Monday, February 12, 2007

Grammy Blog



Hey folks. Welcome to Monday. I blogged the Grammys last night. Enjoy


Sting and the Police reunite. Yawn.The Police - Driven to Tears (mp3)

Directly followed by Jamie Foxx. Jamie wants you to make some noise and get a party going. Jamie Foxx 's jokes fall flatter than Sting & Co. . Jamie says the jokes would have "killed on BET." Did he mean that literally? Good thing the Police are here to prevent this whole thing devolving into the Source Awards.

Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder pick up an award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals with For Once in my Life. Stevie dedicates it to a deceased relative. Good time to get off the stage, but Tony wants to get in there and thank......Target.

Guess what faithful viewers, you can vote ala American idol for one promising singer to share the stage later with Justin Timberlake. And for the next three hours you will be able to see said pretty promising's every time we go to commercial break.

Dixie chicks perform Not Ready to Make Nice. Backwards thinking folk in middle America make a note to turn off tv in silent disgust/approval for President just as soon as they catch up with the modern world. Last week they finally got that running water, so, another 40 for the miracle of television, and another 20 after that for maturity to accept dissenting opinions

Beyonce performs soulless soul song. Is it me or does B look a bit fleshy as of late. Looks like she's taking the old "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach in response to being overlooked by just about everyone (including the Oscars) for Jennifer Hudson in Dream Girls. No one tell Beyonce that the Academy simply reached its maximum number of Black nominations before they got to her. We like her super curves.

Mary J. Blige picks up her second award of the night. The first saw her give a wedding list of thanks. This time she keeps it short, with some insight for all us kids, "Life is peaks and valleys...I don't wanna burn bridges." Didn't make the cut: "The more you know, the more
you grow," and "Don't come home drinkin' (with lovin' on your mind)"

If I could pick three artists, alive or dead, to perform a collaborative performance live at the Grammys, it would have to be John Legend, John Mayer, And Corinne Bailey Rae.

And the winner for Song of the Year goes to........Not Ready To Make Nice. The true winners, however, are fans worldwide who will surely benefit from the empty promise of presenters Seal and Burt Bacharach to write a song together.

J.t.'s prospective duet partners were caught off guard this time and almost forget to all huddle together and pretend to like each other as the camera panned them. Looks like the one on the left is a loss away from her committing her first Grammy night stabbing. Get on those phones and text America. Don't let the Grammys become the Source awards. Good thing the Police are here. (And you thought the joke was terrible the first time around)

And the Dixie girls win another. Good show girls. This time they want to thank the "true" fans. Aww Snap! detractors. Of course by "true" they mean all those fans who bought concert tickets in Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville for the last tour only to see the Chicks cancel those shows when the side effect of Natalie Maines "outspoken" ways caught up them. The Chicks don't do theatres.

Standing O for the Chris Brown, Smokey Robinson, and Lionel Richie tribute performance to R & B. Why won't Smokey age? Is he a robot? Robot Smokey has more soul than 136 aspiring singers. And all six seasons of American Idol. Also more Botox than Olivia Newton John.
Smokey Robinson - Tracks of my Tears (mp3)


Christina Aguilera pays tribute to Jimmy Brown with a burning performance of It's a Man's World. Speechless.

My favourite part of the evening, the obits. In no particular order, thank you for offering your souls and voices: James Brown, Ahmet Ertegun, Arthur Lee, Billy Preston, Denny Doherty, Anita O'Day, Alice Coltrane, Floyd Dixon, Syd Barrett, Gene Pitney, Desmond Dekker, and Ruth Brown. A touching tribute to Brown with a dancer struuting around as James does the same on the screen. And then they drape a cape over the microphone stand. Classy.
Billy Preston - Nothing from Nothing (mp3)
James Brown - Night Train (mp3)

Ludacris is performing the "make Oprah proud" Runaway Love. Jamie Foxx is taking notes.
Ludacris - Runaway Love (mp3)

I fell asleep so I've been watching the telecast on tape. Swear to God I couldn't plan this, the tape just ended half a verse into James Blunt's Beautiful. God loves me and protects me from insipid pop music.

I really wanted to see what instantly forgettable singer got to sing with J.T. Hows about they just can the whole idea and let Scarlett Johansson do it.
Scarlett Johansson - Summertime (mp3)

That's all folks. In and out before I'm subjected to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

3 comments:

Paul said...

Bravo! Very, very well done. I didn't even watch because of a complete lack of interest (and CBS's run of "that's just the first hour" promos a week ago that screamed "we're 7 days from go-time, and we don't even have the whole thing planned yet!")... but I feel like I didn't miss a beat now. A million thank yous.

Rob Rockerr said...

The awards given to the Dixie Chicks were one thing....sending a message.

As you know, these awards were not given by the people. This was not the People's Music Awards, rather less than 11,000 members of professionals in the music industry. One writer brought up the idea that the vote for the various catagories was so split, that the largest chunk of votes left were the politically active members who had the opportunity to "make a statement" with what amounts to a lackluster album and a really boring song.

First of all, there's no way a song like that would take song of the year at the Grammys unless it had help, through collusion or other means, or jury nullification, just like the O.J. trial. And for them to win 5 awards if just not only improbable, but impossible! It looks like the Grammys jumped the shark last night, allowing politics to influence the outcome of not one but 5 awards and I personally could never look at them in any kind of positive light again, though that's been coming for a long time now.

I've been a professional musician for over 35 years, a session player on albums and a touring sideman. I'm hearing nothing, and I repeat nothing, but disbelief at what happened last night. Some are asking for an investigation to see if there was indeed any wrong doing in the "winning" of these awards. And all along, Natalie and the world still actually think that they really won those awards.

Sad. Hope they never realize what really happened. They were used!

Anonymous said...

HOW ABOUT...
you actually, make this site so people can actually download music off of it, OR, how about just deleting it off of hypem, because i come here all the time, being given the link from www.hypem.com and i NEVER get any music!