Iron Maiden Wins Grammy Award, Lady Gaga Arrives In An Egg, I Am Old
Monday, February 14, 2011 at 12:01AM Iron Maiden won big at the Grammy awards last night. They won in the category of "best metal performance" for their song "El Dorado." They beat Korn, Lamb of God, Megadeth and Slayer. In my opinion, this category wasn't even a contest. While "El Dorado" isn't the best Maiden song ever, they still always run circles around the other contenders.
The other rock winners include Muse (best rock album for The Resistance), Them Crooked Vultures (hard rock performance for "New Fang"), Jeff Beck (rock instrumental performance for "Hammerhead"), Neil Young (song writing for "Angry World") and Jeff Beck (pop instrumental performance for "Nessum Dorma").
I think I got all the rock categories...basically, the Grammys shove anything not rap/pop/commercial country to the pre-show telecast. Meaning: not televised but you can watch online. So whatever. Awards don't mean anything - we all like what we like. But just once in a awhile it would be cool to see a rock band get to walk the red carpet, get interviewed on E! and have a category announced on television.
Oh well. Did you see Lady Gaga arrive at the show in a giant egg? Insanity. I love her and her new song "Born This Way." All pop isn't bad and Gaga is a metal loving musical genius!
Ok, so I hope you listened to the new Gaga. Now I want to say I must be about 100 years old because I had no idea who about 50% of the musicians were on the Grammy telecast last night. The names were odd, the music sounded bad...and it was all just foreign. I mean, I always give myself a pass on the country categories because I generally don't listen to much out of that musical genre but by at large, country artists are real musicians. The rest...I dunno. I was finding myself using Google and Wikipedia just about every time an artist was announced. Clearly that's a sign of old age. Oh well I guess. At least I would recognize any member of Iron Maiden if they walked by me on the street.
So, with all this randomness I can say without a shadow of a doubt that modern, commercial music sucks.
Reader Comments (13)
As for the others, after looking at the winners this was pretty predictable. Stupid pop rhymes and the usual suspects. I have to say though as i look on yahoo, the user vote predictions are way off from the winners (or is it vice versa? food for thought)
Oh yeah and will people get over Muse? They're one songs sounds like the intro to sportscenter!
One las thing, what is the difference between record of the year and album of the year? Or why are nominees on record of the year on songs of the year??? I'm slightly confused.
Right now I think Lady Gaga is this decades Quiet Riot. The first album was epic, the second ok. This one will be the determining factor, Because the more I hear the Fame Monster the more I hear Condition Critical, and this single continues the trend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yybcsoUbc&feature=related
should have been the first single....
she aint going away any time soon !!!
Lady gaga?. Gimme a break.Crawl back in your egg and go away...........
I actually thought the telecast was really well done. One thing for sure, you really can tell the different levels of talent out there when you compare the live performances on this show.
No matter if Christine Aguilera can't remember the words to our National Anthem, she out belted and out diva'd the other "divas" on stage with her, Jennifer Hudson (the real pro up there) excepted, during the show's kick-off, a tribute to Aretha Franklin.
Let's not get into the fact that Aretha, minus her Clive Davis hit machine, really is quite limited in her vocal ability.
But that's not the only reason she's undeserving of the tribute. She also happens to be one of the nastiest, most impersonal people in the biz, which is a polite way of saying she treats everyone like dirt.
Yet I suppose they needed something big, no pun intended, to start the show with and there's no denying record sales and the discography of her landmark hits, no matter how many takes or how many strings and horns it took to lay 'em down, take her into the stratosphere of the Pantheon of Rock'n'Soul , thus leaving an indelible mark on our Pop history.
Most of the time, on this particular Grammy show, a performance outweighed sheer raw vocal ability because of the passion and creativity a particular artist gave to their material. One's superiority came across in the delivery, not necessarily through the pure technical aspects of his or her talent.
I thought Gaga, then Bruno Mars/Janelle Monae/BOB and then Rihanna/Eminem/Skylar Grey/Dre were the best performances in that order. I like my performances high concept and high energy and those three groupings had the most of those qualities plus the talent to pull 'em off.
I'm not really that into rap or hip-hop, which is why, these days, I think all of the big hits now incorporate big epic instrumentation and fantastic R&B melodies, disco beats and hooks aplenty as the main part of a song with the rap just peppered in.
These days, in the end, it's all great Pop that generally rules the night, no matter what genre it is.
Most of these numbers performed at the Grammys were about epic performances.
However, on the REAL and LEGIT side of things, after the performances I mentioned above, I'd say Norah Jones/John Mayer/Keith Urban doing their tribute to Dolly Parton, "Jolene", then Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers and then Lady Antebellum with their Tribute To Teddy Pendergrass, as well as the medley of their undeniably infectious Grammy winning hit, "Need You Now", were impressive. Bob Dylan, though quite shot and overly raspy, was still quite amusing and lent the telecast cred.
The simplicity and purity of these performances were in stark contrast to the over-the-top numbers like Gaga, Eminem and Bruno.
The whole Beiber/Usher thing is a great story, but comically played off more like a testimonial for NAMBLA, unfortunately, when brought to life on the stage of The Grammys.
Beiber is overated and Usher seems washed up when compared to the other hitmeisters of today. But I get the little girls fascination with the calculatedly packaged Beiber. They're blind to the kid's limitations and only see (and hear) the bubblegum "catchiness" of his pop confections.
I still think it's his hairdo they're mostly fascinated with, the same way Steve Wynn observed Seigfried & Roy's White Tiger was fascinated with a woman's beehive moments before it attacked Roy.
I actually thought Jagger, Muse and Arcade Fire were the lamest of all of 'em. As far as out and out Rock'n'Roll goes, Iron Maiden, who most of you know, are not exactly my cup of tea, would have blown Jagger, Muse and Arcade collectively out of the water.
And why wasn't Jeff Beck up there with Jagger, too? The guy wins 2 Grammys last night, yet we only get a glimpse of him when he lost out to Muse in another category. Just with that fleeting moment on camera, he became the most Rock'n'Roll character featured on the show.
At the conclusion of the broadcast, I couldn't help but think not only were certain nominees robbed, which always seems to inevitably happen on these things, but so were we.
Remember when REAL Rock'n'Roll Bands, who also happen to be arguably "GLAM", like Guns'n'Roses were nominated for Grammys? Unbelievably, G'n'R never won, though they were nominated in '90, '92 and '93.
And remember when Metallica, who I could personally take or leave, performed "One" live on The Grammys in '89?
Instead, all we got was a glimpse of Ronnie James Dio (coupled with Doug Feiger to a snippet of "My Sharonna") during the "In Memoriam" segment, a flash of Jeff Beck in the audience, a few notes of "Don't Stop Believin'" when that dude from Glee came out and a mention by Al about Iron Maiden 's award in this post.
Where are our heroes?
And where are our NEW heroes?
When will OUR music get it's proper due from the Grammys?
There are so many great bands carrying the torch for us today who are completely off the radar when it comes to the music industry, let alone The Grammys.
Bad City can be signed to Atlantic and Reckless Love to Universal, to name but a couple ROCK bands that actually ROCK, yet only we seem to know about 'em.
Maligned, battered and ignored, but still always Glittery and Shiny, armed with more catchy hooks and licks in one song than you heard all last night, we fight on, all for the love of Rock'n'Roll!
Mark my words, someday we will hear a REAL Rock Lead Guitar live on The Grammys again!
First up, does anyone really care about The Grammys? They're about as good as Rolling Stone magazine when it comes to picking amazing, groundbreaking, transcendent acts... and I'm sure that everyone knows what a joke that is. Being denied a Grammy is more of a compliment than winning one, in my opinion. G'n'R is a good case-in-point.
Having said that: I agree with Shadow. I'm mystified as to why Ozzy is a "hard rock" act and the Irons are "metal". Perhaps they thought Ozzy wasn't wearing enough leather in the one photo the Grammy judges bothered to look at... The Iron Maiden song is okay (but not their best by a long shot), but Lamb of God's was better (and stood in as my phone ringtone for a while).
Of course, everyone knows I'm quite silly for Lamb of God though...
And Muse really does need to go away now. Having seen Muse live, it's the only time I've ever walked out of a concert early in order to beat the traffic. They bore the bejeezus out of me.
Oh, and I forgot to hammer Katy Perry. She is so lame compared to GaGa. She is operating with one bizzilionth of the talent and ability as GaGa, yet still holds on somehow. I predict she'll fade pretty rapidly now.
However, GaGa is just getting started.