“Ratings for Grammy Awards Drop 24 Percent”

It’s the end of the monoculture.

There’s a fiction we all care about the same things.

We don’t.

The ascension of the importance of the Grammys coincided with the MTV era, and that ended nearly twenty years ago.

So why did viewership then go up?

First of all, there was the hangover.

Secondly, there was the Twitter era.

Now no one notices and no one cares. That’s not to understate the importance of hip-hop and women, it’s just that we’re all in our own niches, and old people don’t listen to new music and young people don’t care about old music and ergo, a Grammy ratings flop.

The show was constructed for an old era. For when the show and its awards counted. Furthermore, we live in an on demand era, one wherein you don’t have to watch SNL because the good moments are all online shortly thereafter. If anything happened on the Grammys you’d find out about it. But by playing it safe, the show had no water cooler moments, in an era where so many work from home or are freelance entrepreneurs and there is no water cooler.

Playing it safe is anathema, isn’t that what music has taught us? That the new and cutting edge wipes out the old? Which is why we don’t want to see Sting, Bono and Elton. The Beatles and the British Invasion wiped out Bobby Rydell and so many more, the kids stopped paying attention.

And the kids drive the culture.

So what now?

The truth is as dominant as hip-hop is, there’s a whole swath of the public that is not paying attention and doesn’t care. Hip-hop won because it embraced new technologies, i.e. Spotify and Soundcloud and new distribution methods, i.e. mixtapes and singles…this is the future, when are the other genres gonna wake up?

They will, but they’re so inured to the past, like the Grammy show, that they’ve been left behind. Rock is a marginal enterprise where outside of the radio format, i.e. Active Rock, the bands are meaningless, they barely pop up on streaming services, it’s as if in the old days their records were unavailable in chain stores.

Country has made inroads in streaming, but the powers-that-be don’t want to break the hegemony of country radio, they’re like religious zealots who don’t want to find out their children are atheists.

As for pop… It’s so busy trying to reach everybody that it reaches nobody. Formula never works in music, not for long, and it even stopped working in movies, sequels killed the summer box office.

So where do we go now?

Realize we live in a Tower of Babel society, we’re all speaking a different language. The odds of someone listening to the same music as you are de minimis.

Second, it’s nearly impossible to get the message out, there are too many news sources. So either you’re a nobody or someone who believes they’re a somebody who is not. Meanwhile, traditional markers don’t account for this. There’s still a “Billboard” chart, there are still record reviews in the paper, it’s like it’s still 1989, no one wants to catch up with the present.

As for the Grammy Awards and the telecast…

First and foremost the Grammy organization needs a rethink. Neil Portnow was a placeholder after Mike Greene, who made the Grammys what they are/were and ruffled too many feathers. You see Greene was a renegade who stood up to the powers-that-be, Portnow is a tool of the labels and usual powers when they matter less and less. If the Grammys are to mean anything, they must be more independent. Now they rely on CBS and are so out of touch that the ratings have flopped.

As for the show itself…

The one they’ve been doing will no longer work. I know they’ve got a big contract with CBS, but that does not mean viewers care. To tell you the truth, they should make a deal with Netflix, wherein every nominated track, IN EVERY CATEGORY, has a video that the public can peruse and vote on. Then there’s a show, actually multiple shows, wherein every nominee performs said track live, and then an awards show that’s only awards, no music.

You might not agree with this formula, but the point is you’ve got to think outside of the box. You’ve got to go back to the basics, you’ve got to go back to the music itself.

Now we’ve got performers who are not nominated singing songs that are not nominated while only a few awards are given out. Who wants that?

The VMAs blew a hole in the awards show paradigm by knowing to create moments along with the music. There was irreverence, it felt like the show was on the pulse.

But then that show died.

Nothing is forever. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect to succeed. The world is constantly changing and you’ve got to change with it, otherwise you’re left behind, listening to your classic rock records thinking about the good old days.

Like the Grammy show producers and voters.

It can be fixed. But probably not by the old white men in charge.

We live in a rainbow world. Forget the orange man in power and his vocal fanbase, the truth is gay marriage is legal and everybody now knows a trans person and if you’re not looking forward you’re being left behind.

Like the Grammys and this telecast.

I saw him and Gordon headlining on the Steel Pier at Atlantic City.

What I did not know was the story of Paul McCartney finishing “World Without Love” for the duo.

Peter tells it here.

As well as going down into his family’s basement to hear the Fab Four’s “I Want To Hold Your Hand” played on the piano, can you imagine?

I certainly can’t.

Peter’s father codified Munchausen Syndrome. His mother taught music. His sister…

Dated Paul McCartney.

And after his fame with Peter & Gordon Asher got a gig as an A&R man at Apple and signed James Taylor, that’s still my favorite of his albums, with the definitive versions of “Carolina In My Mind” and “Something In The Way She Moves” as well as the exquisite “Circle Round The Sun.”

But when that didn’t work out, the two, in this case Peter and James, decamped to Los Angeles, made a deal with Warner Brothers and the result was…

“Sweet Baby James.”

And then the production success with Linda Ronstadt, who’d knocked around forever and had had a hit with the Stone Poneys and the solo “Long Long Time,” but was languishing. Then came “You’re No Good,” the part you like she hated at first, concocted in an all night session with Andrew Gold and Peter, but then she came around.

And so did everybody else.

Which begat a management career and further production duties and the astounding thing about Peter is he’s still working! When most of his compatriots can’t or won’t, he’s producing Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, as well as helping Steve out with music on his Broadway endeavors.

And more.

We go very deep here.

But not deep enough.

Then it would be four hours long!

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#metoo: An Open Letter to Charlie Walk

I’m not sure this demands additional comment, but I will say the music business has been curiously quiet when it comes to #metoo and I wonder why, is it because it’s essentially an independent contractor business, one wherein everybody’s too afraid of damaging future relationships to speak up?

Of course there was the Penny Muck/Marko Babineau story twenty five years back, and recently L.A. Reid, but for a notoriously freewheeling business it’s been strangely noiseless.

Could it be that so much of the music is based on sex?

Could the classic rock records of yore, even the MTV rock records of yore, be released today?

So now what happens?

Does Charlie Walk get bounced from television singing show “The Four”?

One would think definitely, right?

Why is it men who make money feel invincible? Especially those who were shunned growing up. They leave morality behind and believe they’re entitled to their heart’s desire.

I’d be scared to be a woman. It’s like running a gauntlet every day.

Furthermore, where were these men brought up, and how?

And never forget that it’s the team/bro behavior, begun in sports and spread through fraternities and board rooms. There’s groupthink, you take one for the team, you stand up for the status quo and those in power. Irrelevant of sexual harassment this is a huge problem in our economy.

We need to teach people to stand up for what’s right.

And we need to ensure they’re not penalized for their behavior.

The Grammys are worthless, despite what Bono extemporaneously said. Made me believe you’re better off reading the script. When you get this old you go for gravitas, you don’t show up for every photo op, but Paul didn’t get the memo, he thinks if he gets facetime his audience will care, but his audience is nearly geriatric, best to play “The Unforgettable Fire” for them, they’re done with new music.

But that’s what this show is about, and that’s where it fails.

The big winner this weekend was Chris Stapleton. Who has not only been anointed god of country music, but our single hope for rock and roll and guitar-based tunes. Not only his victories tonight, but his appearance last night on SNL, with Sturgill Simpson, he’s not afraid to share the spotlight, he got the hip-hop memo, and he’s got sales/consumption too. Stapleton is real music. And he’s the toast of Nashville. What could be wrong with that?

And despite trying to keep Ed Sheeran down, he won for Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album.

And Portugal The Man won for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

But there were so many faux pas and guffaws it was mind-bending.

Do the Foo Fighters win whenever they’re nominated? Is their retread rock the only known entity in this moribund field?

And speaking of which, what kind of bizarre world do we live in where Leonard Cohen wins the Best Rock Performance.

But the greatest crime of all was Bruno Mars’s victory for Album of the Year. “24k Magic” is utterly meaningless, well-honed pop for the mindless. Not challenging, not cutting edge, not as good as what came before, but he’s safe enough to play the Super Bowl twice so let’s give it to him.

HUH??????

Talk to the NFL players, THEY ALL LISTEN TO HIP-HOP!

I would have been angry if Jay Z beat out Kendrick Lamar, but this is positively INSANE!

They’ve got a #metoo segment, the Grammys are all touchy-feely, and then they end up being RACIST???

Believe me that’s true. Its members hate hip-hop. The organization must be decimated, superseded. Come on, when comedians and Presidents win Grammys you know it’s messed up. And the endless categories which ultimately ensure too many people with their heads up their asses vote in categories they’re clueless about no wonder the awards are irrelevant and ignored by the younger generation. Time marches on, but the Grammys remain stuck in the past. Jethro Tull was not an exception. If you didn’t know that Kendrick Lamar put out the Album of the Year, then you don’t have your ear to the ground, which Grammy voters don’t.

And where’s the apology?

Get Neil Portnow on morning TV, have him explain this. How he runs a white-dominated racist organization. Hell, there’d be riots in the street if anybody thought this award meant anything.

But in a year where hip-hop dominated in a way rock hasn’t in decades, where no other sound has in decades, to shut it out and disrespect it this way is a travesty.

It’d be one thing if only the African-Americans listened to it. But the white kids eat it up, they rap in country…BUT HIP-HOP CAN’T GET ANY RESPECT!

But you’ve got white dudes saying racism is passe. Bitching about reverse racism. Saying you’ve just got to put your nose to the grindstone, anybody can succeed, and then you shut hip-hop out? What kind of message does this send? That hip-hop and African-Americans are second class citizens and no matter what they do they deserve no respect.

This is a serious issue. You may not be black, you may not like hip-hop, but the world only works when we’re united and we all get respect, we’re all treated equally. But we’ve got a government trying to jet us back two centuries, Charlottesville was not an anomaly, we’re willing to stick up for white women abused by powerful men, but when it comes to African-Americans…SCREW ‘EM!

But the joke is on the Grammys and the government. They’ve got no sense of history, they don’t know it’s about hearts and minds. That’s how North Vietnam beat the United States. You can’t break passion.

And that’s where it is in music today, hip-hop.

What doesn’t break us only makes us stronger.

This kick to the face, this spit in the eye…

Hip-hop will emerge victorious.

And should boycott next year’s Grammys completely. Hell, the show needs rappers more than rockers. Sometimes you’ve just got to say I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!

Sometimes you have to go on strike.

Sometimes you need a new organization and new awards.

This is a black eye on the Grammys. They think they can duck and cover, push back, but that didn’t work for Harvey Weinstein and Steve Wynn and it won’t work for Neil Portnow and the Grammys.

He should step down and put an African-American in charge, he’s been in power long enough.

But no, nothing can change in the overcompensated white music business.

Same as it ever was.

DISGUSTING!!!