What a train wreck the Grammies were

[Ron]

How do you take an auditorium full of the greatest talents alive on the earth in the field of music, and manage to have about 15 out of 20 performances be god awful?  Watch the 2014 grammies if you didn't see it and take notes.

Why in the hell do they keep insisting on doing this ridiculous duet crap that they do at each Grammies?  They put together folks that sound decent on paper but they just step all over each other and it rarely sounds good at all. 

Whoever mixed the audio of the show mixed all of the microphones so low you could barely hear anybody's vocals.  On a music show.

Then you trot out basically every living legend, and either embarass them or disrespect them. 

So you've got Ringo Starr coerced into playing drums for the Paul Macca show once more, complete with second drummer. 

You've got Willie Nelson trotted out on stage, and then told to sing "Highwayman".... even though Waylon wrote it, and he's dead, and Johnny Cash sang it best, and he's dead.  Then you mix his microphone so low nobody can hear him.

Then you put Kris Kristofferson in the mix, who never in his life has been able to sing worth a sh*t, and have him forget to sing a verse.

Then you have Merle Haggard be a badass like he always is, but don't let him sing anything he wrote (which basically would probably be the best performance of the night)

Then, here, this was great: Get CHICAGO, the entire fucking 15 piece band, to show up, in great shape, sounding amazing, and have some DUMBFUCK like Robin Thicke half-ass all of their lyrics.

Also, don't let them perform a whole song; just 30 seconds of several of them.  Make sure Robin's off key, off lyric, mumbled vocals drown out the microphone of the ORIGINAL LEAD SINGER OF THE BAND WHO SOUNDS AMAZING BUT HASN'T BEEN SEEN ON T.V. FOR 15 YEARS. 

THANK YOU GRAMMIES FOR FUCKING THAT ONE UP FOR ME


Start the show off with a couple talented performers who insist on singing the most ridiculous, pretentious, over bearing sh*t they've written in their entire career... and then mix both of their microphones so that you can't hear anything either one of them are saying as they literally roll around the stage with lights and sh*t bouncing off Beyonce's half naked ass.

Have Metallica come out, but mix their mic so low that you can't hear the vocals while they're playing one of the heaviest, loudeest, biggest clusterfuck songs ever recorded.  If you missed it, it sounded like

BWAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

For about 5 minutes.  Then they hugged the piano player.

Then, Madonna, a fairly average rapper, and about 30 gay couples married each other in the front row.    I'm completely positive that I'm the only person with the balls to say out loud "We don't care.  Most of us aren't gay, typically we don't go to weddings of people we don't know, we kind of just tuned in to hear the music.  The few gay people I do know don't really consider their right to get married on the grammies the most pressing issue affecting their life right now"


----------------------------------------------------------------------

So, through MY eyes, I saw Kacey Musgraves do a good song.  I saw Miranda Lambert and Billy Joe do a good Everly Brothers song.  I saw Carol King be awesome like she always is. 

And that was about it.  They even f***ed up a Beatles reunion. 

Towards the end, a girl referred to John Lennon as "John Legend".  Yoko Ono was standing beside her when this happened.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Disagree on most of that, but as it is a matter of opinion it's no biggie. Agreed on the sound being subpar, though.

 However, I'm personally pleased in that Daft Punk, a group that my own group has been compared to over the past 13 years, won album of the year. Personal vindication right there, and now I'm about to do some recording.

[seltaeb1012002]

The Beatles part seemed rushed and not as great as it could've been. Paul seemed a little tired, and Ringo's drums clearly were mixed out. Knew this about 8 bars into the song when you could see him hit a crash cymbal, but it was nowhere to be heard. That sorta ruined it for me.

Didn't mind the Chicago / Robin Thicke collab, but yeah the original singer sounded pretty amazing for the brief moments he was audible.

Pharrell botched his vocal on Get Lucky - especially the 1st verse. Stevie Wonder took the song to a whole new level on the 2nd verse and killed it, as usual.

[SurfRiderHawaii]

Disagree on most of that, but as it is a matter of opinion it's no biggie. Agreed on the sound being subpar, though.

 However, I'm personally pleased in that Daft Punk, a group that my own group has been compared to over the past 13 years, won album of the year. Personal vindication right there, and now I'm about to do some recording.

Feel the same way Billy. Though Ron has some good points about some of the performances. Problem is when you try to please everybody you don't.

Ron, they were not all gay couples, and the theme was everybody can have Love no matter what your ilk. Maybe that part was a shout out to Putin and Russia's crackdown on gays.

seltaeb1012002 - Yeah, Stevie nailed it! The Daft Punk jam with Stevie Wonder was awesome. He outta use the same production crew as DP for his next record.

Metalica's vocals were mixed way too low. Couldn't really hear Hetfield.

[Ron]

Whatever the message, the performance was pretty "blah" and that's pretty damn shocking seeing as the greatest in about every genre were there.  I've never seen so much talent at the Grammies.... and I don't know if I've ever seen a Grammies with so few good performances.

[KittyKat]

They were mostly bad. I dislike a lot of the artists, though, I must admit. It seems like some of them are famous for being famous instead of having any talent. I'm not sure why the industry shoves them down the public's throat. I don't get Lorde, for example. She's completely average.

That was such a waste of a half Beatles reunion. Play a Beatles song, not a bad Paul song.

[guitarfool2002]

I watched it, had some running Facebook commentary going real-time...basically I agree. How's that for ambiguity? 

Seriously, the highlight for me was Bobby Lamm's lead vocals with Chicago, when he was given the lead vocal. Fuckin' terrific, they played two of my favorite songs *ever* with Bobby Lamm taking lead vocals...even though they were medley-ized, it was great to see Chicago getting some love and respect on that stage.

Now, let's talk Jann Wenner, fucking Jann Wenner and the R&R Hall Of Fame.

If I were running the show, I'd have a reporter with a mic stuck right in Wenner's face after Chicago's performance, wherever he may have been on Earth last night. LL Cool J gave Chicago an introduction worthy of their music, where he said their first album Chicago Transit Authority - a personal favorite - had just been placed in the Grammy Hall Of Fame. As well it should.

Yet Jann Wenner has had a bee in his bonnet over Chicago since the 70's, and for whatever reason refuses to have them considered for the R&R Hall, as if it's entirely his call and as if he is the bellwether of who is deserving enough to be inducted.

They're good enough for Grammy honors, the Grammy HOF, so what's up Jann?

I noticed some other bad points of the show, but they've been mentioned already. "The Beatles" reunion thing was a total bust, I can't believe Ringo agreed to be Paul's sideman like that, and would it have been terrible for Paul to have been on stage playing behind Ringo on "Photograph"? McCartney is a favorite, but man his act can wear thin fast at times.

Oh, and where was Julian? I can't imagine how that guy - a talented musician in his own right - must feel sometimes when the whole thing is played as if Lennon only had one son named Sean, and he's always at these "tributes" while Julian is nowhere to be seen.

The Daft Punk song was the best of the year for me, same with the album, one of the year's best. They deserved what the got last night, and then some. Classic music and production doesn't grow stale, as they proved, and these guys *love* the styles of music they're making going back to their childhoods. I like that.

Stevie Wonder's vocals seemed shaky at times, there I'll say it. It honestly didn't add anything which the original vocals didn't already have, but it was neat to see him. However it didn't make a great song any greater to have him there, i think it was a cool novelty but that's it.

Metallica was out of tune, and as a guitarist who has played and taught the song "One" to numbers of students, I cannot figure out why they detuned their guitars. If it was to compensate for reduced vocal ranges, that could be, but dropping those strings down a half-step made some of their open strings sound flat, and the whole electricity and tension of the "clean" sections of the tune with the guitar arpeggios lost some of their spark. That half-step makes a difference. Producers/performers take note: There is a HUGE textural difference between E minor and Eb Minor, and the "One" performance proved that. It was stripped of the tension which made the original such a jarring song when it was new.

Billy Joe and Miranda had their hearts in the right place, but that weird rhythmic shift they did with the song made it seem like Billy missed a few beats here and there, and it didn't work as well for me. I wish in that case they had simply played the original straight-up as the Everlys had done it, and not tried to "update" it by adding some weird syncopation to modernize it.

I didn't even watch the "Outlaws" segment, on purpose. Made the right call, I see.

Imagine Dragons had a cool song in Radioactive, but all I kept thinking during Kendrick Lamar's rap verses was an overwhelming sense of him trying to steal the show saying "LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!!", and every time they had to bleep his ass, it was a few seconds we could have gotten of something substantial considering the two surviving Beatles were there. Off the soapbox.

Lorde had a cool single, but that performance was too heavy with obvious samples and triggers, I wish she had done it with more of a band feel rather than the ubiquitous Mac-Akai-whatever rig that spits out most of the studio track verbatim and kills the live feel for me. When it's an intimate vocal, it's jarring to hear a pre-recorded Lorde in the mix before she opens her mouth, but I'm old fashioned I guess. She's good, let her sing one live vocal and deliver it. Easy.

I felt bad for Kacey Musgraves at first...whose fucking genius idea was it to have her follow- with no commercial breaks or time-breaks of any kind - the Imagine Dragons/Kendrick Lamar bombast with a basic, old-school county performance featuring acoustic guitar and pedal steel? I thought "oh sh*t, this girl is going to get swallowed up..." because Lamar and the Dragons just went so far over the top as to seem obnoxious...

...But Kasey delivered a highlight of a performance, a good song, and she was there amidst the neon cactus displays and her core band playing like it was her time and like she wanted to be there just singing her song...and I loved it. She won me over, any "oh sh*t" sympathy or dread was wiped away as soon as she started to play and sing.

And Carole King...what can I say? She delivers every time. She has such a commanding style, such a track record, is such a legend at this point...she has a unique ability to make any song she performs sound like a Carole King original. That's incredible. I loved seeing her, she seemed to be enjoying herself a lot, and Sara Barillies even after the performance looked over-the-moon with excitement to be sharing the stage with the woman who literally broke down the walls and paved the way for singer-writers like Sara to do what they do. Awesome.

Whatever I missed, I agree with the previous posts. Oh, and Madonna should stay home. That train already left the station. Well, maybe she could have thanked Nile Rodgers backstage for his work on her early hits and MTV classics in the 80's...

[SMiLE Brian]

I loved it when the BBs did the grammies in 2012 and they seemed like an act from the "age of Magellan" with all the crazy modern music.

[Awesoman]

It was great to see Chicago finally get a little love.  If you think the Beach Boys don't get a whole lot of respect, try being a Chicago fan for a day.  Even if Robin Thicke did his best to sabotage the whole performance, it was still cool.  And Walt, Jimmy and Lee's horn playing were a nice touch on "Blurred Lines". 

Good to see Paul and Ringo, even if Ringo performing "Photograph" seemed a little pointless. 

Didn't realize Pink was an acrobat. 

I won't dispute Daft Punk owning the Grammys; "Get Lucky" is pretty damn catchy. 

I will echo Ron's sentiments that I absolutely detested the "Same Love" performance.  Before the pro-gay polite police jump in, I'm not so much disputing the message of the song as I am the execution of it.  If there are two things I don't like, it's preachiness and pretentiousness, and this whole stunt was beating me over the head with it.  The whole thing was ridiculous -- complete with a peg-legged Madonna, for cryin' out loud!  The whole thing was so over-the-top, I was actually disappointed that the Care Bears and Muppet Babies didn't show up to sing along. 

Kind of sucked that the Grammys cut off the final performance of the night before it was over.  Sure it was running long but let them at least finish the song!

[Mike's Beard]

Who on earth's idea was it to stick a butthole like Robin Thicke on stage with Chicago?

[SMiLE Brian]

I would rather they get Peter Cetera back over that clown.

[Ron]

The Robin Thicke thing was just a travesty, I don't know if I made it clear in my original rant but out of all the nonsense that was the most ridiculous one to me.  Even if we want to act like the guy did a good job (he didn't) it was completely disrespectful to reduce Chicago to his backup band.


If you want to do a duet with Robin Thicke, stick that motherfucker behind a microphone stand or a keyboard like the lead of the band, and lets just have him be an extra member.  Have him sing backup, what the f*** is wrong with having him sing backup?  Does that diminish Robin Thicke's status, or does it pay proper homage to the band by showing he wants to sing with them, not on top of them?  

I'm not a big Chicago fan or a completist or anything, but I love their music, had no idea they were there, and when they said they were going to perform I thought "OH HELL" they're going to be awesome.  Then instead of getting a performance of one of their fantastic songs, we get a medly (which they still did good) and Robin changing everything around to how he wants to sing it, with the microphone turned down so he had to scream before you heard whatever he was mumbling.  

So on one hand you've got a band like Chicago, a large band full of talent, who made a career out of knowing how to work a song; they nuance and contrast the brilliance of their horn section, or break it down to just a piano line with the drums, and work around the contrast between the two, back and forth, all through their music.....

And on the other hand you've got a guy like Robin Thicke who just runs around at 100% the whole time doing as many runs and riffs as he can fit in the song, with no idea of the nuance of the band on stage behind him.

Just a horrible fit the way it was done, and the lead of Chicago seemed completely capable of sounding great.  

Why not do "Does anybody really know what time it is?" and have Robin sing backup?  "I.... don't.... care.... about TIME!!!!  Oh Nooo...."

That would have been effective, would have sounded great, would have showed Chicago and Robin respect, and would have been what we'd all be rewatching on youtube right now.  

[Mike's Beard]

I would rather they get Peter Cetera back over that clown.

I love for this to happen but we are talking about the preverbal flying pig for that to happen.

[Ron]

I will echo Ron's sentiments that I absolutely detested the "Same Love" performance.  Before the pro-gay polite police jump in, I'm not so much disputing the message of the song as I am the execution of it.  If there are two things I don't like, it's preachiness and pretentiousness, and this whole stunt was beating me over the head with it.  The whole thing was ridiculous -- complete with a peg-legged Madonna, for cryin' out loud!  The whole thing was so over-the-top, I was actually disappointed that the Care Bears and Muppet Babies didn't show up to sing along. 

It's hard to properly describe the disgust with it.  People always want to knee jerk with the happy-feely sh*t "Oh, they're just like us, leave them alone, let them love who they want" but the problem isn't gay marriage or that they were there or even that they got married, the problem was it was presented in such a way that we were supposed to see Madonna and her ilk as the enlightened ones in the room, and that they were going to show us how loving and caring they are.  

Meanwhile, Queen Latifah is one of the people presiding over it, she's obviously gay, and has never came out, and didn't last night.  

The entire thing is so fucking fake it's insulting to the audience's intelligence.  

If Queen Latifah would have came out on the stage during the song, and got married to her girlfriend, I wouldn't have a problem with it and nobody would care.  

Even if she would have came on the stage and MARRIED a gay couple, nobody would have cared.  Marrying 30 random people standing in the audience to make the point you're trying to push down our throats is a special kind of pretentiousness that only could be done with the help of Madonna.

[Awesoman]

Why not do "Does anybody really know what time it is?" and have Robin sing backup?  "I.... don't.... care.... about TIME!!!!  Oh Nooo...."

The problem you have is that Chicago, whilst a well-oiled unit that can certainly perform well on their own, is still rather archaic looking when sharing the stage with a half-naked Beyonce, a bunch of French robots, Katy Perry with a bunch of "Thriller" rejects, etc.  They had to have a "hipper" artist share the stage with them to keep the younger crowd excited.  Robin Thicke was up for a Grammy and was obviously going to get the attention.  As we all remember, the Grammys did the same thing to the Beach Boys a few years back.  That's just the way it works.  In any case I was just glad that Chicago was there at all and received a warm reception, especially when they dove into "Saturday In The Park".  

[SMiLE Brian]

Robin Thicke's "performance" reminds me of Adam Levine butchering "surfer girl".

I give props to "foster the people" for doing "WIBN" and wearing classic BBs outfits. They struggled doing one of the hardest BBs songs in the catalog to do live, but the respect was there.

[Ron]

Yeah, i'm not completely stuck in the mud, their performance doing the Beach Boys was fine.  Also I liked Billy Joe and Miranda's "When will I be loved", it wasn't perfect but that was probably the best they could do, and it sounded pretty good, they obviously spent some time on it.

[guitarfool2002]

Some inside music-geek kind of info worth noting: Ringo's backing band, I guess whatever lineup it is they're dubbed "The All-Starr Band", was packed with some of the heaviest hitters as far as studio and live musicians of the past 30 years. Incredible group on that stage.

Kenny Aronoff: drums
Benmont Tench: keys
Peter Frampton: 6-string acoustic
Steve Lukather: 12-string acoustic
Don Was: bass

Apart from the obvious Brian Wilson connections with Tench and Was, if anyone doesn't recognize the other names, do a simple Google search. These guys played on literally dozens if not hundreds of hit records going back to the 70's, and like the 60's scene they show up on all kinds of records everyone knows but might not know who played on them. Steve Lukather and Kenny Aronoff alone have been on so many classic records and have created so many hooks on those hits, it's easy to lose count.

Just some examples: Lukather was a session cat who played with Toto most notably (Toto was essentially a group of session pros who made it big), but his studio guitar style was all but ubiquitous in the 80's. Most notably, any familiar guitar tracks on Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album other than Van Halen's one solo on Beat It were probably played by Lukather, and he's on hundreds of singles, albums, and soundtracks we all know.

Kenny Aronoff...all you need to do is search his name and find the credits. You see him all the time in backing bands at awards shows and music specials, and he did many famous hit sessions along with his main gig on almost all of John Mellencamp's most familiar records in the 80's and 90's.

So that was cool to see, and I'd pay to see Ringo's tour if these guys are the band. I only wish they had done something other than Photograph, and as they did that tune I only wish McCartney had seen fit to join his former bandmate on stage rather than relegate Ringo to second-chair drums on his "new" song. Damn.

[Sheriff John Stone]

So you've got Ringo Starr coerced into playing drums for the Paul Macca show once more, complete with second drummer.  

You've got Willie Nelson trotted out on stage, and then told to sing "Highwayman".... even though Waylon wrote it, and he's dead, and Johnny Cash sang it best, and he's dead.  Then you mix his microphone so low nobody can hear him.

Then you have Merle Haggard be a badass like he always is, but don't let him sing anything he wrote (which basically would probably be the best performance of the night)

Then, here, this was great: Get CHICAGO, the entire fucking 15 piece band, to show up, in great shape, sounding amazing, and have some DUMBFUCK like Robin Thicke half-ass all of their lyrics.

Also, don't let them perform a whole song; just 30 seconds of several of them.  Make sure Robin's off key, off lyric, mumbled vocals drown out the microphone of the ORIGINAL LEAD SINGER OF THE BAND WHO SOUNDS AMAZING BUT HASN'T BEEN SEEN ON T.V. FOR 15 YEARS.  

Hey, Ron, good post and I agree with most of your points. I didn't enjoy the show very much either, mainly because of the points you made. I just wanted to respond to a couple of them:

I didn't get the feeling that Ringo was (or is ever?) coerced into playing with Paul. I always got the impression that Ringo never refuses an invitation and always seems to enjoy playing with Paul - and the attention/spotlight it provides.

You're right; "Highwayman" was a mess, but Waylon Jennings didn't write it; Jimmy Webb did. Without Waylon and Johnny Cash, I don't think they should've touched that song.  

Merle Haggard  DID SING "Okee From Muskogee" which he co-wrote. It was too abbrieviated, however.

And, you're absolutely right about Chicago. They sounded great, played some good songs, and Robert Lamm looked and sounded about 25 years younger, but....Robin Thicke ruined it for me. If he - or about 99% of all the other singers who appeared tonight - would SING the friggin' song instead of trying to impress everybody....geez....

When I saw Robert Lamm up there, for some reason, for a brief moment, thoughts of Dennis Wilson crossed my mind. It was kinda weird...

EDIT: One more thing....For Ringo's "Photograph" performance....it was so incompetent with the photographs flying around in the background. You saw more picture frames than pictures, I could hardly make out who was in the photographs, and for the ones I could make out, they chose terrible pictures. They totally blew what could've been a nice effect.
 

[Myk Luhv]

It's not surprising he didn't but Kendrick should've won.

[Justin]

Best moment had to have been the country tribute.  You see Merle swag on to that stage, stroll over to the microphone right at the exact moment he had to sing the opening lines to "Okie?"  Bad ass.  The performance was way too short...no "Panco and Lefty" or even "On The Road Again?"  Shameful.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

At this point in history, holding annual Vaudeville awards would feel more relevant than the Grammys....

And it's been Ringo and some other drummer (or two) ever since Concert For Bangladesh. I think it's how own choice.

[pixletwin]

The only parts of the Grammies I didn't care for where Beyonce and Katy Perry. I thought everything else was pretty good.

[zachrwolfe]

‍

[Ron]

To be honest I didn't watch some of the rock bands and I didn't watch John Legend's performance so some of those could have been alright too, I think the major, biggest flaw is at least on my brodcast the mixing was horrible, I literally could not make out 1 word some of the people were singing.  I'd never heard Paul's new song and couldn't tell what he was saying, the entire song.

I just would have done things a little differently, as I'm sure most people would have.

If you want Merle and Willie to perform, why not ask them what they want to do?  Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson sitting on two stools, playing guitar, and singing "Pancho and Lefty" would be incredible.  I forgot he did Okie from Muskagoee, I think I still had steam coming out of my ears from Kris Kristofferson forgetting what planet he was on.

Why not have Kris do one of his songs, btw?  I'm sure he's got some drop dead songs that he can do by himself.

The Ringo/Paul thing: why is it that Paul, and Dave Grohl, can come up with a grammy winning song in a couple hours, but when Ringo gets involved Paul puts him at the back of the stage doubling the drums on something he wrote?  I just don't understand it. 

I agree with the sentiment above about Julian as well.  I don't know if that's by choice, though... and I think a big part of it is just that Yoko goes to a lot of events and of course she's going to show up with her son, not her stepson.

The mistake they make, over and over again, is that these legends are legends because their music is good.  Nobody bought Chicago's stuff for anyt reason other than how great it sounds.  Nobody buys Willie Nelson stuff other than they like his music.  Why put people like that in a gimmicky situation, let them do the music the way it needs to be to stand on it's own two feet.

I saw Merle Haggard on the Marty Stuart show recently, he did "Mama's prayers" and it stopped everybody's heartbeat in the audience, it was so incredibly great, let one of these legends have a moment like that where they show  what they're really capable of.

If they REALLY wanted to put on a good show, here's how you do Ringo and Paul... have Paul play piano and sing "Instant Karma".  Have Ringo play drums.  Have Yoko sit on stage with a blindfold on and big posters with all kinds of messages about gay marriage.

Have Chicago sing "Saturday in the Park", have Robin Thicke sing background.  Afterwards, do the thing they did with "Blurred Lines" and have the band reluctantly join in... they just don't time things right, it was cool to see that but it was all so rushed it just didn't work.  Everything's just too balls to the wall all the time on these shows and it looks like a train wreck.

I agree about Kacey Musgraves too, I think she did a great job considering.  Why?  ... because she's a great songwriter, and that will always go over on any show. 

I also agree about Carole King, it's amazing she got through that whole great performance without rolling around on the floor and flashing her ass like Beyonce did.  It must be possible to put on a good show without reducing yourself to a stripper.