What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a Presidential candidate is cooler and has more charisma than the owner of the #1 record?

One in which music is a second class citizen, manipulated by Clintonesque figures mired in the past.

To put Alicia Keys up with Frank Sinatra is to show how small and untalented she truly is.  If it’s this show that’s going to convince people to believe in music, we’re fucked.

But alas, this telecast has nothing to do with belief, and all to do with bucks.

Clive Davis closed NARAS, hell, his party has got more soul than this travesty, they agreed to feature the young woman with a juggernaut of sales, but almost no staying power.  When she’s done, she’ll be history.  Because there’s nothing memorable about Ms. Keys.  She’s bland, not innovative, she’s everything the Beatles and the British Invasion railed against.

Innovation comes from the outside.  Like file-trading.  Even Justin Timberlake embraced free in today’s "Parade" magazine.  At least he’s in touch with the public.  Whereas NARAS, and the record industry that steers it, is not.

Music’s greatest night?  Make me puke.  This is a three hour show designed to sell product.  What it is, who gives a shit.  As long as my bottom line looks good and I get my bonus.  I’m all about keeping my lifestyle, aren’t you?

No.  To the true music fan, it’s not about lifestyle.  It’s about that hit, the connection!  When everything is wrong in their life, music gets them through, they can count on music.  The artists that dig deep down into their souls and reveal their truths, these are the ones they believe in.  Not the mini-corporations with endorsements, sponsorships and fragrances.  Those are business stories, trumpeted in a press that only cares about money itself.  That’s the story of our country, money.  That’s what everybody wants, that’s what everybody writes about.  Quality is irrelevant, what’s number one?

Music used to live outside this sphere.  It was a singular pursuit of unvarnished truth.  Now it’s a collaborative effort akin to moviemaking.   Ain’t that fucked up.

An executive’s job is to create an environment where the artist can create, not tell him to cowrite and come up with a hit single.  Pursue your inner dream, not the fattening of your bank account.

But we live in a world where YouTube is more exciting than radio.  Where technologists are the new rock stars.  And until the generation that knows this gains power, music is screwed.  To think this is the business that all those great acts on Warner Brothers built.  Heresy!

Didn’t anybody realize Ms. Keys was going to look bad?  That she would be revealed to have an unexceptional voice (to go along with her unexceptional material?)  No, it was only about the marketing exercise.  And that’s why the Grammys are irrelevant.  For a few years in the nineties the mainstream and the hip merged and the Grammys almost mattered, but they’ve diverged ever since Napster, when the public took the means of production and distribution into its own hands.

If you think this awards show is important, then you must have a financial interest.  It’s everything wrong with the music business.  It’s something for everybody, whereas we used to specialize in the exact thing the individual needed right now.  Play to the front row, not the upper deck.  Play to those who care.  Ubiquity is history, niche is king.  Everybody knows this but NARAS, which probably doesn’t even know that you can use Google to search hard drives, not to steal music, but to get what you need, to keep you alive.  Whereas this show will put you to sleep.