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Grammy-Award Winning Artists and Other Oxymorons Printable Version

by Jason Roth

No one ever said the Grammy Awards was an occasion not to puke in your own hat and serve it back to yourself for dinner. But this year, something has gone very wrong.

99% of this year's Grammy Awards consisted of:

1. Pre-packaged, vacuum-sealed, corporate-manufactured, canned teen-pop garbage consisting of a drum machine, a turntable, one sexual encounter with an MTV program director, and at least one pair of undeniably satisfactory teenage breasts

2. Dinosaurs of the music industry who refuse to die but have no qualms about accepting any honorary ass-kiss trophy they can get which might help keep their faces in Teen Beat magazine for another five minutes before someone takes them behind the barn and puts them out of our misery

The Grammy's have sunk way below the Oscars. There is nothing left to this Awards show. It is a wasteland of nothing. Of jungle rhythms, of pseudo-social nonsense, and of giant toilets sucking melody away out of thin air.

The only decent moment in the entire night, the performance of Eminem and Elton John, was prefaced by the longest, most gutless disclaimer in the history of television. Even after the Grammy people got half the world to watch their show - presumably because some people weren't completely scared shitless about the prospect of Em and El performing - they still couldn't let the show go on without the president of the whole shindig begging in advance for everyone's forgiveness. There's nothing worse than "defending" something controversial by saying you're not here to make judgments, you're only here to point out "notable" musicianship. The guy didn't even have the guts to say whether anyone thought the actual music was good or not.

Then again, everyone knows the goodness and badness of music has absolutely nothing to do with the Grammy's. But this year, the Grammy's have sunk. And drowned. And, finally, we had the opportunity to experience the ultimate culmination of Grammy nothingness...

...the first award for Native American music.

The few seconds of that so-called Native-American music were more than enough for any mentally-healthy human to have to suffer through. And instead of appearing in black-face, the Indians appeared in feathers. Like an inner-city crack-baby mascot under the arm of a whining, smiling liberal social worker, those Grammy-nominated Indians were the compassion-pets of the entire white-guilt-ridden music industry. And they loved every minute of it.

But even by the Indians' own standards, those songs couldn't convince the weather gods to make it rain if the whole casino-working tribe depended on it.

I mean, did you actually hear it?

I think I might rather listen to an overture of baby-torturing and chalkboard-scratching. Wasn't it obvious to everyone that Chief Big Bird and Dancing With Lab-Rats were only there as token diversity puppets so the music industry could prove to themselves and everyone else that:

"No, dammit, we're not so closed-minded as to only care about music. We also care about more important things. Like destroying the entire freaking concept of music."

And I'm not a huge fan of classical music, but give me Pachelbel's Canon any day over that "classical" piece that Canadian pianist tormented us with. The guy was obvious talented, but did he have to sit and practice his scales for five minutes? The only detectable melody in that mess lasted a full three notes.

So let's evaluate our data, shall we?

We have, on the one hand: no-talent, pre-fab pop-music cash cows. And on the other: academia-drenched, socially unconscious music/social critic swill on the other.

So here we have the Golden Grammy Standard: A piece of music is good when it either makes lots of money, or can't make any money. That's it. That's the yardstick.

It's really a beautiful feeling to know that a product that I cherish is judged by the industry that produces it solely in relation to its audience. Never mind actual, objective, artistic standards. The music industry is content to give a thumbs-up to anything that's extremely popular or extremely unpopular. And a middle finger up to anybody who actually creates music.

Can anyone say second-handed?

I'm reminded of a song lyric from one of the best Grammy-repellent rock bands of all time, the Jesus and Mary Chain: "That second-hand living it just won't do."

Ironically, it was the Jesus and Mary Chain that gave me the most pleasure during the Grammy's. I smiled during their performance of their song "Happy When it Rains", which was featured prominently in an upbeat, well-directed, borderline-inspirational... commercial for Chevy.

When the best music at the premier music awards show comes from a commercial for cars and trucks, you know we have a problem.

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