[Dixielandjazz] Everything Old is Praised Again

[Stephen G Barbone]

When I first saw the title of the below article I thought it might be  
about OKOM. <grin> But it isn't, specifically, that is. However,  
though it is about the Grammys,  it might just as well have been about  
the Dixieland mindset of many bands and fans. I wonder if this  
resistance to change the author speaks about, is endemic to all music  
genres?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Everything Old Is Praised Again

NY TIMES - By JON CARAMANICA - February 13, 2012


Sunday night, at the 54th Grammy Awards, it was 2003 redux. I mean,  
1999 redux.

Or was it 2007? To say nothing of 2005, 2000, 2009 and 2002.

For the third time in recent memory, the Grammys dropped a boatload of  
awards on a young female singer-songwriter and her breakthrough album.  
This year it was Adele, who won six for her work on “21” (XL/ 
Columbia). In 2003 Norah Jones took in five for “Come Away With  
Me” (Blue Note), and in 1999 Lauryn Hill did the same with “The  
Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” (Ruffhouse/Columbia).

Coincidence? Perhaps. But for the umpteenth time, the Grammys went  
with familiarity over risk, bestowing album of the year honors (and  
several more) on an album that reinforced the values of an older  
generation suspicious of change. In the recent past that trend has  
included the Dixie Chicks’ “Taking the Long Way” (Columbia), in 2007;  
the Ray Charles duets album “Genius Loves Company” (Concord/Hear  
Music), in 2005; the collaboration-heavy Santana album  
“Supernatural” (Arista), in 2000; the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss  
collaboration, “Raising Sand” (Rounder), in 2009; and the “O Brother,  
Where Art Thou?” soundtrack (Lost Highway), in 2002. That it was done  
this year under a veneer of progressivism — the anointing of a modern  
young star as a marquee talent — only makes it more loathsome.

Charming though Adele’s album was, there is nothing forward-looking  
about it, or about the accolades rained down on her this year. “21” is  
a spare, slightly haughty pop album, at the intersection of classic  
soul and singer-songwriter post-folk, sounds that have long been  
welcome at the Grammys. The same was true of the work of Ms. Jones  
and, to a slightly lesser degree, Ms. Hill, who was the most  
adventurous of the three but who was recognized largely for making hip- 
hop palatable to Grammy voters.

Appropriately, Adele’s ascension happened during one of the dullest  
Grammy ceremonies in recent memory, a tour de force of bumbling anti- 
imagination hampered even further by the death of Whitney Houston the  
day before the show, which left producers scrambling to fit in raw  
tribute with shimmering and gauche spectacle.

What emerged amid the celebration of Adele and other winners and the  
often clunky musical performances was a stubborn and almost total  
reluctance to engage with the music of the day. Younger artists were  
allowed stage time only when they were matched up with more  
established acts: Maroon 5 and Foster the People bolstering a reunited  
Beach Boys, or Blake Shelton and the Band Perry accompanying Glen  
Campbell. And when the kids were left to their own devices, they were  
hung out to dry, as on the disastrous live collision that included  
David Guetta, Deadmau5 (pronounced “dead mouse”), Chris Brown and Lil  
Wayne. (And Foo Fighters — more on that later.)

Meanwhile, more traditional artists like Adele, Bruce Springsteen,  
Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney got to perform unencumbered. Of  
younger, riskier artists, only a handful got that privilege: Katy  
Perry, who was at her most vicious; Nicki Minaj, who was at her most  
disturbed; and Chris Brown, who was at his most limber. Even Rihanna  
was saddled with dragging Coldplay out of its doldrums.

Pop music has been at its most exuberant, plastic and confusing — in  
the best way — in recent years, but this ceremony hardly captured  
that. Instead the show went out of its way to uphold antiquated  
values. The induction of Adele into a not-so-secret society will be  
cheered as a triumph over artifice, and what an unfortunate thing that  
will be.

Also troubling was the domination in the rock categories of Foo  
Fighters, who took home five awards. In acceptance speeches during  
both the pretelecast and the main show, the band’s frontman, Dave  
Grohl, invoked the garage in which it recorded its winning album,  
“Wasting Light” (Roswell/RCA), and advocated for the “human element”  
of making music that way, as if no humans were involved in the making  
of other nominees’ music.

Even the most reluctant Grammy winner unconsciously echoed the night’s  
theme of old-school Puritanism. Bon Iver was named best new artist,  
and Justin Vernon, the creative force behind the band, gave an aw- 
shucks speech that was rooted in nostalgia for the indie ethics of the  
1980s: “When I started to make songs, I did it for the inherent reward  
of making songs, so I’m a little bit uncomfortable up here.” (It was a  
softer step than how he suggested, in an interview last year, that  
he’d approach such a situation: “Everyone should go home, this is  
ridiculous.”)

Even when the music wasn’t conservative, Grammy voters were. The  
familiar name and demonstrably serious musician Kanye West was the  
night’s big hip-hop winner, with four awards. He didn’t even bother to  
show up for the broadcast, which was well enough, because hip-hop was  
almost completely marginalized, reduced to a token Lil Wayne verse  
during the dance-music collision. In the dance categories Skrillex  
emerged as a new force with three awards, victories that reflect his  
being a brand name in a genre most voters very likely know next to  
nothing about.

Given these choices, the ubiquity of Foo Fighters in award collecting  
and stage time came as no surprise. The band is dynamics-free and  
tiresome, not much more than a cover band gone legit, except instead  
of covering songs (though it does that too, in concert), it covers  
whole styles, guaranteeing that fans of 1970s hard rock, 1980s hair  
bands and 1990s post-grunge will all be soothed equally. Its stand- 
alone performance was middling, and it was also part of the dance- 
music tragedy, during which it performed the popular Deadmau5 remix of  
its song “Rope”; its presence came off like baby-sitting.)

That’s no shock: it will take decades, probably, before guitars cede  
their Grammy primacy, even if they’re losing it everywhere else. The  
show opened with Mr. Springsteen humorlessly churning through a new  
song, “We Take Care of Our Own,” which mistakes jingoism for empathy,  
and closed with a performance by Mr. McCartney — his second and maybe  
the best of the night — who was joined by Mr. Springsteen, Joe Walsh  
and, inevitably, Mr. Grohl, cheesing for the cameras.

Forget women. Forget black or Latin stars or those of any other ethnic  
background. In a year in which the Grammys could have reasonably tried  
to sell progress as a narrative, it chose to end the night with a  
phalanx of older white men playing guitars, a battalion guarding the  
rickety old castle from attack, a defiant last stand of yesteryear.