I agree, very cool. I knew we had a lot in common!
U2 just won for best performance by a rock group for Vertigo.
I have to sign off, (sick and need my sleep) so maybe a West Coaster or one of you super Straight Dope addicts can take over.
Goodnight
That whole Tsunami Tribute song was a little… weird. It worked for the most part (although I wish Stevie had actually learned the words), but going from Billie Joe to Tim McGraw to Scott Weiland was kind of surreal. I liked that Ravi Shankar’s daughter got the first “Jai Guru Deva.” That’s pretty fun.
I thought Across The Universe was hideous. Too many singers that seemed ill-preapred.
And before anyone jumps on my case, it’s Sarah Evans, not Evens. And the singer I meant was Gretchen Wilson.
:smack: :smack: :smack:
I dunno…I managed to watch maybe the first five minutes of the opening act but had to turn it off because I kept hearing my parents’ voices whispering to me, “What the hell is that noise?!”
I’m sure there was some great performances later in the show but they lost me very early. It’s a bitch getting old, ain’t it? I’m just glad I’m an old school rocker (and apparently pretty set in my ways). 
I knew that, but due to your long and meritorious service here I thought it would be rather poor form to point it out. 
I’m not saying Ray didn’t deserve to win anything, because that’s just not true - especially considering much of the “competition” (which, imho, mostly sucks)…but still, it’s hard to see this and not think the grammy organization was throwing nominations (and wins, I suppose) at him because he passed away. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve given someone an award that, realistically, is more due to the cumulative audience appreciation factor based on previous works than the one for which the honor is being bestowed (John Wayne in True Grit, anyone?)…of late, George Harrison and Warren Zevon, I think, were recipients of these “pity nominations”.
The opening act had some great songs, but it all just seemed thrown together. A little odd.
I turned off the TV during Queen Latifah’s little thing.
I somehow missed the Freebird thing (greatest. song. ever 
jimpatro , looks like we wont be getting together anytime soon!). Bummer.
Kanye West seemed…on something. He was acting odd and that was really distracting to me.
I thought the best performance that I have seen would have to be Ms Ethridge and Ms Stone. Awesome. Blew me away.
I enjoyed John Mayer’s small-group thing. Damned if I want to see (or hear) another one of those stinkin’ biscuit-tin snare drums, though.
And I was simply overjoyed to see Loretta Lynn win that Grammy with Jack White in tow—and his respectful nature was ridden with class, I thought.
Most of the rest—eh. Too much melisma and the usual theatrics.
Jack White was incredibly charming up on stage.
He really was. (So much so that my sister thought he was her son.)
One thing I’ll say for young (and middle-aged, for that matter) musicians is that they don’t hesitate to show props where due. Whether it’s Stephen Tyler or Eric Clapton talking about B.B. King or Jack White showing respect and deference to Loretta Lynn, these guys know and respect great talent that has paid its dues.
Jack White was great on stage, definitely a class act.
I didn’t care for the Tsunami tribute song either, it just didn’t sound well put together.
It was incredibly funny when Stevie Wonder pretended to read the envelope for best song, then moved on to using brail.
All in all I thought it was less than satisfying. It would be nice if they stopped trying to hype things up so much by combining acts for every single performance, and instead just let some talented artists do their thing.
I thought one or two seemed ill-prepared (sorry, Stevie), but I don’t think the rest of them could have done any better than they were doing. It was just a weird combination of voices, and not all the voices were necessarily appropriate for the song in the first place. Rather than try to figure out who might sound good together or who would be more appropriate for the song, they just grabbed people with a lot of noms and/or previous Grammy wins and shoved them together. It probably couldn’t have worked any better than it did. And it probably could have been worse.
Basically, I’m just glad Slash didn’t shoehorn in a massive guitar solo. That would have sucked.
The Ray stuff - it was pretty obvious he was going to be one of the big winners, because the Grammys like their posthumous awards. On the other hand, it is Ray Charles we’re talking about. He’s a legend for a reason, and it’s hard to begrudge him the awards. I was more annoyed that U2 won for “Vertigo,” considering that their competition included Elvis Costello, Franz Ferdinand, and Green Day. Heck, I even liked the Killers better.
I missed the first half hour, then turned it on for a while.
JLo and Marc, he has an incredible expressive voice, her not so much. Can she not sing without making some production out of it? Maybe they thought that those of us who don’t speak Spanish would need a little show to follow since we didn’t understand the lyrics but the whole scene was just distracting and looked like JLO just trying to show off her pretty dress to prove to the world that she can dress nice without showing off all the goods.
The Southern Rock tribute might have been more enjoyable if they left the Country singers out of it and had more of the “old guys” singing. Although Keith Urban seemed to be better able to actually rock than his country co-horts.
Queen Latifah almost put me to sleep. I like some jazz but those songs that sound like someone just rambling on and on with no actual melody or chorus bug me. If it did have an actual melody or chorus I guess I missed it because I was half asleep by then.
They totally lost me at the Gospel and Rap thing. Talk about antithetical! And not in a good way. Then again I may be biased, I can enjoy some good gospel singing but I hate rap with the burning passion of 1000 suns. I turned it off around the rappers second burst of rapping and I went to bed because I was still drowsy from Latifah’s song.
And I am annoyed because I was so tired from a 10 hour work day that I didn’t realize Desperate Housewives was on opposite this and wasn’t being preempted by it and so missed DH. :mad:
Alycia Keys’ incredible voice actually made me cry. Holy cow, that girl sure can sing.
It was a repeat so you didn’t miss much.
J-Lo was awful. I mean really bad. If her duet with Marc Anthony did anything, it showed everyone how weak her voice really is.
Congrats to Howard Shore for winning 2 Grammys.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20050214/ca_pr_on_en/music_grammys_4
I knew there ware a lot of categories, but I just read on the official site that there are 105 :eek:
Soon to include “best sea chanty performed by a mixed gender group with a prime number of singers”
Brian
Nu uh. It was new.
It was new - and great! I bet they re-run it on Sat night though – they sometimes do that.
I thought J Lo and Marc Anthony were so bad it hurt to watch it.
I thought the highlights were, in this order:
- Dicky Betts,
- Seeing how drunk Adam Sandler seemed,
- Alisha Keys performance (amazing)
- Melissa Etheridge and Joss Stone singing that Janis Joplin song - effing amazing!
I hope they rerun it, I seem to have a mental block with Desperate Housewives show times lately.
So much with the hijack, back to the Grammy’s:
2) Adam Sandler, he always seems drunk to me and not even a funny drunk but an annoying drunk. Nelly was more amusing than he was and Nelly is not a comedian by trade. I thought Nelly wanted to slap him, now that would have been funny.