Like most award shows, the Grammys are pretty much worthless.  Somehow, the idea of winning one of these golden gramaphones still holds some level of credibility, but when you actually take the time to stop and consider the quality of many of the… *cough*… “artists” that have been awarded these things, much of the potency behind that “achievement” becomes quickly diluted.  Was there EVER any real legitimacy behind the awards?  Was I too young to know any better, have our musical tastes gotten worse, or do we only remember the greats?  By this point, it feels like these honors are passed around a lot more like letterman jackets than a Nobel Prize for physics.  If you do decide to pay any attention to these ceremonies, it can create some mixed feelings.  When the Coen Bros and P.T. Anderson won Academy Awards, I was happy to hear that someone won that I felt deserved it, but I was also confused by my own emotions.  “Don’t I hate these things anyway?“  Still, I always loved for Nirvana to take home awards; not despite the fact that Kurt Cobain would treat the souvenirs like doorstops and worthless pieces of shit, but because of it.  In response to the Oscar nomination for his documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop, Banksy has even been quoted as saying, “I don’t agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I’m prepared to make an exception for the ones I’m nominated for. The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me.“  Maybe the idea that such artists could still “win” symbolizes the last remnant of imagined validity left in these glorified traditions or, more likely, it could just be the feeling that someone sneaked in and pissed all over the cool kids’ party.  Even if you didn’t want to go to the party, the idea of not being allowed in can still result in good times throwing fire-crackers through the window.  Does the nomination itself mean that the previously lesser profiled artists, no matter how generally subversive, have been given the invitation to sit at the hip table, or even that their previous fanbase will abandon them?  Sometimes it might just mean that performers with actual talent are recognized.  Regardless of the reasons or the meanings behind them, I have to believe it’s a good thing that, after almost a decade and half a dozen albums, Akron, Ohio‘s The Black Keys finally had a trio of well-deserved Grammys thrown in their direction last night. Read the rest of this entry →