50th Annual Grammys: Greats and Goofs

This year's Grammy show was 3½ hours long, including over 40 commercials, and showed live presentations of 9 major awards or 1 every 13 minutes. In between were lifetime achievement awards, performances and special features.

After an intro by Alicia Keyes, Carrie Underwood performed "Before He Cheats" backed up by some rejects from bring the noise or stomp or something. Is spite of this she still sounded good and the music and lyrics (remember those) stood up to the awkward treatment. The Grammys still try to "Hollywood Up" songs that they shouldn't and this was one of them.

Underwood pulled it off anyway and won the best country female Grammy for it as well.

The artist still known as Prince awarded Alicia Keyes best R&B female vocalist of the year in good order.

A guy named Jimmy Jam came out with his old semi-funk band; big baggy pants and a "you can't touch this" look going on and did their bit which stayed pretty lame, even with best Rap collaborator winner Rihanna coming out to join them.

Cirque Du Soleil did a Beatles retrospective, and then won an award for it. Surviving Beatle Ringo Starr helped with the soundtrack of "Love". No doubt Harrison and Lennon are rolling over in their graves. It was disconcerting to watch some chick swing from a trapeze to Beatles music with Ringo and Yoko Ono in the audience.

The Foo Fighters perform outside and win Best Rock album inside a little later. Their outside performance rocks and the amateur winner Anne Marie Calhoun plays violin in the backup string section on stage with them.

Kanye West performed and won best a Rap Album Grammy as well as two others. He came off as arrogant and egotistic in his acceptance speech, which prompted the best quote of the night a little later from Vince Gill.

When Vince came on stage to pick up his Grammy for best country Album, one of the presenters was Ringo Starr. When Ringo handed Vince the award, Vince smiled in wonder, turned to the audience and said "I just got an award given to me by a Beatle." The crowd laughed with him at this special thing, he looked back at the crowd and with a grin said "Have you had that happen yet, Kanye?" The crowd roars, the camera goes close-up on Kanye and he looks chagrined. It was beautiful.

In sharp comparison and contrast to Kanye's self-involved remarks, Vince stated that it took 1 year and a hundred musicians to make his winning album, concluding with his final quote; "Music is the real place where democracy lives, every note is equal." For me this was the high point of the show as far as speeches.

Both Record of the Year and Song of the Year Grammys went to Amy Winehouse, who performed from London due to her inability to get a visa to get into the U.S. She had a quote as well after winning Record of the Year. She thanked her Mum who stood beside her and then said "to my Blake, my Blake incarcerated."
By far and away the most deserved award was Album of the Year to Herbie Hancock. Herbie, an unselfish collaborator, thanked the Grammy's for the award and noted it had been 43 years since a Jazz artist won it. He and Joni Mitchell collaborated on his winning album, "the Joni letters."

OK, let's talk performances..........

Kanye's West's first song pretty good, the one to his mom not so much.

Fergie and John Legend, OK but not inspiring.

Beyonce and Tina Turner, Ouch!

Amy Winehouse from London, If you like her quirky style she was great.

Brad Paisley- "Ticks" lame but Brad's playing is always good

Fiest- Ok, in a kinda seen that a bunch before way

Alicia Keyes and John Mayer -cooked in the end, looked weird together

Herbie Hancock and Chinese Guy -Rhapsody in Blue - if you like classic jazz you loved this

John Fogarty with Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis-only if you're taping it for a rest home. While Fogarty still rocks it's just too old and lame.

Josh Groben and Andre Bocelli sang a tribute to Pavarotti and others who passed on this year. Pretty good if you're into opera.

During the CEOs presentation they did a piece on people lost from the industry this last year. Among those were; Ike Turner, Boots Randolph, Robert Goulet, Don Ho, Beverly Sills, and Dan Fogelberg.

Outside of the earlier mentioned Foo Fighters, the only other performances that really rocked this year were the Gospel singers. Aretha Franklin and BBWynans headlined a 5 minute gig featuring a gospel choir, a brass band and several other gospel singers. These folks got after it.

Well, I've probably forgotten something, sorry, like I said the show was 3 and ½ hours long. Even with notes it's hard to remember it all. Think I hit the highlights for you though.