The controversy over departed Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore being left out of the Grammys’ “In Memoriam” video package Sunday night continued to burn this morning, with Matthews himself saying “I don’t care much for anything about the Grammies” on his Twitter account. (Burn!) Meanwhile, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences president Neil Portnow has released a statement claiming that Moore was remembered by his organization, just not in televised form:
“Nearly 250 members of our music community have passed in the last year, and all of them have been listed in the program book for the 51st Annual GRAMMY Awards, including LeRoi Moore. For the “Encore” segment of our annual GRAMMY Awards telecast, unfortunately we are unable to include all of the talented and wonderful people within the allotted timeframe. The Academy recognizes Moore’s contributions to music and music education, and we are deeply saddened by his premature passing.”
So basically all you people getting all Internet-angry about this? You just weren’t in the know enough to see the tribute; you would have seen him memorialized if you rated enough to get a ticket to the show. Feel better?
Why can’t they pull an Obama-after-Daschle and just admit, “We screwed up — we totally forgot about him, and we’re sorry”? I mean, isn’t it obvious? Moore was clearly famous enough to include in the montage compared to a lot of the sidemen who were included. It’s obviously just a goof.
Refusing to apologize directly just fosters the notion that the Academy is an insider’s club for friends of Quincy Jones, Clive Davis, and about five other people, and if those guys don’t know who you are (i.e., you didn’t play drums on a record Q produced back in ‘68 or something), you don’t rate…
Oh, wait…right, the Academy is all those things.
Elvis, still dead.
Regardless, DMB fans are the biggest whiners in the music fan subcultures. not even close.
This, I think, makes it even worse. Rather than apologizing and saying it was an oversight, instead aren’t they basically saying that Moore wasn’t as important as all the people featured in that video and only deserved to be listed in the program with everybody else? That’s not going to calm any fans down.
@ImmaculateMisconception: Never let it be said that Neil Portnow has his finger on any sort of pulse.