TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022591/0225440.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.2 KB | 129 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 72

What's Wrong with the Grammys


Lame choices and noisy critics give the awards a dubious rep

By JAY COCKS -- Reported by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles and
Janice C. Simpson/New York


    Bad timing. And with the big show ready to air this week
too.

    Here is the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences,
diligently trying to add greater luster and further lucre to
the music biz by modernizing the Grammy Awards and trying to
slip them into some semblance of synch with contemporary taste.
It took NARAS until 1979 to give rock its own category, but
lately it has cooked up a slot for everything from rap to New
Age.

    Now maybe hipsters will stop calling the show the "Granny
Awards." But still present -- they won't go away -- are the
unsavory reverberations of Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, the two
Audio-Animatrons who were supposed to be Milli Vanilli but
weren't, and had to surrender their 1989 Best New Artist
Grammy. Very embarrassing.

    But maybe not as embarrassing as Sinead O'Connor, nominated
for four gold statuettes, boycotting the Grammy ceremony. She
doesn't want to be part of the show, which will be aired live
at 8 p.m. EST this Wednesday on CBS, and she won't accept her
Grammys if she wins them. Such awards, she informed NARAS
president Michael Greene, "respect mostly material gain, since
that is the main reason for their existence."

    O'Connor, 24, is one of the most gifted young rockers
around, and it is awkward to have someone of her talent and
exuberance tell the music business to stuff its highest award.
"I don't agree with her rationale," says Joe Smith, president
of Capitol-EMI Music, which is affiliated with O'Connor's
record label, Chrysalis. "If Sinead doesn't like these shows,
then that's her opinion. They get good ratings. This is not the
International Red Cross."

    Nor is it the Oscars, Emmys or Tonys. Among the Big Four
show-biz awards, the Grammys have the most unfortunate
reputation for often making saccharine choices that toady
shamelessly to the marketplace. The past winners have included
such unremarkable talents as Debby Boone and Toto. With the
latest snafus, NARAS president Greene has been busy defending
and explaining how members cast their lot for a total of 77
awards in 27 different fields. "It's a very complicated
process," Greene admits. "It's too damn complicated. I don't
know if God intended music to be classified."

    The voting is egalitarian, but that may be one of its
problems. Last summer NARAS sent a form to each of its 8,000
members and to executives at the major record companies
soliciting nominations for recordings released during the 12
months ending last Sept. 30. Each member -- including singers,
songwriters, album-cover designers, engineers and producers --
is allowed to recommend up to five candidates in each award
category. That list becomes the ballot that is mailed out to
the 6,000 members eligible to vote.

    Members can vote in as many as nine of the 27 fields, and
everyone can vote on the four key Grammys (Record, Song and
Album of the Year, and Best New Artist). Members are, however,
encouraged to vote only in areas where they feel qualified.
"I'll vote in pop and rock categories," says songwriter Diane
Warren (who wrote Milli Vanilli's Blame It on the Rain). "But
when it comes to the Best Polka Song category, I don't vote in
that one."

    Not everyone shares that compunction, and there is no system
of checks to make sure, for example, that Itzhak Perlman isn't
putting his mark beside Motley Crue's Kickstart My Heart. "I
don't like the idea of having the freedom to vote in areas
outside your expertise," says Ken Barnes of the trade
publication Radio & Records. The system seems to give the
advantage to more widely publicized, commercially accepted
acts. "If you don't sell, you don't have a chance at winning,"
says rock critic Dave Marsh. "But if you do sell, it doesn't
guarantee winning."

    Not even greatness guarantees that, especially for artists
ahead of their time. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Little Richard,
Sonny Rollins, the Talking Heads, the Supremes and the Who
never got a single piece of Grammy gold. Some of Grammy's
greatest hitters are heavy-duty worthies (Aretha Franklin has
copped 15, Stevie Wonder 17), but it's also true, as Marsh
points out, that "no one thinks that the Grammys honor
artistry. People like Marvin Gaye, Bruce Springsteen and Phil
Spector have all been disrespected by the Grammys, and so
people don't take the awards seriously."

    Then what does that Grammy, a little gold-plated Gramophone
on a pedestal, represent? A souvenir of a TV extravaganza. A
talisman of mainstream commercial success. A bit of show-biz
immortality that, since this is show biz, after all, is more
tenuous and suspect than other varieties of eternal fame
(anyone remember 1980's five-Grammy  grand slammer Christopher
Cross?). Sinead O'Connor is right: the Grammys probably do
"respect mostly material gain." But in the words of a very
prominent Grammy wanna-grab, we're living in a material world.