The 2007 Grammy Awards: Reflections

(Simu-post)
Every year I make it a habit to do two things: first, watch the live Grammy broadcast to pick up on new talent. Then, next morning, I check the complete winners list to see who the Academy honors and who they miss. It's a good way for an old man (who just turned off a Derek and the Dominoes recording to write this) to try and keep up with what's happening now in popular music. Here are a few thoughts.

First, the advertising promoting the show made a big fuss about bringing The Police together to play on the broadcast. I'm a big Police fan so I said to myself "great, can't miss that." Well, I wish I had. This is the second time Sting, Stuart, and Andy have pulled this trick and I for one am tired of it. The first time was justifiable: they were being inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. But this time: play "Roxanne", pick up a most certainly huge check, and hit the road -- it is simply unacceptable. These three men are too talented for such antics. Shame on all three of you. If The Police are truly "back", let's here some new music from them.

Two more complaints and I'll get to the nice things I have to say. A three song tribute to The Eagles? The Eagles are not an important band. They are a footnote that for reasons I cannot fathom are apparently still popular. Me, I'm with "The Dude" in the Coen Brothers' film The Big Lebowski: I'll risk getting thrown out of a cab to get the driver to turn off this lame excuse for a country rock band. Dear Academy: you wanna do a country rock tribute, do one to The Flying Burrito Brothers -- Gram Parsons in particular.

Last complaint: Maria Callas was given a well deserved lifetime achievement award. But then Ms. Callas was immediately compared to the next performer, Mary J. Blige. I have nothing to say about Ms. Blige other than she's no Maria Callas.

And now my positive remarks. The staying power of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, their humility in accepting the Grammy for Rock Album of the Year, and their suprisingly understated performance were proof that hard rock is alive and well.

Other random highlights: the tribute to the late James Brown brought tears to my eyes; though Smokey Robinson is an old man now, his live performance of Tracks of My Tears was close to perfect; Ludacris turned in a fine live performance; John Mayer, winner of the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album, played the the best guitar of the evening and is the singer/songwriter to watch in coming years; also, keep an eye on Corrine Bailey Rae, she gave a mesmerizing live performance.

Now, to three things I really want to highlight about this year's Grammys. Rick Rubin is the man, the producer to have in your corner. If he continues on the path he's on, he will be the Tom Dowd of this era. He received this year's Grammy for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, no doubt in part because he produced the Red Hot Chili Peppers' and Dixie Chicks' albums that stole the evening.

And that brings me to exactly were I want to be: singing the praises of the Dixie Chicks. Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, Emily Robinson & Co. took home 5 Grammys this year, including the three big ones, Album of the Year (producer / artist award), Record of the Year (artist award), and Song of the Year (songwriter / artist award), for their album Taking the Long Way and the potent single Not Ready to Make Nice. As Alanna Nash wrote for Amazon:

Nothing changes folks like babies and war, and since the release of their last album, 2002's Home, the Dixie Chicks have been forever altered by both. If that album showcased the trio as precocious young adults, Taking the Long Way finds them sobered and matured, and in a grown-up state of mind. Produced by the celebrated Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers), who saw the Chicks as "a great rock act making a country album, not a country act making a rock album," their new record impresses both as beautiful sonic tapestry (peppered with myriad Beatlesque hallmarks) and forthright yet vulnerable portrait of three women shaken by the personal and political events of the past few years. As they make clear in the defiant "Not Ready to Make Nice," they still smart over the backlash from their 2003 Bushwhacking. But as they assert on the equally autobiographical "The Long Way Around," they could never "kiss all the asses that they told me to" and just follow others aimlessly--and silently--through life. This means that the Chicks are simultaneously prideful and scornful of celebrity ("Everybody Knows"), and that as new mothers they increasingly treasure the refuge they find in life with their families, out of the spotlight ("Easy Silence," "Lullaby," "Baby Hold On"). The push and pull of both passions drive this record. .... The trio crafted all 14 cuts with the help of such writers as Sheryl Crow, Gary Louris, Mike Campbell, and Keb' Mo', laying out their lives as honestly and intimately as they might in their diaries. .... By the last cut, the R&B/gospel offering "I Hope," the Chicks have chronicled their journey with as much spirituality as spunk, their pain deeply ingrained in their protests.

Whatever side of the political spectrum you espouse, you've got to admire a girl group power trio featuring soaring three part harmony vocals, violin, and banjo that stands their ground in the face of death threats for political commentary.

Finally, let me tip my hat to Academy president Neil Portnoy's three minutes at the microphone. Instead of the usual whining about record industry loss of control over its profits, Mr. Portnoy gave an impassioned plea for art education in our schools. In a time where more and more pressure is placed on school authorities to teach to evaluation tests, his defense of the importance of arts education is both timely and also a profound use of his air time.

In sum, this year's Grammy Awards did it's job for me; I feel much better informed about today's pop music scene now than I did before I watched the show. And I won't be surprised if the phrase "I'm not ready to make nice" becomes part of North America's idiomatic lexicon.

"Money's Tight, Nothin's Free, Won't Somebody Come and Rescue Me; I am Stranded, Out in the Crossfire"

"Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fuckin' live."

-- Calamity Jane

Stevie Ray Vaughn
(sings the title quote like he understands what it means)

Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

(film the Coen Bros. tipped their hat to with O Brother Where Art Thou)

[Written May 2012 through November 2012]

In the place where you are born and grow up, you begin to learn the things all men must know. Although they are the simplest things, it take a man's life to really know them. And if you are to be a writer, the stories you [tell] will be true in proportion to this knowledge of life that you have ... [of] the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, the people, the places, and how the weather was. (Except from narrative introduction in the 1963 film Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (dir., Martin Ritt) (Introduction by E. A. Hotchner -- 1968).

 When, despite your best efforts to keep things in balance, the money runs out and your Seven Spanish Angels are away for an audience with the Man with the thunder, changes simply must come.

My offline financial exile shattered my attempt to keep things fresh over the past five years of writing and editing Gold Coast Bluenote.

Here are of few of the treasures I've enjoyed during my break from the online life:

- Steve Earle Live From Austin TX (DVD of an Austin City Limits gig from 1986, New West Records, 2004) .... [with The Dukes]. Steve and his band turn in a crack performance that made one friend of mine wonder why he "didn't make it big." Whatever the answer to that question, the full Austin City Limits concert is first class -- what Gram Parsons would call "cosmic American music."

- The Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way (CD, 2006). I've written about this album here before, so I'm going to reprint part of one of two GCB posts on the record:

A friend of mine put on an album the other night, one I hadn't written about since it took home five Grammys and tore up the charts in 2006. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way still sounds great these five years later.

As an aging hippie, the idea that a band would stir up so much controversy by exercising an artist's right to criticize American foreign policy from overseas is more than a little disconcerting. I grew up at the height of the era where protest music and musicians speaking their minds were badges of honor. But judging on the first decade of this century, a band now puts its future on the line by stepping out of line. As I think about it, I guess its always been risky to oppose those in authority.

The Dixie Chicks are still thriving with a smaller fan base, having lost many of their more conservative, mainstream country fans. But they are still going strong, and their cathartic album Taking the Long Way stands as one of the decade's most important protest records.

- Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie and George C. Scott in The Hustler (DVD, 1961; dir. Robert Rossen). You will find a full post on this film here.

- Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

- White Shadow by Ace Atkins (historical novel, 2006). It's a vast over-simplification to say that White Shadow is Tampa, Florida's The Godfather. This noir novel is drenched in local color and the Mafia-drenched world of Tampa and Havana, Cuba in the mid-1950s. 

I was born in '57. Nobody talks anymore about the history this book is filled with, from the Latin and Sicilian mobsters who ran the city's underworld to the task faced by honest Tampa cops of trying to chip away at a granite mountain of corruption and decadence. Atkins takes the Pulitzer Prize nominated research on an unsolved mob murder in the fifties and spins an accurate, engaging tale of the darker side of life in my hometown. It's one of the finest historical novels I've found since discovering Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Deadwood: The Complete Series (DVD set, copyright 2004, 2006, 2007; created by David Milch)

 As reader's of Gold Coast Bluenote would expect, there was a good deal of rock 'n' roll that matters on the home jukebox while I was offline. Let me mention a few of these classics that were in heavy rotation:

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Derek and the Dominoes (1970; produced by Tom Dowd)

Exile on Main St, The Rolling Stones (1972, produced by Jimmy Miller)

The Chess Box: Chuck Berry, (3 DVD compilation, 1988)

The Bootleg Series, Vol. IV, The Royal Albert Hall Concert, Bob Dylan (the acoustic side, 1966). Especially Dylan's live version of, arguably, one of the greatest songs ever written, Visions of Johanna.

 If these albums, DVDs, or books are gathering dust in your collection or you haven't acquired the more recently released archival material, well, double clutch your mojo back into gear and let the good times roll. A little time offline did me a world of good. To quote Chuck Berry:

"C'est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell."

The Dixie Chicks: Still "Not Ready To Make Nice"

A friend of mine put on an album the other night, one I hadn't written about since it took home five Grammys and tore up the charts in 2006. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way still sounds great these five years later. (Judge for yourself with the video above; as always, my apologies for the ad across the bottom.)

As an aging hippie, the idea that a band would stir up so much controversy by exercising an artist's right to criticize American foreign policy from overseas is more than a little disconcerting. I grew up at the height of the era where protest music and musicians speaking their minds were badges of honor. But judging on the first decade of this century, a band now puts its future on the line by stepping out of line. As I think about it, I guess its always been risky to oppose those in authority.

The Dixie Chicks are still thriving with a smaller fan base, having lost many of their more conservative, mainstream country fans. But they are still going strong, and their cathartic album Taking the Long Way stands as one of the decade's most important protest records.