Grammys: fighting the taste-impaired voters
What’s that Noise?
Michael Tatum
OK, we all know why we’re here. I hate the Grammys; you hate the
Grammys. What else is new?
Yes, we all know the NARAS, the oblivious fugitives from
intelligence who vote for these awards, are hopelessly out of touch
with modern music. We all know that Bob Dylan never won a Grammy
during his most creative period, the ’60s, only to win lifetime
achievement a few years back. We all know that nearly every Best
New Artist winner disappears into obscurity after the release of
their next album (considering this year’s winner was Sheryl Crow, I
find this curse to be righteous).
You’ve heard it all before, and I assume since you’re reading
this column, you want to hear it again: The Stones blah blah Patti
Smith blah blah George Clinton blah blah Velvet Underground blah
blah Milli goddamn Vanilli blah blah blah.
Why should anyone sensible Â- you or me, for example Â
invest so much psychic energy into something so trivial?
As someone who has probably heard more records in the last year
than your average NARAS member, I do it because the sterile,
hegemonic, taste-impaired sensibilities of the Grammy voters must
be stopped. If it takes kidnapping their children to stop
abominations like Tony Bennett capturing an award for Best Album,
that’s what we have to do.
I could pontificate on some of the other winners  the
innocuous, rich-kid-pop of Sheryl Crow, for example  but
Bennett’s Unplugged will serve as a useful paradigm.
After much deliberation, I’ve decided that the NARAS couldn’t
possibly have heard the same album that I reviewed last July.
Bennett cracked hitting high notes, cracked hitting low notes, and
embarrassed himself trying to hold a note for 20 or so seconds
during "Old Devil Moon." And people want to award him for this?
I’ll admit that enlisting the accompaniment of a three-piece
ensemble, the Ralph Sharon Trio, as opposed to a full orchestra,
showed admirable restraint that Sinatra (not to mention Harry
Connick) wouldn’t have. And I admire how Bennett calculatingly
exploited Gen X identified superstars (how else to explain
Bennett’s introduction of "my good friend, ‘Even’ Dando"?) to draw
in those with short attention spans.
But in no conceivable way is this album the best record of the
year. I mean, Bennett has been performing these same songs for
decades. Does the world really need the 10,056,676th version of "It
Had To Be You"?
And I know this horse has probably been beaten to the center of
the earth, but compare Bennett’s Unplugged album to Nirvana’s. OK,
maybe the just-like-the-studio versions of "Polly" and "Something
In The Way" were a bit redundant. But for the most part, instead of
coasting on obvious past successes, Cobain chose the occasion to
unearth obscure songs that many in Nirvana’s audience probably
hadn’t heard before.
On top of that, let’s hear Bennett execute a more harrowing
vocal performance than Cobain does on Leadbelly’s "Where Did You
Sleep Last Night?" (since Bennett considers Tin Pan Alley writers
to be progenitors of "traditional folk music," this seems to be a
moot point).
I know  why pick on an old guy, why not let sleeping dogs
lie, why make a mountain out of a molehill, why compare apples and
oranges, etc. But when the orange happens to be rotten, moldy and
crawling with maggots, why would you want to bronze it and put it
in the Smithsonian?
This goes for Cobain as well as anyone else. Not that I wouldn’t
give my record collection (or better yet, yours) to have him alive
again, but at least in 30 years he won’t be picking up an award for
some crusty, mediocre album that he vomited up in his spare
time.
I’m not opposed to giving Bennett the Lifetime Achievement Award
(I haven’t looked it up, but I’m sure he’s already got it), but why
do we have to acknowledge his, er, greatness by honoring Unplugged?
I mean, do people really think it’s going to inspire future
generations of musicians?
Clearly, the guilt of this should be brunted by the
sentimentality-handicapped older voters, many of whom no doubt
caved into their own nostalgia ("Hey Martha, this was our wedding
song!") rather than base their decision on artistic merit.
Now, having excreted that little bit of vitriol out of my
system, here are my own nominees for Best Album of 1994. I’m sure
that many NARAS members will live the rest of their hopelessly
narrow lives without putting these great CDs into their changer,
but these works are guaranteed to provide insight and inspiration
long after Bennett’s Unplugged finishes its run in Holiday Inn
elevators everywhere.
1. Beck Mellow Gold; Beck, Tom Rothrock, Rob Schanpf and Karl
Stephenson, producers
2. Latin Playboys, Latin Playboys; David Hidálgo, Louie
Pérez, Mitchell Froom, Tchad Blake, producers
3. Sonic Youth Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star; Butch
Vig, producer
4. Iris DeMent My Life; Jim Rooney, producer (in real life,
nominated for Best Folk Album, but lost to Johnny Cash’s insanely
overrated American Recordings)
5. M People Elegant Slumming; Heather Small, Mike Pickering and
Paul Heard, producers.
An avant-garde free-associater who constructs his own staggering
soundscapes on a mere four-track recorder. Two members of Los Lobos
whose adventures into "East L.A. ambient music" produce the most
beautiful music of the year. Four aging art punks who bury some of
their most alluring melodies in their most galvanic guitar noises
to date. A gifted singer-songwriter whose poignant
semi-autobiographical songs and heartbreakingly gorgeous voice
recall the great chanteuses of country music’s long lost past. And
a high energy disco album that won the prestigious Mercury Prize in
England but was completely ignored in the United States.
Even if your tastes are different than mine, don’t these records
sound more immediately intriguing than:
A rich, formerly interesting, corporate rock star emotes blues
songs like he’s auditioning for a Michelob spot. A vanity affair
from three overwrought, ego-addled opera singers, each of whom
tries to out-yell the other. A sententious, un-funky, non-tuneful
pseudo R&B outing that does for black-pop what George Michael’s
Listen Without Prejudice did for white-pop. A pro forma record from
one of rock’s most crucial interpreters and slide guitarists, but
who these days, can’t be bothered. And Tony Bennett.
In the words of Mick Jagger, who with The Stones won the
Lifetime Achievement Award after more than 20 Grammy-less years,
"The joke’s on you."
Unless it happens to be Grammy week, Michael Tatum’s column
appears every Wednesday.