THE GRAMMIES

I don't usually watch the Grammies much anymore. But caught the last three hours (!) and dug some of the live performances. Watching Ringo sing his song "Photographs"—which I used to dance around my DC apartment to back in my DC days—touched me (and impressed me, the cat's in his 70s after all) and McCartney win a grammie for a new song(!) as well as perform another new one with Ringo on drums behind him (would rather have seen it be a smaller band without the extra drummer, but guess they needed it for the sound they wanted)...

But one of the things that bugged me on that one was the camera work. The sound is usually the worst aspect of these live shows on TV, but for these Grammies it was the camera work. Which just sucked half the time. Like during another highlight when Pink did that incredible high wire air ballet while singing etc.! Amazing performance, but at times lost in some mandatory distant shot that seemed to be playing Where's Pink?

Daft Punk's "Lucky" performance with Nile Rodgers, Stevie Wonder and Pharrell Williams, and Metallica's with Lang Lang, and Trent Reznor's and Dave Grohl et. al. finale were some other highlights. But the best was Mackalmore's "Same Love" performance with help from an array of talent, spotlighting all kinds of wedding vows (same gender, mixed races, etc.) only once again the camera work sucked.

Also touching was the performance by Willy Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, joined by Waylon Jennings and that contemporary western singer from The Voice. They were makin' me feel old, I have to admit, watching them try to play and sing what used to come so easily to them but now seemed a bit of a challenge (interestingly, the youngest of the three old guys was Kris but he was having the most trouble reaching some of the notes)...

Oh yea, and Carol King doing a piano and voice duet with Sara Bareilles. Talk about talent.

All in all a pretty good show though.