Deep Thoughts on the Grammys

A recent poll suggests that 80 percent of television viewers will not be tuning in to the 2007 Grammy Awards on Sunday. And this makes us…sad. Love them. Hate them. But you musn’t ignore the Grammys. Sure, the award show proves time and again that it’s out of touch with music on a number of levels (see below). Sure they drag on for hours, leaving you practically catatonic and drooling into your Cheetos during Bob Smith’s twelve-minute acceptance speech for Best Pan Flute Album Performed by a Left-Handed North-Umbrian award. Yes, the jokes are lame, the applause is forced and everyone in the audience seems to be counting down the minutes before he or she can start getting wasted/smoke a cigarette/gouge his or her eyes out with a fork. But really, this is not a new phenomenon. Have the Grammys ever been fun to watch? Save a few stellar performances in recent years (Prince with Beyonce, the White Stripes), it’s almost always been a race to the finish-line, a means to an end. And that end is the water cooler, around which we rally to praise or disparage the winners and losers, rehash the evening’s poignant or ridiculous moments and, of course, analyze the year’s latest fashion victims. In the age of Tivo, it’s easy to blow the less exciting portions of the show (that’d be about 80 percent of it), but for the full experience, one must soldier through the whole mind-numbing shebang

taken from
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/category/2007-grammy-awards/