and buy all of her music. First I need to jab a flaming pitchfork into my foot.
OK, I think you get the point, so to speak.
Anyway, until this week, I’d never heard of a group called the Zac Brown Band. The group won for Best New Artist. The Zac Brown Band is performing March 19 at the Redding Convention Center and that show sold out in about 15 seconds. Obviously I’m a little behind on the times.
I watched a video by the Zac Brown Band, and although the band’s sound is kinda dipped in that Nashville gloss-and-polish-for-the-masses tone I detest, there’s something kind of likeable about the group. One of their tunes contained the line, "roll me a fat one" or something like that. If that tune is getting played on mainstream country airways, I consider it a major breakthrough for the absolutely horseshit genre of today’s modern country music.
OK. So the Zac Brown Band gets a pass.
Corporate music with meaningless lyrics — just like the majority of mainstream films — are designed to appeal to a wide, predictable swath of the masses. It’s art for people who detest art. And we’re belching this crap all over the world. They’re watching "The Fast and the Furious 4" in Honduras. They’re listening to Taylor Swift songs in Singapore. World: I’m sorry. I’m deeply sorry.
And, readers, I’m sorry. This is an old, well-worn rant.
What do I know ("what a wino"), anyway?
The Grammys had its best viewing audience in years. People want to see Beyonce, Pink and that gal from the Black Eyed Peas. They don’t want to see old Jeff Beck or old Kris Kristofferson or old Bob Dylan or old Lucinda Williams.
But what happens is that over time, people keep listening to those latter artists and they become deeply important to a lot of people. Grammy finally says, "Upon further review, we’ve had our heads way up our keisters. Give ’em the lifetime award!"
No one continues to listen to Britney or Kenny Chesney or ‘N Sync or Kanye West. You just grow out of them like you grow out of your baby shoes. You go: "Oh, man, I’ve been eating that candy corn for an hour and I feel awful! Anybody got a John Hiatt CD I can listen to?"
So, if humanity has a chance, if we’re going to continue to exist as a race, we do this: We watch the Grammys and we say, "Huh, that was interesting. Kinda fun, actually. But does anybody know where I can find some good new music?"
