Music and Musical Gear

YOU MUST READ THIS POST! IT IS GOING TO BE HISTORIC! EVERYONE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT IT! I swear that every time I heard that last night during the Grammy Awards, I was certain of one thing – mediocrity was the best thing to hope for. If ‘everyone would be talking’, it would be like Nicki Minaj’s terrible performance that might signal her 15 minutes has played out with her singular stylistic droppings getting tiresome.

Yesterday we heard about the death of Whitney Houston, one of the all-time best selling female vocalists. She was extremely popular from the mid-80’s through the 90’s, but more than that she brought to the stage a voice that ranks her among the great all-time vocalists in popular music. Here is a bit from the news item: Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48. Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer…

Before the Grammy Awards last year I highlighted performances by Miles Davis and the double-genre performance by Wynton Marsalis that took more than 10 minutes and would be impossible today … if those categories still even existed. The Grammy Awards are now all about corporate self-congratulation, highlighting the few artists who sell all the records and those who get rich on their backs. Last year there was outrage when Justin Beiber had “his” best new artist award ‘stolen’ by the amazingly talented Esperanza Spalding (of course, ANYONE in the category was/is more talented than Beiber, but that is beside the…