The Smiley Smile Message Board

Is there any footage of Brian winning the grammy? or was it not broadcasted?

Probably wasn't broadcast... I don't remember ever seeing someone winning "Best Instrumental" on TV.

I guess it would be kind of counter-intuitive to give a speech after winning Best Instrumental.

I always thought that Grammy was an insult. Only more proof of how backwards that organization is.

In what way an insult?  I agree that the institution is bass ackwards!

I think it can be construed as an insult that the leader of rock's greatest vocal group...and the greatest vocal arranger of the rock era... is given his first and only Grammy for an instrumental. Sh*t like that has gotta mess with Brian's mind.

And everyone else's mind as well. :3d

The fact that such a weird track is the one that got the Grammy is really kind of miraculous if you think about it. It's probably the least commercial track on there, and yet the commercially-minded Grammys put out for this one.

I wish it had been broadcast--as long as the studio orchestra would have played a cheesy show-biz arrangement of it as Brian walked up to collect.

It ranks right up there with the GV grammy loss to Winchester Cathedral....

Adding to the weirdness: Brian and his band sing on the track that won the instrumental Grammy ...

My feeling is they gave it to him much in the same way they give someone an honorary Oscar.

But wouldn't Brian and/or his organisation have been the ones that entered the tune for a Grammy?

Good one! :lol

I think Jeff Beck has a subscription to that award. He wins every year.


It's a weird category , is Mrs. O'Leary's Cow really rock?..... and I bet the overall instrumental award is more prestigious but a grammy is always a grammy.

Just remember this...the year prior to Brian getting that Grammy, the best rock instrumental winner was none other than Linkin Park (Don`t ask me how I know this). Either the Grammy people got their sh*t together in `05, or they`re just really inconsistent from year to year.

Brian looked really happy holding his award

I believe Brian was nominated for best vocal album (or something similar) but lost to Ray Charles, because the latter just died shortly before the Grammies. His "Genius meets company" was a nice album but far from being great and you could see how that whole stuff works by looking at how many Grammies that one won.

You cannot beat the sympathy, pathos, or recent death factor in awards like this. You simply can't top the emotions, or in some cases the politics (internal and external), no matter how deserving of the award the artist or creation may be. This is why I rarely if ever actually watch these phony love-fests, but I do consider and use as historical reference the results. I admit there is my contradiction, and I would have watched an awards show for the first time in many years if Eddie Murphy had actually hosted this year. Alas, the inner workings of it all prevented that from happening.

Do I think Brian's Grammy was in some way an "insult"? I can't see the connection, so absolutely not. I feel he did have the most innovative instrumental song of that year, and remember if we remove our fan goggles for a minute, most of the general public had never heard "Fire" until BWPS, and the reaction there was probably similar to when the hard-core fans first heard it on a bootleg in the 80's or whenever. So I think the Grammy folks got this right, there was no better instrumental release than "Fire" that year. Unless we think Yanni, Kenny G, or John Tesh got robbed of a deserved prize... ;D

The insult has nothing to do with what he got. Its about what he didn't get. Brian should have a few Grammys for songs with vocals. He's pretty good at those.

Of course I agree, but at the same time I was reacting to this original statement: "I always thought that Grammy was an insult. Only more proof of how backwards that organization is." It's one thing to say that something which should have taken place but didn't for various reasons is an insult, it's another thing to put the negativity onto an event that actually did happen, like Brian actually getting a Grammy award to put on his mantle, and suggest it's an insult in light of what could have been done decades ago. He had an incredible song released that year in "Fire", he received an award for it, good for him; What "should" have happened can be separated from what did happen in that issue, otherwise everyone up for an award can start whining publicly over Grammy and MTV losses like Kanye West.

This is why I put little or no stock in the validity of such awards, especially given the list of recent Grammy recipients in certain categories who have no business at all winning such things. Or how about those categories where PDQ Bach and Jimmy Sturr, as good as they may be at their craft, were given the award in their category year after year after year almost as an afterthought. Is or was PDQ Bach really that fucking great and funny of a classical satire act to get a handful of "Best Comedy" awards? Was Jimmy Sturr the best Polka act to warrant almost 20 Grammy awards in his category? Who knows.  Don't get me going on spoken word...But I do consider the award results for historical reasons, things like Geoff Emerick winning engineering Grammys for Sgt. Pepper when he was 22, they are important for telling the story. Again, that's my own contradiction and/or hypocrisy about these awards.

The Grammys are simply stupid. Elton John's first was shared for That's What Friends are For in 1987! Now, I know that opinions on Elton differ, but surely some of those 70s classics would have won something, right? Nope. Not a single thing.

Seconding what guitarfool says, the Grammys have always been out of step like that.  In the mid-sixties, when the Beatles were sweeping everything, the record of the year was Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass's "What Now My Love."  Now I like Herb Alpert, but that was just ridonculus.

I think the Grammy for What Now My Love was basically the Grammys capitalizing on the huge media boom around Herb Alpert at the time; remember, in 1966 he had five albums in the top 20 on the Billboard charts, and four of them (S.R.O., What Now My Love, Going Places, and Whipped Cream & Other Delights) were top 10. He also won Record of the Year in 1965 for his cover of A Taste Of Honey.

If you want to talk about a big Grammy error, look no further than Elvis Presley. Not that How Great Thou Art and He Touched Me aren't excellent albums (they're two of his best), but to award the guy only for his gospel work is wrong. From Elvis In Memphis and Elvis Country could easily have won a few awards, if only for the engineering alone.

I agree.  I'm no fan of the Grammys, but when he won it, my immediate thought was it was a way for them to say "Brian, even your craziest song deserves a Grammy"

There's a lot of legend around that song and it's mental effect on Brian; I thought it was pretty classy that they did that for him.  

(http://media.santabanta.com/gal/event/grammy/23.jpg)

(http://cbskits.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/522015902-385x261.jpg?w=385)

I remember around the time on his website Brian was posting (or Melinda as Brian) from time to time, and the next day or whatever after the Grammys he was posting a lot of schoolgirl giggling like "We Won'! We actually Won! Can You Believe It? ? ? ? !!!!"

So I think it meant a lot to him.  

Well, the engineering was pretty standard and although it's one of my favorite records of his later years, He Touched Me really is quite weak. But I agree about his better albums really deserving more Grammies. From Elvis In Memphis not only is one of the strongest albums of '69 it also has vocal performances of single songs like "Long black limousine" "After loving you" "Gentle on my mind" that just put a shadow on other songs of that time. Or "I really don't want to know" from Elvis Country, which still is a milestone vocally and in intensity. In fact, just as strange that Brian hasn't gotten any recognition from the Grammies for his vocal work, is the fact that Presley never got a Grammy for a vocal performance (I'm not sure if his Grammy for the '74 How Great Thou Art performance was for vocal).

I will say that A Taste Of Honey is an all-time classic instrumental, a great record and a great sounding record. So if Alpert won that year, a case could be made he deserved it - that record is a stone-cold classic. Some of his others which won and were nominated...perhaps not.

And he was a superstar at that time, he was even given hosting duties on shows like Hollywood Palace and his own TV specials, so the Grammys were going with a popular choice that several age groups enjoyed, I agree.

I don't understand why the grammys would pander to people like oh... ANY of the modern acts that make music just because they're popular, but at the time didn't pander to Elvis or the Beach Boys who were both hugely popular.  Then they pander to Herb Alpert. 

I have no problem with Herb Alpert winning, because I can see that not only is his music popular, but it's also very good... how come they didn't see that with Elvis or the Beach Boys?

Sorry, but...

'Inner workings'?! Brett Ratner was being a colossal skull of Dick Reising, and Eddie Murphy hasn't been funny in about 30 years and insists on impregnating Spice Girls.

oh hell, we've gone OT. Er....

Ahem, yeah, the foremost vocal arranger of the late twentieth century getting an instrumental grammy! That sucks!

Fantastic wordfiltering there, too - If I ever meet the moderator who put that in, they're getting a beer  :lol

Eddie Murphy was on Jimmy Fallon's show a few weeks ago where he confirmed he would host the awards, and in that interview he was funny, insightful, and clocky enough to make it seem like we were seeing the Eddie Murphy who was probably most responsible for carrying SNL on his shoulders and saving it during a bad time.

My friends and I used to do the skits and voices from his stand up comedy albums and crack each other up, have you heard those albums? Are comedy albums even made in 2011, and are they even funny? Bottom line, Eddie in his prime was funny and innovative, something guys who do commentary on politics and current affairs couldn't touch or don't understand. Or guys who rely so much on a schtick or a character that they can't break it to be a normal person in public every now and then.

frig Ratner, would his comments have ruined the dignity of the awards if he stayed on? I doubt it. Eddie would have been unpredictable AND funny, it's something that has nothing to do with Spice Girls and something the awards don't understand when the writing teams get together to create the supposed comedy.

OT. :)

Just happened to think of how many times Brian Wilson and/or The Beach Boys have been tagged with the "hasn't been good in XX years" line, and how much good music we would not have in 2011 if they had quit instead of moving forward. For all the horrid "comebacks" in pop culture, there are a few diamonds in the rough. I think BWPS is one of those. :) But before Brian's comeback tour in the late 90's, I remember hearing the "he hasn't really done anything for 30 years" line leveled at him, too. Should Brian have quit then because his best work was three decades in the past?

I think Eddie Murphy has the talent to be funny anytime he wants to be.  He just hasn't chosen to be much in the last 20 years (30 is a bit harsh).  I saw previews for his lastest movie and to me, it looked like the old Eddie Murphy.  I haven't seen it, though.

BTW, what's wrong with impregnating Spice Girls?  Haters gotta hate. 

Back On Topic, and wrapping this up:

Let's not confuse things.  Herb Alpert's "A Taste of Honey" deserved all it got the year it won.  It broke everywhere, the oldsters liked it, the Hip Kidds liked it, even top-forty WABC had to play it.  A lot.
 
And I do like "What Now My Love."  My point was: by that time, the Beatles had flattened everything else in their path, and who did the record of the year and other Grammys go to?  Herb Alpert.  Yeah he was big.  But the Grammys were out of step, which I believe is what the OP was talking about with Brian getting a "best instrumental" as his first Grammy after being otherwise snubbed for 40 years. (as in wins, not nominations).

Regarding past (and possibly current) habits of the Grammies, there's something you need to realize to understand some of it...if I'm not mistaken, the Grammy Awards tend to favor music that your parents wouldn't be scared of. Also, IINM, "Sing Along With Mitch" Miller was involved in the founding of said awards. Put the two together, and the safer the mush, the more likely it is to win a Grammy.

That explains why the trippy, weird "Good Vibrations" lost to the adult-friendly, Murry-pleasing schmaltz of "Winchester Cathedral" -- which, btw, spent more time at #1 than "Good Vibrations" did. And why "Michelle" won Song of the Year in 1966 despite it not being a single. And why The Who never won a Grammy. (Too loud!)

It doesn't explain just plain STUPIDITY, though, like how Fountains of Wayne won Best New Artist, oh...six years after they had their first hits.