The annual awarding of the Grammys provided the media their annual opportunity for bemoaning the low quality of those awards. This is par for the course, but for once I found myself disagreeing. According to conventional wisdom, the failure of the Grammys relates to that institution’s snub of rock ‘n’ roll in the ’60s: while the Rolling Stones and the Who and Jimi Hendrix and whomever were working their magic, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences continued doling out awards to the likes of Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Petula Clark, and Herb Alpert. The only real exception was the Beatles, who won Best New Artist in 1964, then won awards for “Michelle” and Sgt. Pepper’s. In the ’70s, major Grammy Awards (Best Song, Best Album) were doled out to artists whose once-low reputations have also been recently burnished. The Captain and Tennille won for “Love Will Keep Us Together,” Carole King for “It’s Too Late,” Fleetwood Mac won for their Rumours album, Olivia Newton-John for “I Honestly Love You.”
Rock critics imagine that both the culture and the marketplace have proven the awards wrong, but history, and enduring radio stations like KIXI, have proven those critics wrong. You just can’t set the individual, song-by-song achievements of multiple Grammy-winning songwriters like Jimmy Webb and Carole King, or singers like Sinatra and Glen Campbell, or bandleader/arrangers like Herb Alpert and Henry Mancini, up against those of, well, anyone in rock.
As far as this year’s particular awards are concerned: sure, the Titanic song’s fluff, and Lauryn Hill’s nothing but a pale, charisma-free simulacrum
of the authentic soul that led to Grammys for Isaac Hayes, Bill Withers, Aretha
Franklin, and Roberta Flack. But the failure isn’t in the academy, it’s in pop
music, which was destroyed by the creative death of Broadway, by the demise
of Tin Pan Alley–and especially by record company capitulation to “creative
freedom” for musically illiterate teenagers. When young artists are expected
to be their own songwriters, producers, arrangers, and backing musicians, of
course the music’s going to suffer. What’s left in the realm of division-of-labor
pop (husband-and-wife team Mutt Lange and Shania Twain, for example) is never
going to fill that gap.
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In response to the financial troubles faced by independent, community-based cultural businesses (Scarecrow Video, Elliott Bay Book Co., Bathhouse Theater, Speakeasy Cafe, and Red & Black Books are recent examples), a group led by Seattle Times columnist David Brewster, Elliott Bay’s Rick Simonson, and Allied Arts’ Philip Wohlstetter has gathered to try to find a way to save troubled cultural institutions. Dubbed the Elliott Bay Group, after the recent dangerous interlude that local bookstore passed through, the group intends to maintain a fund devoted to the short-term purchase, restructuring, and careful reselling of troubled local cultural businesses–kinda like an International Monetary Fund for Seattle arts organizations. Who knows if it’ll get off the ground, or if it’s even a good idea for troubled businesses looking for a bailout… but it’s an interesting idea.