8:00 PM: It’s Grammys’ 50th Birthday and the 2008 Rock Daily Grammys Live Blog is underway with a gentle reminder that things were easier for the record biz in 1958 (Alicia Keys is performing “with” Frank Sinatra). Seriously, does anyone actually think duets with dead stars are a good idea?
(Click here for photos from this year’s Grammy Awards.)
8:05 PM: Carrie Underwood is wearing vinyl. Last year’s Best New Artist winner performs “Before He Cheats” with a kind of Blue Man Group-esque ensemble beating on trash cans and attempting some Christina Aguilera-like vocal runs. Sorry kid, playing in the garbage doesn’t exactly make you dirrty.
8:09 PM: Prince presents Best Female R&B Vocal Performance to Alicia Keys for “No One,” making her the first winner of the night to thank God. Now that Prince is no longer required onstage, he can go back to filing lawsuits against his fans.
8:17 PM: Jimmy Jam brings out the original members of the Time (with a keytar). Rihanna joins them and starts singing — what else — “Umbrella,” then “Don’t Stop the Music.” There’s a perfect moment for Michael Jackson to come out here, but … he doesn’t.
8:23 PM: Tom Hanks (?) is talking about the Band, tonight’s Lifetime Achievement Award honorees. Wait, we are honoring the Beatles! With performances from Cirque du Soleil’s Love and the movie Across the Universe. Nothing says rock & roll like interpretative dance.
8:34 PM: Miley Cyrus and Cyndi Lauper are presenting Best New Artist. Amy Winehouse wins, but doesn’t appear via satellite for an acceptance speech. Major letdown. Question: Is Amy Winehouse the 21st century Cyndi Lauper?
8:35 PM: They have Jason Bateman outside at the “People’s Grammys.” He is being eaten by insects and has the unenviable job of getting folks amped about a violinist. Nothing says rock & roll like some hot classical fiddlin’! Who will you text vote for?
8:45 PM: That Daft Punk sample could only mean one thing: Kanye West in those darn shades and some sort of Michael Jackson-referencing battery-operated jacket that has a tail. If that pyramid doesn’t open up and reveal DP in there, this “sampling” thing has gone a bit far.
8:48 PM: Ah, there they are (and we’re being told it’s their first-ever televised performance). It’s going to be hard to top this as the coolest performance of the night. Okay, this may be the coolest Grammy performance ever.
8:49 PM: We have moved on to the major downer part of West’s performance — his touching tribute to his mother, Donda. (More interpretative dance on the big screen, and West appears to have “Mama” shaved into his hair.)
8:52 PM: John Legend joins Fergie for a performance of her next single (yes, they’re squeezing out another from The Dutchess), “Finally.” This is our second-favorite song about meth addiction, behind Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life.”
8:55 PM: Legend and Fergie present the Grammy for Best Soundtrack Compilation for a Motion Picture, Television, or other Visual Media to Love. Ringo kindly reminds us who he is when he comes up to accept.
9:03 PM: The one and only Cher opens with an age joke (nice) and looks like Joan Rivers.
9:04 PM: Beyoncé is taking us to fabulous-woman school, shouting out Diana, Gladys, Whitney, Janet. Tina Turner emerges. Oddly enough, she looks like Joan Rivers, too — Joan Rivers in an easy-bake foil wrapper.
9:08 PM: Turner brings out Beyoncé for “Proud Mary.” Sixty-eight-year-old Turner is giving B a run for her money in the energy department.
9:13 PM: Strange trio alert: Andy Williams, Nelly Furtado and actress Rosalyn Sanchez are both honoring Burt Bacharach and giving out the trophy for Song of the Year. Winehouse wins again! Still no acceptance via satellite. Dang!
9:20 PM: How bitter is Jason Bateman? “By the powers invested in me by whoever booked me this gig …” he presents the My Grammy Moment winner: Violinist Ann Marie Calhoun. Foo Fighters (with Pat Smear!) start rocking “The Pretender.” We’re glad John Paul Jones is fake-conducting this orchestra and not on a reunion tour with Led Zeppelin. Dave Grohl’s voice is shot from too much chit-chat on the red carpet with Giuliana Rancic.
9:32 PM: George Lopez is shouting! And introducing Brad Paisley! Meanwhile, over on The Wire, Omar is mending his broken leg after falling six stories and McNaulty is still peddling his fake serial killer.
9:37 PM: Was Beyoncé contractually obliged to bring her sister along? Solange, Chris Brown and Akon are reminiscing about DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith, the first winners of Best Rap Album. Whoa, awkward moment. Somebody blew their Tele-Prompter lines. This year’s winner: Kanye West, who has his sunglasses attached to his head with a librarian string. He’s making a grand statement about hip-hop not being dead, shouting out Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse and getting pissed about being played off by the exit music (”It would be in good taste to stop the music then,” he says, as he’s talking about his mom).
9:41 PM: Ludacris is honoring Cab Calloway with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Bebe Winans and Aretha Franklin get an immediate standing ovation. There’s some sort of trombone throw-down happening.
9:49 PM: We’ve been praising Jesus for eight minutes now.
9:56 PM: We’re back with Carole King and Dierks Bentley to honor Earl Scruggs, yet another Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Who didn’t get one of those? Annnd here’s a forced transition into Feist!
9:58 PM: Whatever Feist is doing to this song, it isn’t an improvement over the LP version. No dancers in American Apparel or an indie-rock chorus! Not that much fun.
10:00 PM: Keely Smith tells Kid Rock, “I’ll do anything you want me to do.” Um … what? Seriously, what is going on right now? Robert Ritchie is about a half-hour late for the Cab Calloway tribute.
10:03 PM: Best Rock Album goes to Foo Fighters’ Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. Taylor Hawkins is keeping it real in a T-shirt (wonder what he said on the red carpet when they asked “Who are you wearing tonight?”).
10:11 PM: Stevie Wonder is in leopard (it’s possible he doesn’t know how unfashionably dressed he is). He brought his harmonica so he could properly introduce Alicia Keys with a few bars of “No One.” Keys has literally let her hair down for her collabo with John Mayer. Mayer strides out with his busted-up Strat and jams out.
10:17 PM: Ringo Starr and Dave Stewart, two bearded dudes in sunglasses, have arrived to give away the award for Best Country Album even though they are not from this country. Tim McGraw is upset by Vince Gill: “I just had an award given to me by a Beatle. Have you had that happen yet, Kanye?” BURN. West will have an anti-Gill mixtape on the streets by Wednesday.
10:24 PM: Actor Joe Mategna honors two more Lifetime Achievement Award honorees: Yitzhak Perlman and Max Roach. Herbie Hancock and pianist Lang Lang are performing “Rhapsody in Blue,” the abridged version. Is this the same orchestra that played with Foo Fighters?
10:32 PM: It’s around 3:30 AM in London now, so Amy Winehouse should be rolling home from the club nearly prepared for her big performance!
10:33 PM: Juanes and Taylor Swift are an odd choice to present Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, but alas. “Umbrella” (Rihanna featuring Jay-Z) wins, which should surprise nobody. Jay-Z is “translating” for her in an attempt to move things along. Jay-Z should write everybody’s acceptance speeches.
10:40 PM: Pleasant surprise: the CBS show Jericho is using the Hives’ “Tick Tick Boom” in their commercials.
10:41 PM: Cuba Gooding Jr. is live in London introducing Amy Winehouse! We can understand the words! She looks pretty good! Someone washed her beehive! She got her snaggletooth fixed! She is shouting out Blake! Most ironic rendition of “Rehab” ever. Britney, are you watching?
10:47 PM: Natalie Cole and Tony Bennett have an awkward Tele-Prompter moment, then honor Doris Day with yet another Lifetime Achievement Award. Record of the Year time! Amy Winehouse is caught unaware live via satellite! Her acceptance speech starts slow, gets loud and contains the line “for my Blake incarcerated.” Amazing.
10:53 PM: And the Grammy for most commercials goes to Beyoncé!
10:56 PM: President and CEO of the Recording Academy Neil Portow is taking us on a tour of the Academy and pleading with the television audience to please, for the love of God, buy CDs this year (okay, he’s actually talking about radio royalties). Eldar is playing an Oscar Peterson tune on piano. Who is Eldar you ask? We suggest you use Google for that one.
11:00 PM: Tribute reel reminds us we lost Lee Hazlewood, Pimp C, Lucky Dube, Hilly Kristal, Don Ho, Dan Fogelberg, Porter Wagoner, Bobby Byrd, Ike Turner and Luciano Pavarotti this year. Pavarotti is getting an extended memorial via Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban.
11:12 PM: Bonnie Raitt introduces John Fogerty, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. If sixty-eight-year-old Tina Turner can squeeze herself into a shiny silver get-up and high kick, seventy-two-year-old Lewis should be able to at least turn his head to the left. Seventy-five-year-old Little Richard stopped aging in 1987.
11:21 PM: Stop the presses. Art Brut’s Eddie Argos stars in a Sidekick commercial.
11:24 PM: Professor Will.i.am is celebrating fifty years of Grammys. He is rhyming Grammy with “jammy.” Uh oh. Evidently this is some sort of live montage of Grammy-winning songs from the past half-decade as interpreted by the lead Black Eyed Pea.
11:26 PM: Usher and twenty-seven-time Grammy winner Quincy Jones congratulate Mark Ronson on his producing award and prepare to finally give out Album of the Year.
11:28 PM: “There are no losers in this category, Kanye,” Usher jokes. And the award goes to Herbie Hancock. We really could have used an Amy Winehouse reaction shot here. Apparently it’s been forty-three years since a jazz artist last won this honor. Sorry, Herbie, but name-checking Miles Davis and John Coltrane isn’t going to make us forget that two of this decade’s most exciting performers just lost out to a record of Joni Mitchell interpretations.
11:38 PM: Wait, is THIS the Beatles tribute? A freaky version of “Sgt. Pepper’s”?
11:40 PM: And, we’re spent. That’s it, folks! Come back tomorrow for Rock Daily’s full post-Grammys coverage, including a special edition of the Smoking Section and reports from behind the scenes and the afterparties.
Share
Email
AIM
Del.icio.us
DiggThis
Fark It!
- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
Get RS Mobile
RSS
