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?<\/p>\n
One in which music is a second class citizen, manipulated by Clintonesque figures mired in the past.<\/p>\n
To put Alicia Keys up with Frank Sinatra is to show how small and untalented she truly is.\u00c2\u00a0 If it’s this show that’s going to convince people to believe in music, we’re fucked.<\/p>\n
But alas, this telecast has nothing to do with belief, and all to do with bucks.<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 When she’s done, she’ll be history.\u00c2\u00a0 Because there’s nothing memorable about Ms. Keys.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s bland, not innovative, she’s everything the Beatles and the British Invasion railed against.<\/p>\n
Innovation comes from the outside.\u00c2\u00a0 Like file-trading.\u00c2\u00a0 Even Justin Timberlake embraced free in today’s "Parade" magazine.\u00c2\u00a0 At least he’s in touch with the public.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas NARAS, and the record industry that steers it, is not.<\/p>\n
Music’s greatest night?\u00c2\u00a0 Make me puke.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a three hour show designed to sell product.\u00c2\u00a0 What it is, who gives a shit.\u00c2\u00a0 As long as my bottom line looks good and I get my bonus.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m all about keeping my lifestyle, aren’t you?<\/p>\n
No.\u00c2\u00a0 To the true music fan, it’s not about lifestyle.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about that hit, the connection!\u00c2\u00a0 When everything is wrong in their life, music gets them through, they can count on music.\u00c2\u00a0 The artists that dig deep down into their souls and reveal their truths, these are the ones they believe in.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the mini-corporations with endorsements, sponsorships and fragrances.\u00c2\u00a0 Those are business stories, trumpeted in a press that only cares about money itself.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the story of our country, money.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what everybody wants, that’s what everybody writes about.\u00c2\u00a0 Quality is irrelevant, what’s number one?<\/p>\n
Music used to live outside this sphere.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a singular pursuit of unvarnished truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s a collaborative effort akin to moviemaking.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Ain’t that fucked up.<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 Pursue your inner dream, not the fattening of your bank account.<\/p>\n
But we live in a world where YouTube is more exciting than radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Where technologists are the new rock stars.\u00c2\u00a0 And until the generation that knows this gains power, music is screwed.\u00c2\u00a0 To think this is the business that all those great acts on Warner Brothers built.\u00c2\u00a0 Heresy!<\/p>\n
Didn’t anybody realize Ms. Keys was going to look bad?\u00c2\u00a0 That she would be revealed to have an unexceptional voice (to go along with her unexceptional material?)\u00c2\u00a0 No, it was only about the marketing exercise.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why the Grammys are irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
If you think this awards show is important, then you must have a financial interest.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s everything wrong with the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s something for everybody, whereas we used to specialize in the exact thing the individual needed right now.\u00c2\u00a0 Play to the front row, not the upper deck.\u00c2\u00a0 Play to those who care.\u00c2\u00a0 Ubiquity is history, niche is king.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas this show will put you to sleep.<\/p>\n
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