What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where "Not Ready To Make Nice" wins Record Of The Year?\u00c2\u00a0 What next, Harry Reid elected PRESIDENT?<\/p>\n
Speaking of politics, NARAS has insured at least a decade of bashing by the Republicans as a result of the Chick trifecta.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d think they’d vote for something a little more right wing, or the black woman, you can’t criticize a black victory, at least not in PUBLIC!<\/p>\n
But you take the most left-leaning act in recent memory, with an album that half the country REFUSES to listen to, and you give them ALL the awards.\u00c2\u00a0 Smart.<\/p>\n
But it’s worse.\u00c2\u00a0 "Not Ready To Make Nice" is not a hit record.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, it’s pleasant, you can tap your toe to it, but a HIT is something indelible, something you get on the first listen, something you can sing EVERY WORD of thirty years later, FORTY!\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, I heard "Ode To Billie Joe" on the way home from KLSX, I know more about Choctaw Ridge than anything that happened on "Take The Long Way", even though I don’t own the oldie and I’m not even sure Bobby Gentry is ALIVE!<\/p>\n
I heard "Crazy" for the first time a block from my house.\u00c2\u00a0 I RAN from the garage into the house to download it.<\/p>\n
I streamed "Not Ready To Make Nice" once on my computer, and I haven’t played it again SINCE!<\/p>\n
Come on, even YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL was both a bigger hit and a better SONG!\u00c2\u00a0 At least people are playing it at weddings, most people have never HEARD "Not Ready To Make Nice".<\/p>\n
At least "Put Your Records On" is CATCHY!<\/p>\n
But no, we’ve got to give the award to the act with the brand name.\u00c2\u00a0 This would be like giving the Oscar to…"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men’s Chest".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s RECOGNIZABLE, it’s just not CLASSIC!<\/p>\n
Oh, a bunch of people say "Taking The Long Way" is good.\u00c2\u00a0 And it did sell a ton better than many albums this year.\u00c2\u00a0 But the SINGLE?<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t that be like saying the biggest and best record of 1965 was Edwin Starr’s "Agent Double-O-Soul"?<\/p>\n
No, that "hit" was bigger than the Dixie Chicks’ song, it went to number 21!\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to find something MORE obscure.<\/p>\n
How about Dionne Warwick’s "Are You There (With Another Girl)", which reached number 39.\u00c2\u00a0 You remember that one, DON’T YOU?<\/p>\n
OF COURSE NOT!\u00c2\u00a0 But "Five O’Clock World", which made it to number 4, that one’s on your hit parade.\u00c2\u00a0 You remember, they used it on Drew Carey’s TV show.\u00c2\u00a0 Love that track, but was it the BEST OF THE YEAR??<\/p>\n
Oh, maybe "The Game Of Love" by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, it went to NUMBER ONE!\u00c2\u00a0 But no, that was a good record, but not a classic.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to look at other number ones, like "Hang On Sloopy".\u00c2\u00a0 THAT could be Record of the Year, if it weren’t so STUPID!\u00c2\u00a0 "Downtown"’s a good number.\u00c2\u00a0 As is the song that preceded it at the top of the chart, "Eve Of Destruction".\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re not in the LEAGUE of "You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’".\u00c2\u00a0 Or "My Girl".<\/p>\n
But EVERYBODY knows the biggest record of 1965 was "Satisfaction".\u00c2\u00a0 You couldn’t be on the planet and not hear it.\u00c2\u00a0 It was UBIQUITOUS!<\/p>\n
"Not Ready To Make Nice" is ubiquitous on the coffee tables of baby boomers who want to impress their liberal friends, fuck, it probably doesn’t even make it into the CD player.<\/p>\n
Nor did it make it on to people’s iPods.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t even in the iTunes TOP FIFTY!\u00c2\u00a0 It was number 61, yup, that’s my definition of a hit.<\/p>\n
Oh, I know.\u00c2\u00a0 The public is STUPID!<\/p>\n
No, that’s completely wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 People are so smart that they didn’t even bother TUNING IN this train-wreck of a television program\/awards show.\u00c2\u00a0 They believe it’s out of touch and IRRELEVANT!<\/p>\n
I’ll tell you how out of touch NARAS is, they gave away TWO CD CASES in the MusiCares goody bag.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, you pay $1500 a ticket, and you can’t afford an iPod, you need a case to schlep your discs with you on the back of the plane.\u00c2\u00a0 DIDN’T ANYBODY GET THE FUCKING MEMO?<\/p>\n
Oh, the stage had holes for the hoi polloi.\u00c2\u00a0 Whoa, THAT’S innovative.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t seen that since the VMAs, the better part of a DECADE AGO!<\/p>\n
How could an organization be so OUT OF TOUCH?<\/p>\n
You can’t let "Not Ready To Make Nice" win the Record of the Year, never mind the SONG of the year, it eviscerates your CREDIBILITY!\u00c2\u00a0 And all you’ve got is your credibility.\u00c2\u00a0 Without it, you’re Vanilla Ice.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, the Grammys are now Vanilla Ice, laughable has-beens.<\/p>\n
Oh, we know why the Dixie Chicks won.\u00c2\u00a0 Because nobody RECOGNIZED the rest of the nominees, they went for the name around longest, which they were FAMILIAR WITH!<\/p>\n
I bet not even ten percent of Grammy voters know who Danger Mouse is, never mind Cee-Lo.\u00c2\u00a0 So, they shouldn’t have been allowed to VOTE in this category.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t search for and reward excellence by turning over the decision-making reins to CHIMPANZEES!<\/p>\n
I will say one thing though, even if "Not Ready To Make Nice" WERE a hit track, there would be nowhere to HEAR IT!\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, there’s no country station in Los Angeles.\u00c2\u00a0 The one outlet we had went Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 If only it WERE Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not the best of the best, rather the most conservative choices derived from research, selected not to alienate the core audience, which is people who can’t afford an iPod or satellite radio.\u00c2\u00a0 People who listen to Top Forty are equivalent to those without CABLE!\u00c2\u00a0 The indigent, the ignorant.\u00c2\u00a0 But they rule our country.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, just look at our PRESIDENT!<\/p>\n
Well, he’s not indigent.<\/p>\n
If only the Dixie Chicks had written an antiwar song, as good as the aforementioned "Eve Of Destruction".\u00c2\u00a0 But NO, it’s not about the country, but THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 They were put upon, it’s personal now.\u00c2\u00a0 BULLSHIT!<\/p>\n
Music, when done right, is universal.\u00c2\u00a0 "Not Ready To Make Nice" is like a hit show on the Food Network.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, let’s give the Emmy for best variety show to RACHAEL RAY!<\/p>\n
There’s a revolution going on.\u00c2\u00a0 The major labels are driving headlong in the other direction, with the ass-wipes at NARAS following in their footsteps.<\/p>\n
I mean can you take CHARGE?\u00c2\u00a0 Are caretakers what we really need now?\u00c2\u00a0 Should Kodak have just made film until it went out of business?\u00c2\u00a0 God, the record business, the RADIO business, is like Polaroid.\u00c2\u00a0 An old king heading straight for the dumper.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if we need an awards show.\u00c2\u00a0 CBS certainly doesn’t need it, hell, they’d do better with a "Survivor" special.\u00c2\u00a0 But we do need great music, great MAINSTREAM music.\u00c2\u00a0 And we need somewhere to hear it, a clearinghouse where one can stop and shop and find out what’s good and hip.<\/p>\n
Instead we’ve got a balkanized music scene.\u00c2\u00a0 So bogus and so impenetrable that the public has tuned out.<\/p>\n
I remember when We want to go CRAZY!\u00c2\u00a0 We want to be driven CRAZY!\u00c2\u00a0 We want to be elated, transported, CHANGED by the sound.\u00c2\u00a0 Gnarls Barkley’s song did that this year.\u00c2\u00a0 Just hearing it changed your mood, took you away, outside of yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 You felt the possibilities, you were emboldened, you were ELATED!<\/p>\n But does NARAS recognize this?<\/p>\n No.<\/p>\n Isn’t this like standing on the mound and having no idea where home plate is?<\/p>\n Back in ’65, we had MANY "Crazy"s.\u00c2\u00a0 At least this year we had ONE!\u00c2\u00a0 But this particular fish could not be shot in the barrel.\u00c2\u00a0 God, the guys running NARAS are the same guys running the war in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re CLUELESS<\/p>\n It’s time to clean house.<\/p>\n The Net is doing this to the inept labels.<\/p>\n But someone has to take charge at NARAS.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully, not the same people in control of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.\u00c2\u00a0 And they must turn the ship around.\u00c2\u00a0 They must realize the joke of the Grammy Awards doesn’t only hurt the television show, but the ENTIRE INDUSTRY!<\/p>\n Music’s greatest night?<\/p>\n Let’s hope not.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where "Not Ready To Make Nice" wins Record Of The Year?\u00c2\u00a0 What next, Harry Reid elected PRESIDENT? Speaking of politics, NARAS has insured at least a decade of bashing by the Republicans as a result of the Chick trifecta.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d think they’d vote for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-b5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I remember, I remember when I lost my mind<\/em><\/p>\n