Sunday, February 12, 2012

The 54th Annual Grammy Awards

The 54th Annual Grammy Awards has little to do with me, even though my age and beyond are probably the only ones left who purchase physical products. I suppose that my age bracket is looked upon as the ones that will propel this year's Mumford and Sons into the stratosphere and I'm sure that we'll oblige.

I'm also pretty confident that the Grammy's are the source of all of my parents new artist purchases.

What that means is that we may see another five months of 100,000 + sales of Adele's 21

But the generation gap is amazing when you factor in how my 8 year old son immediately asked "Who's that?" when LL Cool J came out as the evening's host. Moments later, he was the one singing a lot of the songs nominated when I had no idea what they were or who the artists were.

My four year old daughter could also identify the songs, and she also began shimmying her behind in front of her Mother and I during Chris Brown's performance.

"Chris Brown! He threw a chair once because he's got anger issues." advised my son.

How he obtained that bit of information is beyond me, and is a testament to how far reaching pop culture is among our youth, even in families like mine that seem to have a tight grip on their children's entertainment options.

But since he's shown a propensity for voicing his opinion on tonight's performers, I thought it would be cool to include his random ass comments from time to time because, the reality is, he's got a better perspective on some of this shit than I do.

From minute one, it became obvious that this was going to be a Whitney Houston love fest, all of which prompted me to catch up on her career. She had fallen so far off the radar for me that I had no idea that she released an album a few years back and that the tour was a source of anger among some of her fans due to how far her voice had fallen from years of abuse.

"What are Foo Fighters?" my little girl asked while I wasn't sure if they won something. They sounded like Foo Fighters to me, and I liked how the dude from Fear ended up on the Grammy's while Dave Grohl wore a Slayer t-shirt.

It was nice to hear Grohl carry on about how music is best when it comes from the head and the heart. It was even better to hear him get cut off before he got too long winded.

It was clear from both children that Adele was going to be the big winner as brother and sister would finish up "Rolling In The Deep" whenever the fucking commercial that featured that song would come on.

"She does not look like Rhianna anymore." explained my son while my daughter stated how "She said the "F" word." Meanwhile, my wife and I tried to figure out what was the Rhianna/Coldplay connection was.

Finally, Chris Martin from Coldplay came on stage while my son announced "Coldplay sucks!"

Brian Wilson looked sedated and it looked like someone else was singing his part during the Beach Boys reunion set. They sounded good, but I wondered how much of it was canned. It was cool how they followed the camera to Glen Campbell in the audience where Mike Love gave a nod his way for Glen's contributions to the Beach Boys back in the day.

Why so glum, Joe Walsh? Is it because you got stuck with Paul McCartney during his standards phase? Yeah, that was a bit of a bummer. I'm sure the performance was fine, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Holy shit. They gave an award to that woman beater.

Every time they mentioned Taylor Swift, I kept thinking of Taylor Dayne.

Was that Katy Perry routine supposed to do that? And why do I get the feeling that her time is over?

Meanwhile, how brilliant was it to have Adele start "Rolling In The Deep" A Capella? It took less than 10 seconds to hear how her voice is the same as it was before her surgery. Adele on the other hand is far from over. Here's hoping that she learned a little something from Whitney's passing.

Glen Campbell's gotten worse. I don't remember the words "gotten run outta town" in "Rhinestone Cowboy." As a matter of fact, there were a few extra words that I didn't know. Like the ending "...snd cowgirls!"

Bon Iver won best new artist and sounded really dumb during his acceptance speech. Check Rosie O' Donnell's tweets to see if she knows who he is.

Immediately after the performance, I noticed a Yahoo article how Bruce Springsteen said something insensitive. It was related to Whitney's passing, of course, but it also was one of those non-stories that someone puts together just because it's time for some ridiculous update.

There was nothing offensive that Bruce or anyone else said. It was the Grammy's for crying out loud. Besides, if we're actively looking for something truly offensive that was broadcast on Sunday night, we can start by talking about the bullshit "we take care of our own" speech from Grammy president Neil Portnow suggesting that we all work together as we strive to fairly compensate artists through physical and digital delivery platforms.

You can start by not suing us, Neil.

1 comment:

Kiko Jones said...

Solid overview, Mr. T.

I am, however, quite surprised you made no mention of the "Golden Slumbers"/"Carry That Weight"/"The End" finale and the post-Grammy Chris Brown-related tweets from young ladies eager to be on the receiving end of his temper, who also did not know who Macca was.