It's Only a Show

Rock and roll is getting a little more love from the National Academy Recording Arts and Sciences  (NARAS) this year - but not much more. Beck got a nomination for Album Of the Year for Morning Phase, and the alt-rock band Haim has a Best New Artist nomination.  And British blue-eyed soul singer Sam Smith  - very much a male Adele, a favorite of traditionalist pop fans who hate contemporary popular music - has nominations for Album Of the Year, Record Of the Year, and Best New Artist.  That said, all of the major nominations are still dominated by Beyoncé, Pharell Williams (I got sick of "Happy" after having only heard it twice!) and their ilk.  Plus Meghan Trainor's inexplicable song about posteriors ("All About That Bass").  If rock didn't have its own category at the Grammys (the Best Rock Performance nominees are "Gimme Something Good" by Ryan Adams, "Do I Wanna Know?" by the Arctic Monkeys, "Blue Moon" by Beck, "Fever" by the Black Keys, and "Lazaretto" by Jack White), rock records wouldn't be up for much of anything.  The fact that so few of them are up for the mainstream awards shows how much rock has been relegated to the background.  (Katy Perry - not a rocker in the traditional sense by any means - has been selected to play in the Super Bowl halftime show, in February. Even a macho domain like the Super Bowl is no place for macho electric-guitar groups anymore.)  

Ideally, the Grammys, unlike, say, the People's Choice Awards, are supposed to be above the whims of popular taste and receptive to culturally important musical trends, but NARAS hasn't been good at reconciling those two missions.  NARAS tried to be hip by honoring Adele even as music critics noted her antiquated musical values, and the academy's attempt to be "with it" has sometimes inspired guffaws (Toto IV as Album Of the Year?  Milli Vanilli as Best New Artist?)  But showmanship has replaced musical values at the Grammys, and not just with the performers who get nominated.  Now that enough time has passed, I feel free to comment on a peculiar act at the 2014 Grammys this past January.  For reasons known only to themselves, the award show producers decided it would be a really cool idea to celebrate love and coupling by having 32 couples, both straight and gay, get married together on live television and having noted rapper, actress, and daytime talk show host Dana Owens (she's known by a royal title and an Arabic name to most of you, but I will not refer to her as such on this blog, having decided not to humor hip-hop stars by referring to their stage names) officiate.  Oh yeah, Madonna was enlisted as a witness.

I was totally against this, because I thought it was inappropriate and tasteless to have a mass wedding on what was supposed to be an awards show honoring music.  At best, one had nothing to do with the other.  At worst, it cheapened the idea of weddings, which are supposed to be solemn, dignified  affairs, involving one couple at a time - and, unless they are royal weddings, private affairs that shouldn't be broadcast on television.  If I had a fiancée, and she suggested we get married on live nationwide television with 31 other couples, with my least favorite singer as a guest and a self-centered rapper as the officiator, I'd break the engagement.

So why didn't I say so earlier?  Because Rush Limbaugh - no doubt incensed at the Grammys' sanctification of gay marriages - blasted the ceremony as an insult to the institution of marriage.  Limbaugh has sustained three divorces and is on his fourth wife.  (Talk about being inappropriate!)  If I had said something at the time, I would have sounded like another clueless, mean-spirited white guy who doesn't get it, like Limbaugh is.  Indeed, having Owens officiate the mass ceremony with Madge (among other entertainers) present seemed to say to music fans nauseated by hip-hop and hit pop, "Look out, rock and rollers - we aren't going anywhere.  You are!"  

I understand that this mass wedding segment was NARAS' idea of trying to promote love and tolerance. Fine.  But, again, I still thought it was inappropriate to marry 32 couples on live television in the middle of an awards show  (and by the way, I support marriage equality, so that had nothing to do with it).  That's not the time and place to have a wedding ceremony, and it's actually sort of vulgar  to have so many couples get married at once - especially by an entertainer who got to officiate this wedding ceremony by simply filling out paperwork for an officiant's license in California.  I used to think you needed to be a cleric or a justice of the peace to marry people . . . silly me, thinking that there are standards for wedding ceremonies  - especially in California.

Nevertheless, this segment of the 2014 Grammys was so popular, it even overshadowed the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in America, which included a reunion of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.  I expect more tastelessness of this sort in the 2015 Grammy ceremony this coming February.  Because honoring art is no longer what these awards shows are all about.  Not only are they more or more self-congratulatory exercises by the entertainment industry, but they are celebrations of the worst of American popular culture . . . packaged for television.

(By the way, I won't do any more than mention the cancellation of Owens' daytime talk show . . . except to say that I don't know why anyone thought giving her a daytime talk show a second time would work out when her first daytime talk show - which aired from 1999 to 2001 - wasn't very successful either.)