50th Annual Grammy Awards: PLEASE Don't Let There Be 50 More...

By Tony Mazur

Last night the 50th Annual Grammy Awards was broadcast live on CBS from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony honors the musical achievement of artists from all genres. The Grammys feature many performances by today's hottest singers or groups, and sometimes collaborations, and awards are presented by music legends, even though most of the awards were handed out prior to the broadcast.

I watched it. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. Tony Mazur is not impressed by an awards show?? Preposterous! It was one of those situations where it's extremely cold outside, there's nothing else on TV (see Pro Bowl...), and I'm eating dinner. Otherwise, I would have tuned into the same reruns of Family Guy. Don't get me wrong; I love Family Guy. But Seth, make some new ones already!

Anyways, onto what I did like from the Grammys.

I do like Alicia Keys. She sang a "duet" with Frank Sinatra to start the show, and she later performed "No One", her Grammy Award-winning single. Morris Day and The Time did their 1984 hit, "Jungle Love", with Rihanna, leading into her Top 40 songs, "Umbrella" and "Don't Stop The Music". The Band, Bob Dylan's band, received a Lifetime Achievement Award, so that was cool. The Foo Fighters won Best Rock Album for Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace, and performed "The Pretender" outside of the Staples Center, by far the best performance of the night.

Oh, and I also loved the music playing off Kanye West was he was gloating to the world about his Grammy Award. What a pompous piece of garbage.

Now onto the bad parts of the evening.

Can Aretha Franklin never appear on a stage again? With a yellow dress, she honestly looked like a school bus.

Bruce Springsteen won three Grammy Awards. Why?! The Boss is so far removed from being that blue collar man from New Jersey. He used to be this high energy, brilliant songwriter from Asbury Park, thanking WMMS's Kid Leo for first playing his music. Now he's this cranky, Obama-supporting communist who hasn't put out anything halfway decent since Born To Run.

Speaking of Osama- I mean, Obama (who hasn't gotten that one wrong?), he won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for his book, The Audacity of Hope. Please don't tell me this is going to be his year. I have hundreds of reasons why I do not want Barack Obama to be our next president, but I'll save that for further FDH Lounge posts.

Just a question. Why does every awards show have to be political? Can someone answer me that question?

After losing American Idol, Chris Daughtry has blown up the music world with such songs as "It's Not Over", "Home", "What I Want", and "Over You". However, he got screwed out of an award. The aforementioned Springsteen won his deserved award.

Everyone made a big deal about Amy Winehouse not being able to perform in the United States. I watched her perform "Rehab", and it didn't blow me away. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't breathtaking.

I don't know who performed The Beatles' "Let It Be", but I started cringing. They turned a wonderful song written by Paul McCartney into a Negro spiritual. And that brings me to my next point. I understand that February is Black History Month, but do we have to have a constant reminder ever ten minutes? I acknowledge the month. But please don't pound it into my head 24/7.

A miscellaneous thing I got out of the ceremony was the good time Tina Turner had with Beyonce. Now that Ike is six feet under, Tina enjoyed herself for the first time since 1962.

50 years of the Grammys. 50 years of fraud and phoniness. This must be why I watch sports. Oh wait, steroids, gambling, thug lifestyles. I guess there's no escaping it.


Meanwhile, here is a video of the Foo Fighters performing "The Pretender" in England.

Rush in concert: a rockin' compromise

By Rick Morris

It's always an interesting experience to hear a legendary band in their hometown or an adopted hometown. As with Bruce Springsteen, Rush was able to break into the mainstream of American music at least partly due to the rabid support of the then-influential radio station WMMS in Cleveland in the '70s and the Cleveland market has supported them wildly ever since. Having seen Rush three times in concert, but not since 1994, I was determined to see them on their Snakes & Arrows tour this year and gauge how some of their most devoted fans would react to them now.

As listeners of The FDH Lounge program know, I loudly decried the content of the Rush album released in May. We the loyal fans of the group waited years for the release, only to be greeted by one admittedly great song in Far Cry, a good instrumental in Malignant Narcissism, and a fetid load of filler rounding out the disc. So when I and new FantasyDrafthelp.com drag racing correspondent Jeff Weber acquired tickets for the August 30 show at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, we were hoping against hope for mostly "the good old stuff."

We didn't get everything we wanted, but the compromise seemed agreeable to all.

Geddy and the boys did play just about the entire new album, but gave us several of the chestnuts we were hoping for along the way in this 26-song endeavor. The new songs received little in the way of reaction except for the aforementioned two -- and with the obligatory Neil Peart drum solo in that instrumental, the crowd did go bananas. As usual, Rush came with a state-of-the art light-and-video-screens presentation and we were treated to overhead shots of Peart with his massive drum set at many points along the way.

Here were the old songs, in the order in which they were played: Limelight, Mission (a personal favorite as Weber and I are two of the few to really enjoy the Hold Your Fire album),
Freewill, Circumstances (a surprise selection from Hemispheres), Dreamline, Subdivisions, Natural Science, Xanadu, Summertime Blues (an excellent cover which I am happy to own), Spirit of Radio and Tom Sawyer prior to the encore, which consisted of One Little Victory, A Passage to Bangkok and YYZ. Prior to Tom Sawyer, we were treated on the video screens to this South Park parody version of the song with Cartman in rare form. The crowd erupted with the delight you would have anticipated for this gem.

In fairness to Rush, even the new material which I found lacking (and judging by the indifference of the crowd, I wasn't the only one) sounded much better live than on the CD, so even that wasn't a complete waste. But the material from their unmatched catalog was the real draw of the evening and getting to hear such a great sampling of their past hits made sitting through the rest of the evening worthwhile. Judging by the comments I heard on the way out, that seemed an accurate representation of what most in the crowd thought as well. If you are a big Rush fan, and it seems that most people are either huge fans of the group or not into them at all, you will probably find their efforts on the current tour worthwhile and I urge you to check them out.