Did the Grammy Awards get something right?

For years I haven't watched the Grammy Awards. For the most it's because the awards are more about music that sells a huge number of units or sentimental/political favorites than about truly great music. Like when the Dixie Chicks swept the awards because they were being boycotted by Country music fans for slamming President Bush or when Jethro Tull beat Metallica for the first Heavy Metal Grammy. My faith in the Grammy electorate is extremely low. However, this year they awarded a total of five awards to Robert Plant and Allison Krauss' collaboration "Raising Sand" including Record of the Year for "Please Read The Letter," Album of the Year for "Raising Sand," Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Rich Woman, " Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for "Killing The Blues," and Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album for "Raising Sand." I'm really looking forward to the follow up album.

If they aren't careful the Grammy awards might actually become relevant to good music.

T Bone Burnett

In an interview with New York’s WNYC, Producer T Bone Burnett expounds on his dislike for the CD. "It's stepped down from tape to digital to compressed digital, so people are now listening to a Xerox of a Polaroid of a photograph of a painting." For future releases of Burnett’s projects he intends to release a CD packaged with a DVD that will include DVD-Audio and files in a number of formats including 24/96, 16/44.1, AAC, and MP3. The files will be encoded from the original master instead of the process so eloquently described by Mr. Burnett. All for the same price as a conventional CD release. Too bad it wasn’t ready for the Robert Plant & Allison Krauss release “Raising Sand.” Hopefully it will be re-released in the new format.

Touching

Below is a clip of Robert Plant paying tribute to Jimmy Page. Here I am completely ready to write Robert off as a completely selfish, pompous ass and then he does something like this. It chocked me up a bit.

An unexpected twist

For those of you who haven't heard Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin fame) and Alison Krauss (a famous blue grass singer) have done an album together. Robert's motto has always been, "ever onward" which has earned him my respect. After Zeppelin he could have easily cashed in on the success by sticking with what he knew, but he decided to take risks. Some albums have been better than others but none of them have sounded the same.