Randall Roberts’ piece on being inside the Grammy press room for the first time was a somewhat intriguing slice-of-journalists’-mundane-lives take on interviewing the winners of the Feb. 8 awards show, with tidbits about access ($400 for a DSL hookup?!) and quotes that didn’t make it out to the wires (including a few from the owner of reissue haven Dust-to-Digital, whose Art of the Field Recording Vol. 1: nabbed the Best Historical Album trophy) sprinkled throughout. It even engendered a thoughtful response from Variety scribe Phil Gallo, who lightly swatted Roberts on the nose while adding a bit of historical perspective to his notes on what he termed “a dying industry covering another dying industry.” Too bad, then, that it all had to go sour at the end, when Roberts popped a banana about Katy Perry’s trip to Fruitopia that night: MORE »
Posts Tagged ‘grammy09’
everybody's a winner
Inside The Grammy Pressroom: Despair, DSL, And Bodacious Bananas
Grammys To Angry LeRoi Moore Fans: “We Only Memorialized Him For People Who Were Invited To The Show”
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: MORE »
everybody's a winner
Maybe The Grammys’ Performance-Heavy Strategy Actually Worked?
As of right now, 20 of the 25 entries on Google’s Hot Trends list—which tracks the “fastest-rising search queries in the U.S.”—are about music. And all of them seem to be Grammy-related: “blink 182 back together,” “m.i.a. pregnant,” “static major,” “raising sand,” and so on. Look back at, say, Sept. 8, the day after the VMAs, and there are only four music-related search terms, surrounded by the usual mix of politics, sports, and TV stories. Does that mean, then, that the Grammys’ seemingly ridiculous strategy of only televising ten awards and filling the rest of the telecast’s three and a half hours with live music actually made people interested in music? MORE »
Trent Reznor: Always Thom Yorke’s Bridesmaid
You have to feel bad for the guy, and the way… MORE »
“Opulent Party Attended By Millionaires” Does Not = News
Look, I know Idolator used to be owned by Gawker. But if we really were the Gawker of the music industry, you would have seen so much coverage of Clive Davis‘ Grammy party. You would hear where it was, who was playing, who was invited, who wasn’t invited, who sat next to who, and how you could crash it. You would have gotten gossip from inside, pictures of the food, and a big wrapup post. This would be justified because Clive’s party is the music biz equivalent of the Vanity Fair Oscar party. The VF party gets a lot of attention and coverage from a wide variety of media outlets, and that’s somewhat understandable from a practical if not a moral standpoint: our interest in Hollywood and the star system is always to some degree about power, and by watching what happens at the VF party, we can make conclusions about what’s going on behind the scenes, where people stand, who’s in and who’s out, and so forth and so on. So why wouldn’t we care about Clive Davis’ party, if we’re supposed to be covering the music biz? Well, because the biggest music-related item to come from the party was the news that Whitney Fucking Houston performed. MORE »
Another name left out of the Grammys’ “In… MORE »
Another name left out of the Grammys’ “In… MORE »
Chris Brown Goes To, Gets Out Of Jail
Things are still a little hazy, but here’s what we know so far: Last night, R & B singer Chris Brown turned himself in to the Los Angeles Police Department in response to an alleged domestic violence felony battery incident that occurred Sunday morning, when an argument between Brown and a woman in his vehicle escalated. Brown did not appear at the Grammys; he’s since been released from police custody after posting $50,000 bail. What’s not entirely clear is who the woman was, since domestic dispute complainants are kept anonymous. MORE »
putting the pseudo in pseudo-event
Live-Blogging The 2009 Grammys: Where The Winners Don’t Count As Much As The Ability To Bring In Ratings
Welcome to Idolator’s liveblog of the 2009 Grammy Awards, a year in which there will be more spectacle and less award-doling than ever. Well, at least it seems that way: The 3 1/2-hour telecast will have no more than 10 brass gramophones handed out during its running time, presumably because the music industry decided that what it really needed to give it a shot in the arm was a slightly more pretentious version of the Video Music Awards. (And yes, that is Paul McCartney being That Guy—or rather, the Bret Michaels-pioneered variation on That Guy who wears a shirt advertising his own projects—above.) Full minute-by-minute coverage after the jump! MORE »


Winners from the 2009 Grammy Awards, presented Sunday night in Los Angeles: