If, like me, you were amazed at how Madonna interacted with the holographic band "The Gorillaz" I am about to spoil your fun. The entire set with her and the Gorillaz was filmed prior to the show. This is why you didn't see her make the transition from them to the set with the dancers. This also explains how she changed corsets so fast. Oh well. The fantasy was nice while it lasted.
She also announced today on The Ellen Show that she is indeed touring this summer, like I hadn't already told you that. Chances are, she'll probably lay somewhat low between now and then getting ready for the tour.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Grammys Schmammys!
Here we are in the middle of award show season. You know what I’m talking about…where all of Hollywood get dressed up, walk the red carpet and then spend 3+ hours patting each other on the back. They give gracious speeches thanking God and everyone they’ve known since age 3. It always makes me wonder if God watches award shows. If so, does he get all warm and cuddly inside when a rap artist thanks him for his award for a song that mentions the word “bitches” or “ho’s” 45 times?
“Hey St. Peter, Eminem just thanked me for his Grammy for the song where he kills his wife and stuffs her in the trunk of the car! How sweet!! Bring me a tissue.”
Last night, the music industry gathered for The Grammy’s at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Some looking their best and some looking pretty normal. It’s one of those award shows where some people don’t feel the need to get dressed up at all. Even so, I’m sure the dressed-down artists spent as much time looking “thrown together” as did the stars who were dressed to the nines. Okay, I’m not here today to debate the winners, as it really doesn’t matter. No one tunes in with their fingers crossed for Mariah or Gwen to win and there’s not an office Grammy pool. People tune in to see the stars. See them sing, see how they’re dressed, see how they act, see their faces when they lose and watch them all look bored when a rival is performing. Let’s get to the show.
The show opened with the Gorillaz, the animated band, singing their song “Feel Good.” I could tell right away that they had retooled the song a bit to flow right into Madonna’s “Hung Up.” Watching the holographic band was pretty amazing. It was awesome when, one of my old school favorites, De La Soul came out. The holograms looked bored and the lead singer started text messaging on his phone. The drummer was falling asleep until Madonna rose from the floor. She interacted with the holograms, which was cool. It was actually mind blowing when she walked behind one of them. Then she went to a different stage and performed the rest of the song with her dancers. She looked and sounded amazing. My only problem with it is that we’ve seen it before. She performed this exact number, choreography and all on the MTV Europe Awards. One of my pet peeves is when an artist simply performs their video live. And much of the choreography is directly from the video. Either way, there’s not another female artist out there who could have pulled off that number as well as she did. All I could think was the younger female artists in the audience thinking, “Crap, I’m going to have to look that good at 47?” Kelly Clarkson was probably thinking, “Damn, I can’t lift my leg that high right now!” On a side note, I just watched her video for the song “Sorry” on AOL.com and she’s channeling some serious Xanadu!
Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys were the first presenters. After some pretty awkward and forced banter, Stevie launched into an impromptu and acapella version of “Higher Ground” for Coretta Scott King. He urged the audience to sing along, but they just clapped and looked confused.
I won’t bore you with a play by play. I’ll just make a list of what I liked and didn’t like:
THE LOWDOWN
1. U2 with Mary J. Blige was incredible. She out sang Bono and then proceeded to sing the hell out of the song. Good for her! You go, Mary.
2. Coldplay sucked. The lead singer Chris looked like a rag doll. He was off key and I still don’t get why he wraps colored tape around his fingers. Gwenyth, can you help us out here? And his run through the audience was contrived at best. Boring boring boring. This band wants to be U2 so bad even I can taste it.
3. The Sly & the Family Stone Tribute was really good. Though, I’m not sure who the guy that sang with Fantasia was. Everyone did a great job. Ciara looked hot! I mean hot! Then Sly Stone came out. This was after 18 or so years out of the spotlight. He looked confused, kept his head bowed the whole time, played for a few minutes with a very confused looking band and then abruptly left the stage. Even still, he’s a big pioneer in funk rock. I was glad he even made an appearance. Nice 3 foot blond Mohawk he was sporting! Go Sly!!!!
4. The Kanye West debacle was just that! He and Jamie Foxx were dressed up like a drum corp. performing with a drum corp. What was that all about? Did they miss it when Destiny’s Child did the drum corp. thing with “Baby Boy” or Gwen’s drum corp. on Saturday Night Live on “Hollaback Girl”?? Am I’m so tired of Jamie Foxx doing Ray Charles. You got the Oscar, shut the hell up already. On his way to the stage at the beginning of his number he mumbled something about how if he didn’t win [album of the year], “ders gunna be problems.” So, you can imagine how delighted I was that he lost album of the year to U2, though he should have lost it to Gwen Stefani. I mean really, U2 is good, but their last album was weak at best. Gwen rocked 2005 like nobody’s business. She’s the most respected white girl in the R&B industry! She was up for a Soul Train award! Either way, she looked great and her tummy is growin’!
5. Last night, while watching the show, it dawned on me that it was trash night and I needed to get ours put out. Since we just moved in, we’re still generating a lot of trash. It took 10 minutes or so. When I got back inside, I realized I had missed Mariah’s Performance. I’m sure she wore dress 4 sizes too small and over sang every note of the song. Then we launched into jokes but how I un-emancipated Mimi by taking her out with the trash. I mean, she really is a trashy girl. I remember back in the late 80s when she was on her 4th music video and a reporter for Rolling Stone said her videos looked like phone sex commercials. And that pretty much describes her.
6. Christina Aguilera with Herbie Hancock. So is she trying to channel Madonna from the early 90’s or Marilyn Monroe. Either way, she actually looked understated for once. She did a pretty good job on the song, but I credit that with Herbie’s arrangement. Seriously, Christina hasn’t met a song yet that she didn’t sing right into the ground.
7. Thank god we didn’t have to watch any of the pop tarts try to hold their own. No Jessica, Ashley, Lindsay or Hilary. That was like a gift from God. Not that I think any of them would ever be nominated for a Grammy. Since it’s an award that requires actual talent.
8. So….Jay Z with Linkin Park. It was an odd pairing to begin with and had no business winning an award. Sure they sound good together, but the lyrical content of the two songs have NOTHING to do with each other. And then during their performance, they did a really bad segue way into “Yesterday” with Paul McCartney joining them onstage. It was awkward at best. And the oddest thing was to hear Jay Z mumbling his “ya” and “uh huh” crap while the other two sang the song. Seeing that he can’t sing, I guess that was all he could contribute.
Overall, I thought the show was boring. There were no surprises, but what can you expect with a 5 second delay? Some of the stars looked great, others just looked horrible. Like Billy Joel said: All you need are looks and a whole lotta money, you can’t dress trashy ‘til you spend a lot of money.
If I’m correct, we only have one more award show to stomach and it’s the “Brokeback Oscar Mountain” awards. Sorry, I still haven’t seen the movie. At this point, I won’t see it until it comes out on pay per view. I am way too harsh and critical of movies that become media darlings. Funny thing is, I have gay friends who think this movie is the best thing since cha cha heels and Brad Pitt’s abs, and then I have other gay friends who thought this movie was an overblown piece of crap. And it’s either/or. I haven’t met anyone yet who thought is was just “okay.” Anyway, let me stop before I go off on a Brokeback tangent.
Thanks for reading. Who knows what I’ll blog about next. I’m always open to suggestions……
“Hey St. Peter, Eminem just thanked me for his Grammy for the song where he kills his wife and stuffs her in the trunk of the car! How sweet!! Bring me a tissue.”
Last night, the music industry gathered for The Grammy’s at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Some looking their best and some looking pretty normal. It’s one of those award shows where some people don’t feel the need to get dressed up at all. Even so, I’m sure the dressed-down artists spent as much time looking “thrown together” as did the stars who were dressed to the nines. Okay, I’m not here today to debate the winners, as it really doesn’t matter. No one tunes in with their fingers crossed for Mariah or Gwen to win and there’s not an office Grammy pool. People tune in to see the stars. See them sing, see how they’re dressed, see how they act, see their faces when they lose and watch them all look bored when a rival is performing. Let’s get to the show.
The show opened with the Gorillaz, the animated band, singing their song “Feel Good.” I could tell right away that they had retooled the song a bit to flow right into Madonna’s “Hung Up.” Watching the holographic band was pretty amazing. It was awesome when, one of my old school favorites, De La Soul came out. The holograms looked bored and the lead singer started text messaging on his phone. The drummer was falling asleep until Madonna rose from the floor. She interacted with the holograms, which was cool. It was actually mind blowing when she walked behind one of them. Then she went to a different stage and performed the rest of the song with her dancers. She looked and sounded amazing. My only problem with it is that we’ve seen it before. She performed this exact number, choreography and all on the MTV Europe Awards. One of my pet peeves is when an artist simply performs their video live. And much of the choreography is directly from the video. Either way, there’s not another female artist out there who could have pulled off that number as well as she did. All I could think was the younger female artists in the audience thinking, “Crap, I’m going to have to look that good at 47?” Kelly Clarkson was probably thinking, “Damn, I can’t lift my leg that high right now!” On a side note, I just watched her video for the song “Sorry” on AOL.com and she’s channeling some serious Xanadu!
Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys were the first presenters. After some pretty awkward and forced banter, Stevie launched into an impromptu and acapella version of “Higher Ground” for Coretta Scott King. He urged the audience to sing along, but they just clapped and looked confused.
I won’t bore you with a play by play. I’ll just make a list of what I liked and didn’t like:
THE LOWDOWN
1. U2 with Mary J. Blige was incredible. She out sang Bono and then proceeded to sing the hell out of the song. Good for her! You go, Mary.
2. Coldplay sucked. The lead singer Chris looked like a rag doll. He was off key and I still don’t get why he wraps colored tape around his fingers. Gwenyth, can you help us out here? And his run through the audience was contrived at best. Boring boring boring. This band wants to be U2 so bad even I can taste it.
3. The Sly & the Family Stone Tribute was really good. Though, I’m not sure who the guy that sang with Fantasia was. Everyone did a great job. Ciara looked hot! I mean hot! Then Sly Stone came out. This was after 18 or so years out of the spotlight. He looked confused, kept his head bowed the whole time, played for a few minutes with a very confused looking band and then abruptly left the stage. Even still, he’s a big pioneer in funk rock. I was glad he even made an appearance. Nice 3 foot blond Mohawk he was sporting! Go Sly!!!!
4. The Kanye West debacle was just that! He and Jamie Foxx were dressed up like a drum corp. performing with a drum corp. What was that all about? Did they miss it when Destiny’s Child did the drum corp. thing with “Baby Boy” or Gwen’s drum corp. on Saturday Night Live on “Hollaback Girl”?? Am I’m so tired of Jamie Foxx doing Ray Charles. You got the Oscar, shut the hell up already. On his way to the stage at the beginning of his number he mumbled something about how if he didn’t win [album of the year], “ders gunna be problems.” So, you can imagine how delighted I was that he lost album of the year to U2, though he should have lost it to Gwen Stefani. I mean really, U2 is good, but their last album was weak at best. Gwen rocked 2005 like nobody’s business. She’s the most respected white girl in the R&B industry! She was up for a Soul Train award! Either way, she looked great and her tummy is growin’!
5. Last night, while watching the show, it dawned on me that it was trash night and I needed to get ours put out. Since we just moved in, we’re still generating a lot of trash. It took 10 minutes or so. When I got back inside, I realized I had missed Mariah’s Performance. I’m sure she wore dress 4 sizes too small and over sang every note of the song. Then we launched into jokes but how I un-emancipated Mimi by taking her out with the trash. I mean, she really is a trashy girl. I remember back in the late 80s when she was on her 4th music video and a reporter for Rolling Stone said her videos looked like phone sex commercials. And that pretty much describes her.
6. Christina Aguilera with Herbie Hancock. So is she trying to channel Madonna from the early 90’s or Marilyn Monroe. Either way, she actually looked understated for once. She did a pretty good job on the song, but I credit that with Herbie’s arrangement. Seriously, Christina hasn’t met a song yet that she didn’t sing right into the ground.
7. Thank god we didn’t have to watch any of the pop tarts try to hold their own. No Jessica, Ashley, Lindsay or Hilary. That was like a gift from God. Not that I think any of them would ever be nominated for a Grammy. Since it’s an award that requires actual talent.
8. So….Jay Z with Linkin Park. It was an odd pairing to begin with and had no business winning an award. Sure they sound good together, but the lyrical content of the two songs have NOTHING to do with each other. And then during their performance, they did a really bad segue way into “Yesterday” with Paul McCartney joining them onstage. It was awkward at best. And the oddest thing was to hear Jay Z mumbling his “ya” and “uh huh” crap while the other two sang the song. Seeing that he can’t sing, I guess that was all he could contribute.
Overall, I thought the show was boring. There were no surprises, but what can you expect with a 5 second delay? Some of the stars looked great, others just looked horrible. Like Billy Joel said: All you need are looks and a whole lotta money, you can’t dress trashy ‘til you spend a lot of money.
If I’m correct, we only have one more award show to stomach and it’s the “Brokeback Oscar Mountain” awards. Sorry, I still haven’t seen the movie. At this point, I won’t see it until it comes out on pay per view. I am way too harsh and critical of movies that become media darlings. Funny thing is, I have gay friends who think this movie is the best thing since cha cha heels and Brad Pitt’s abs, and then I have other gay friends who thought this movie was an overblown piece of crap. And it’s either/or. I haven’t met anyone yet who thought is was just “okay.” Anyway, let me stop before I go off on a Brokeback tangent.
Thanks for reading. Who knows what I’ll blog about next. I’m always open to suggestions……
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