Daft, I Call It

Okay, I thought I wan't going to say anything more about last week's Grammy Awards, but of course I have to acknowledge that Daft Punk, a pair of electronic musicians from France who dress like Boba Fett and don't talk in public, won the Album of the Year award for their Random Access Memories LP.  While I have not heard anything from this album apart from "Get Lucky," the hit song featuring Pharrell Williams (which sounded like just another dance-pop record to me), I'm not pleased that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences would shower such acclaim on a record with tracks that require a computer programming certificate to perform them on stage, crafted by a duo with a Kiss-like penchant for keeping their identities hidden.  These frogs should have called themselves "Bisou."

Oh, by the way, here's Daft Punk unmasked:

I may have to rethink some of the things I've recently said about popular music.  In bringing up Phoenix, another French act - an alt-rock band that records in English - I expressed hope that the attention they got showed that rock fans were open to new ideas from unexpected places.  (I never expected Phoenix to be a candidate for "new Beatles" status; I still say that the next band that revives rock and roll like the Beatles did, if there is such a band, will have to come from a country where English is the first language.)  What I didn't get, of course, is that I was paying attention to the wrong frogs - it was Daft Punk that was more in tune with the musical tastes of American youth.  As for the next band to revive rock and roll, I wonder if such a band materializing is even possible anymore.  Because the Grammys ratified a disturbing trend that's been in place ever since electro-pop and hip-hop first manifested themselves in the eighties.  Every time alternative rock or folk-rock achieves some commercial success and makes it look like rock is coming back, what actually happens is that such successes turn out to be aberrations that don't represent mainstream tastes.  As for Phoenix . . . well, maybe they can get another record in a Cadillac commercial.  Since The Weather Channel stopped playing alt-rock over its local forecasts, that's the only way you can hear such bands on TV now.

And I really think rock fans ought to wake up, smell the coffee, and face what passes for the music these days.  No popular music genre lasts forever. Even Sinatra kept going over the world he knew over and over . . . when the world he knew was, well, over.