Eclectic Company: It Was A Very Weird Year: GRAMMYs 2011

This has been a weird GRAMMY year, as those of you who’ll be watching the awards ceremonies this week will probably agree. For one thing, a major nomination in the Record of the Year and Song of the Year categories has gone to a song with an unprintable (and for radio purposes, unsingable) word, repeated so many times that there’s no mistaking the syllables. The song, Cee Lo Green’s “F**k You!,” expresses the singer’s resentment that since his pockets are shortchanged and he can’t afford a Ferrari, he’s lost his gold digger GF to her new lover with the Benjamins, the fancy car, and the xbox. I had trouble believing the song was actually called “F**k You!,” because I’d only heard the expurgated version, in which the offending phrase is altered to “forget you.” Then I got an email from Vance Gilbert (aka “Bee Lo Blue”), a Banners’ favorite, who’s written a tasty answer song to Cee Lo’s “f-bomb” dropping, and I youtubed Cee Lo to check it out. Uh-huh, uh-huh, there it was, and, in fact, I decided I liked it, right out of the gate. Because “F**k You!” is a tuneful and smart-mouthed ditty about betrayal, with a killer video set in an artfully nostalgic diner, shifting viewpoints between grown-up Cee Lo’s scorn and his inner child’s honest anger.

Which is not to say that Gilbert’s answer song is shabby. Oh no no. It’s tres chic. In “(You Can) Kiss My A**!,” Gilbert as Bee Lo, wearing sideways ball cap, Flavor-Flav-styled clock (still in its wrapping) on a big gold neck chain, and a snarky brown hand puppet (also wearing a clock), explains that he treats Cee Lo’s ex- well ‘cause he’s “old school,” and that he knows the moment Cee Lo’s GF became his ex-: “She looked up and asked me does he really kiss his mom with that mouth?” It’s a hip, funny, and incredibly well-crafted song that should be playing Top 20 everywhere, but especially wherever Cee Lo finds his audience. Hell, Ms. Blackwell should be running it on KZWA right here in river city! You can try all three songs on youtube, and if you like you can download either or both of Cee Lo’s bowdlerized and original versions from iTunes; catch more of Gilbert at www.vancegilbert.com. If you can stand the stank [ed: yes, I meant stank] of rocket fuel, I recommend you listen to Cee Lo’s high-test take versus Bee Lo's blue.

So the GRAMMYs. Weird this year for me especially, because this is the first time since I began voting on the music industry’s self-congratulatory honors that I was truly hard-pressed to choose eight awards fields in which to cast my votes. Usually I have to forego some worthy category for one only marginally worthier, and spend half the year ducking the nominees (well, actually, their publicists) whose fields I decided to pass by. See, the way the GRAMMYs work, all sorts of musical endeavors are tracked into 29 different groupings – musical genres such as Rock, Gospel and Classical, media genres such as Film, Video and Theatre, and craft genres such as Historical, Packaging and Production – but each voter can only choose their faves in eight genres. Voting in too many groups will cancel your ballot entirely. In some of those groupings, designated “Fields,” there are several subcategories, and you can vote in all subcategories in a Field. Like, if you select the Country Field, for example, you can vote on Best Female Vocalist, and Best Country Duo or Group with a Collaborator, among other categories, including Best Country Album. But if you vote on Album Liner Notes, there’s only one category in the Field, so liner notes writers in Jazz and Classical and Historical and Reissues albums are all up against each other for just one prize. I wrote a bunch of liner notes many years ago – that’s how I got to become a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences – and even got an early round nomination for my Richard Thompson: Watching The Dark notes one year. It was pretty heady to be told I was nominated, let me tell you, even if almost no one outside of a small circle of friends knew that I was, and even though, as per usual, a jazz liner notes writer eventually took the honor from among the final round nominees (well, it was for The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959, and there was a 200-page hardbound book accompanying the CDs — if it wasn’t always all about me, me, me, I would have voted for it myself . . .).

So who did I vote for this year? I promise you I won’t have hit all the winners in the fields and categories I weighed in on, but if you’re watching the show, you can keep score, and check in with my website to see how I fared. I loved Lady Antebellum and Adam Lambert, so I voted for “Need You Now” and “Whataya Want From Me?” Always a bluegrass, alt.country and Cajun fan, I voted for Del McCoury, a tribute to the late John Hartford (author of “Gentle On My Mind,” and contributor to the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack, for which he won his last of four GRAMMYs), and Eunice/Lafayette/Opelousas, Louisiana’s own danceable Pine Leaf Boys. I'm a yellow dog Richard Thompson fan, so I chose his recent release, Dream Attic, in the Contemporary Folk category. And I’m all for strong women with big recognizable voices and real vision, so I voted for Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, together and apart, and Cyndi Lauper’s "traditional" blues and R&B/soul singer Bettye LaVette’s reinterpretations of the British rock songbook. A few quirky numbers caught my ear: A few quirky numbers caught my ear: Jeff Beck performing “Nessun Dorma” gave the aria a startling spare reading, even if the sweet strings behind him were an over-sufficiency and the cast of Glee singing “Don’t Stop Believin’ (Regionals Version)” got the nod, though such a diva-loaded performance seems a bit over the top, even for a Journey song. My votes closed with Herbie Hancock’s tender solo on “A Change Is Gonna Come” (though I have to admit that the international peace music group Playing For Change’s live performance at the Starbucks Leadership Conference in New Orleans in 2009, featuring Suriname-born and Amsterdam-raised Clarence Bekker and New Orleans’ own Grandpa Elliott on vocals is probably my all-time favorite version of that song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvayzIktTJ4). But for the GRAMMYs, for this year, for my money, Hancock beat out the instrumental competition including Wynton Marsalis and Keith Jarrett, hands down.

See my 2011 GRAMMY votes.