!La Musica por la Gente!

Or something like that.

I caught the Grammy show tonight. Most of it was apolitical which was nice. Then the worm who is the head Grammer cracker had to lobby for legislation and do his version of the "Yes we can" speech. Tacky, and transparently self serving. Politics permeates the music world even down to rinky dink blues competitions. Adding to it is not a commendable thing. Too bad people have to do that.

Many of the acts and artists were exceptionally good. Justin Timberlake is better than I realized. That boy rocked. I was surprised to see Robert Plant. I don't keep up with these things. Zeppelin goes country, and it doesn't sound bad. Of course teaming up with Alison Krause helps the effort considerably. They rock.

Radiohead was particularly inspiring, performing with the USC (I think) marching band, but the USC guys stayed stationary. It was an inspired thing. All those drums, how can that be wrong?

I've caught bits and pieces in the past and liked it this year more than any other time since Lionel Richie won about a gazillion awards. He did win, didn't he? Maybe he just played. It would be inconceivable if he didn't win maybe five or ten of those things. That was a long time ago.

McCartney is always a favorite of mine. Just showing up is good enough but he did OK performing.

The result of it was that it made me want to play. I wish the people who tried to squeeze politics into it would have put a sock in it and just stuck to the music. Can't there be an entertainment awards thing in which people don't talk about the president or Washington DC? It's sick. The sickest part is that some of those people are simply pushing something that gives them an edge in some way, at taxpayer expense. And being a great performer does not a political genius make. Often those people are not really capable of intelligent critical thought on matters unrelated to their particular talent.

In my opinion, Stevie Wonder and Justin Timberlake were the winners of my imaginary battle of the Grammy performers, and almost all the others were pretty good.