Rick Roberts (from his Facebook page)
Rick Roberts on Facebook: I’ve always been lukewarm on awards shows, and I can’t remember the last time I watched the Grammy’s. But we were snowed in tonight, and there were no good movies on, so Mary and I tuned in.
I’ve known for a long time that the style of music my friends and I played all those years ago is as alien to the majority of the music fans of today as the music of the big band era was to us in our own youth. It was okay, but it didn’t move us.
So the fact that tonight’s music was, shall we say, ‘different’ was no surprise.
But what did surprise me was that in tonight’s show, the music was pretty much secondary to the other aspects of the artist’s performances.
One of the only saving graces of the Grammy’s is the live performance of some top artists. Most of tonight’s were a bit puzzling, and hopefully, not really the cream of the crop, artistic direction wise. Too many moving parts.
Maybe it would be too harsh to use the old axiom of ‘the talent of the performer can be judged in direct reverse proportion to the number of dancers’, but even (especially) that was boringly one dimensional.
From the performers themselves, deemed to be the best and the brightest, I felt like I got to see a couple of musical performances (from the ‘old fogeys’ like Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars) sandwiched between a 21st century take on the Follies Bergere.
I’m not against cleavage, but tonight was almost comical (In the audience, too, but that’s old news). And very creative. There were outfits that showed amazingly ample portions of the front side, and some were front and side too, but there were also a couple that hid the front, but showed you the sides and the bottom. Meanwhile, the whole gathering gave a new meaning to the reality of the push up bra.
I also noticed that a lot of the female performers seemed to have a thing for disposable armor.
And now I realize Miley Cyrus is a prude. All she ever did on stage was a little twerking.
Tonight, there were several artists whose dancers, and they also, were starting with twerking and working down from there. Maybe I’m an old fogey too, but when (it was either Cardi B or Megan Thee Stallion) stood with her posterior to the camera and showed she could twitch her gluteus maximus at an impressively high rate of speed, I was not artistically moved.
I admit, I kind of miss the days when the most important part of a performance was the music.
The era of music I got to be part of was not the norm anyway. In the early days, what became rock music was not known for its poetic lyrics nor its musical sophistication. The show was a big part of things. (See: Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Little Richard)
Then came the merging of rock with country music, and folk music, both story oriented genres.
Suddenly the charts were filled with songs from artists more interested in sounding good than putting on some kind of multimedia event. Some of the songs even had (oh, no) content!
So you got sell out performances from people like The Band and the Byrds, or Bob Dylan, with no dancers and no pyrotechnics.
Then came even more music oriented concerts with people whose lyrics were what most mattered. James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Eagles, Jackson Browne, etc.
On the musical end it went from Good Golly, Miss Molly and Peggy Sue to ELO, Yes, and Genesis. Then it started to regress. Okay, maybe it was starting to get a little too sophisticated, but I had hoped for a happy medium.
A large part of the musical audience is now allegedly devoted to a single chord, spoken word style of “music.” But it’s got a great beat; you can dance to it.
On that front, I will admit that when rap first became a thing, I defended it as being equivalent to what Dylan wrote about. He was providing a running account of what many young people were feeling. But the music itself took a little getting used to.
Rap was saying a lot about the inner city experience.
Then it changed to gansta rap, and lost any social significance it had.
The last artist, Lil’ Baby, I think (there were several artists I wasn’t familiar with), did do a socially themed piece but, once again, there was more emphasis on the visuals than anything.
Okay. That’s all. Next time I’ll tell you how far I had to walk to school when I was a boy.
Jeffrey Schneider: Actually there is alot of really good music out there-Laura Marling Dawes Blitzen Trapper Holly Humberstone Muse Phoenix etc. But these shows focus alot on what statistically is selling the most
Rick: totally agree. That’s why I mentioned that these were hopefully NOT the cream of the crop. But we all know that the Grammy’s only show a very commercial slice of the music that’s out there, and not often the best stuff.
https://www.facebook.com/RickRobertssftharrison
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Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’ Grammys Performance Drew FCC Complaints
By Tim Baysinger, The Wrap | Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s were burning up the FCC’s phone lines during Sunday’s Grammys, as the regulatory body received multiple consumer complaints regarding the two’s performance of their hit song “WAP.”
“We can confirm that the FCC did receive consumer complaints regarding the Grammys performance,” an FCC spokesperson told TheWrap. While the spokesperson did not say how many complaints the commission received, it was described as “an average amount for this type of event.”
TheWrap followed up by asking if it was more than last year or other recent Grammys performances, but have yet to hear back.
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If its any consolation for worried parents, it doesn’t appear that many people watched the Grammys.
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Read the whole story here:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cardi-b-megan-thee-stallion-000720132.html