Okay, I'll admit I vote for the Grammies. Yup. Why? Besides the sometimes odd spectacle of the Grammy Awards, NARAS does some cool stuff in the music community (like the Seattle Studio Summit), MusiCares and the Producers and Engineers Wing. So I do vote for these Grammy Awards, and in many years past it's felt like a futile game, as the few half-interesting albums, songs and artists that DO make the final cut seemed to always get overshadowed by the act with the bigger sales or "legendary" status. This year was a bit different. Seeing Robert Plant and Alison Krauss take home all 5 awards they were up for, including Album of the Year, nearly made my cry. "What, real music won?" Damn nice, and seeing a few folks I'd met over the years, like T Bone Burnett and Gavin Lurssen up there grinning at the end was damn nice. Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical went to a great album, Consolers of the Lonely by The Raconteurs, and some cool dudes: Joe Chiccarelli, Vance Powell & Jack White III. Nice. I guess Rick Rubin won producer of the year, but man, I wish I could say I thought his records sounded good these days. I think he's fucking shit up more than helping some times. But all in all, the Awards had some better stuff than I expected, and more acts won that I had voted for than ever, but sitting through country-row music hacks Sugarland, and then watching them butcher Adele's way too brief set was excruciating. And if the Jonas Brothers, Justin Timbershit and John Mayer fell off the face of the earth it would not be a bad thing for music. But what the hell do I know - I'm not a 12 year old girl who has crap music shoved in her face by the Disney Corp. If some of these audio mixers involved were stone deaf then I'd understand why half the performances sounded completely out of balance and weird. At least we got to see 2/5's of Radiohead rock out with a marching band, although that mix was the worst I heard by far. Alright, back to work...
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Tape Op Magazine Presents: Let's Play the Recording Game!
by Larry Crane
