Whither American Music-The Grammies

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Last night, I decided it was time to spend some quality time with the missus, so I dragged myself away from my computer and book to watch most of the Grammies. All I can say is that this has to be the 51st annual commemoration of the decline of American music. Switch this blog off right now if you want because what follows is a review of the Grammies from one who didn't know who most of the performers were nor virtually any the songs.

The whole shebang started off with the latest song by U-2, a group I think are really good. Not this song through. Don't ask me what the name of the song was. I don't want to know.

One positive feature of the show was the fact that they brought back a lot of the older singers. There was Muddy Waters, Stevie Wonder, the last surviving member of the Four Tops, Neil Diamond and a few others. Now for the bad news. As much as I liked Neil Diamond in his prime-it's over. In his song, "Sweet Caroline", he was pretty much resigned to ,"C'mon, everybody now!" I wish Stevie Wonder had sung, "Fingertips", his first hit and, to this day, his best song. I missed Paul McCartney's performance-just as well because I never liked him anyway.

As far as the other appearances were concerned, it got downright embarrassing at times. The presenters were a joke. It was obvious that they had a teleprompter screen as big as the wall they were looking at to read their "flawless" lines. Take Whitney Houston, for example, a poster child for "Just say no." Thank God she didn't have to sing anything. She could barely stand up. Then there was "Mister Duane Johnson", whose real name is "The Rock". He walked out and read a tasteless joke about kissing some woman in the audience-don't ask me who it was-I don't know. After that, he disappeared-probably back to some studio to make another movie whose main plot is him jamming his head through a wall.

As far as the other songs that were performed, let me say right here; the best performance I saw was by Jennifer Hudson. She can sing, and she conducted herself with class, quite unlike the other mopes who pranced around the stage.

Lil Wayne. What can I say about Lil Wayne except that I thought it was Alan Iverson giving one of his "press conferences"? Who the hell is he anyway? And the Jonas Brothers that I have been hearing so much about lately. Three little dopes jumping around the stage and yellin' "yeah, yeah, yeah".

One other thing I noticed besides the fact that nobody had any dress code was that about a third of everybody in the Staples Center was wearing sun glasses. How phony was that? OK, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and the Blind Boys from Alabama had an excuse, but what about the rest? One would have thought the Grammies were being held at Malibu Beach. The only guy in the room dressed appropriately was the head chingon of "The Academy" (don't ask me his name) who gave the standard stump speech and started talking about Barack Obama and "Change" (haven't we gotten over that yet?)

So who won all the Grammies? I have no clue. All I remember is that some guy aptly named Robert Plant won the last award for some song he sang with some good-lookin' babe with a Jerry Lee Lewis-look-a-like on guitar. This guy (Plant)looked like the offspring of a three-way trist between Willie Nelson, Keith Richard and Ozzie Ozborne. Speaking of weird looking dudes, how about those two mopes that came out on stage toward the end? One guy had on one of those old crooked stovepipe hats that made him look like the Big Bad Wolf-with white framed sun-glasses no less.

Oh yes. There was supposed to be performances by some guy and gal named Chris Brown and Rihanna. Seems that they were last-minute cancellations because Brown beat the daylights out of Rihanna (his girlfriend) earlier in the day and wound up being booked into jail. Good thing he didn't win any Grammies. Sheriff-to-the-Stars Lee Baca would have had to accept the award on his behalf.

All I can say is they'd better come up with a slew of new "stars" before next year's Grammies because half of this year's cast will probably be dead by then.