The Grammy Awards, which happens this weekend, has been going on for awhile (since 1958), and has always tried to be hipper than they are, bless their hearts.

For example, the year the Beatles took over America, and by extension the whole pop world, the song that took home the Record of the Year trophy was “The Girl From Ipanema”; the Song of the Year was “Hello, Dolly!” In fairness, though, the Fab Four did receive a Grammy for Best Performance by a Pop Group. After that year, the group that runs the Grammys decided, and not for the last time, to try and catch up with musical trends. In other words, to become relevant.

The Grammys did a fair job of keeping up with the hurly-burly that was the late sixties music scene, but began to stumble when disco started to sell a lot of records in the seventies. What else can explain A Taste of Honey winning the Best New Artist award in 1978 for their one (and only) hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie”. And then of course who can forget the Grammy Award winner for Best New Artist in 1990: Milli Vanilli, a duo that could not be bothered to use their own voices on their songs. But then again, they never claimed to have sung the songs that bore their name.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has taken a more aggressive approach since then, and one way they have dealt with the whole “staying relevant” thing, is to hand out awards for about any category they can think of. This has helped open up the whole awards thing, and deflected criticism about which musician is an “artist”, and which musician is a “performer” (although either one involves a certain amount of talent).

So congratulations to all the contestants.

Not Conan The Barbarian, either (which, by the way, the movie industry is remaking as we speak).

Now that the Conan-slash-Jay incident is finally resolved, perhaps we can take a more rational look at what prompted this P.R. nightmare. Just so you know, this will be the first year that N.B.C. has ever lost money: it will be in the hole about $100 million dollars, mainly because of Olympic production costs. Exactly one decade ago, the network made well over a billion dollars. That’s quite a drop, but N.B.C. is not alone: all the broadcast over-the-air networks are in the same boat. That’s because they are competing with cable channels that not only use the same business model they do (advertising), but also have an additional revenue stream with cable subscribers.

And speaking of cable competition, this year N.B.C.’s total share of prime-time audience will be about 5%.

So a lot of impetus of this recent late-night show swapping was brought about by a need to control costs while remaining competitive. And, according to N.B.C., they were happy with the ratings and profit from the prime-time Jay Leno show, but it was their affiliates that weren’t. Something else cable channels don’t have to worry about. And if the network bigwigs are to be believed, the not-so-distant future model of the big four networks will resemble the cable channel model.

Then the broadcast network affiliates will really have something to worry about.

The dire conditions in Haiti are difficult to fathom.  The pressing issue does not involve petty politics or ideology.  Here is a link I hope you find useful.

www.oxfam.org/getinvolved

This area of the country is blessed in the amount and depth of talent displayed by local musicians. In our ongoing effort to support and nurture the local music scene here in Western New York, we are glad to see the return of the weekly free “Lake Local Music Series“, and the debut of a new weekly local music performance showcase called “The Buffalo Shuffle”.

Every Friday night beginning at 6 pm at Nietzsche’s, 248 Allen Street, you can see some of the best musicians in the area perform for free, with no cover charge. The “Lake Local Music Series” has been a long-standing tradition here at 107.7 The Lake, and we are glad that this has been able to continue, thanks to the generous support of the local community.

And now a new weekly tradition begins  Mondays beginning at 8pm at The Tralf Music Hall 622 Main Street, with “The Buffalo Shuffle”. This showcase has a regular local music house band (Doug Yeomans, Mick Hayes, Pete Holquin, Jim Ehinger, Steve Sadoff, and Al Monti), with a special guest local musician every week. Although not free, a portion of the small cover charge goes to benefit the Blues Society of Western New York.

We hope you will support these local musicians, and the venues that make these events possible.

As I recall, “2010″ was the sequel to “2001 A Space Odyssey”..  At the end of the film(Spoiler Alert) One of Jupiter’s Moon’s explodes thus giving the Earth Two  Suns…!    Can’t wait…

The Grammy Awards come around at the end of this month.  There are often a hit and miss affair.  A quick scan of the list shows me that the Dave Matthews Band record “Big Whisky & the Groo Grux” is the finest and most deserving for Album of the Year.  A fine collection and fitting to tribute to the late Leroi Moore….

It was right about this point at the beginning of the last decade that record company executives thought their future was never ending. They had just shattered all the previous one-week sales records, with ‘Nysyc’s “No Strings Attached” compact disc, selling an astounding 2.4 million units in one week. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters, one year after that milestone, the first iPod was launched. And by the time record company executives started thinking “Houston, we have a problem”, they decided to blame the customer (always a bad idea). The record labels began to sue music lovers in an ill-fated attempt to stop music piracy. After years of bad publicity, suing over 35,000 fans (one a 12-year old girl and another a grandmother who didn’t happen to even have a computer), the record industry finally retired that policy.

In case you’re wondering, the number of albums that were released in 2009 that finally sold as many as ‘Nysyc did in that one week, totals exactly two. The percentage of record buyers buying music online at the beginning of the decade amounted to 2.2% of all sales. Today that figure stands at about 30%.