Another old-timer who appeared last night was Bob Dylan who will be 70 in May. He too chose an old song (this one he wrote) "Maggie's Farm," from the album "Bringing it all Back Home," (Columbia '65). He used his frog-croak voice, one that no one will ever get used to, and he was backed by two young bands he has influenced. Dylan doesn't bother me on stage. He stands in one place with his guitar and he sings. Hell, he's an old man. He's brilliant. He's the greatest living icon in American music. If he wants to sing like a frog, who am I to complain?

But Jagger. Really. Grace Slick, former lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane once said something like "rock 'n' roll is for young people." As you might know Grace will say anything. In part this is the result of having the best Rock female voice in the country and hearing it drowned out every night by half-talent male guitarists, who never seemed to understand that Grace Slick was the band. Period.

I was lucky enough to see what I believe was one of her final performances. It was in Germany. Grace was drunk. In the middle of the act, she went into this rambling monologue about Nazis and how she sure would feel safer once she was out of Nazi  Germany. It was the kind of Grace Slick you dream about. I believe I fell in love with her that night.

And Grace is right.That is the one thing about rock that separates it from all other forms of music - it is for young people (teens, twenties); a way, really, for them to express their displeasure with older folks like Sir Mick Jagger, with the establishment, with how screwed up the world is. Not many did this better than the Rolling Stones fronted by Mick Jagger. They were the Beatles' negative, and they were great. But you are 68 years old now Mick. You have been there. You have done it. We love you.You can sit down.

The Grammy's did have highlights, too. Such as when Justin Bieber, the most untalented performer to step on stage since Fabian Forte, failed to win Best New Artist. You just knew he had a place for that Grammy waiting at home. Well, sorry Justin, someone made a mistake and awarded it to a real musician and performer, Esperanza Spalding.

There is always a bad group or single artist who receives multiple Grammys. I don't know why this is. It must be that the judges, having made the one bad choice of awarding them their first Grammy, feel they almost have to back it up by giving them even more. Last night this group was Lady Antebellum. They won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and maybe another Grammy, with this irritating little ditty entitled "Need You Now." The song came wrapped in the 1980s and was terrible.

Great songs like Eninem's duo with Rihanna, "Love the way you Lie," actually lost to some cheap little tune that accidentally got into the room. So that was sad. But Eminem did all right for himself, taking some meaningful Grammys home. It was strange watching him last night.

His rhyming has improved and so has his timing and phrasing. He has become a formidable performer, a veteran. And Lady Gaga. She was easy to like. It helped that she had appeared in a segment of "60 Minutes" just moments before the awards show began. It gave her a chance to connect to the entire audience.

You see her in all these fantastic costumes including real meat and after a while you think of her almost as a cartoon character. But she corrected that impression on "60 Minutes," portraying herself as a performance artist. We are not talking Laurie Anderson. Gaga is a bit more bizarre. But she's a good performer and she knows what her audience wants. We are talking show business here, after all.

She got out of there with a Grammy or two last night but not before performing a piece that brought the house down. Lady Gaga is going to be around for a while and deserves to be.

But back to Mick. I have to admit that he had a solid R&B band backing him last night. And the audience liked him. They were even standing. In the past, I would have written that they were standing because they wanted to make sure they didn't miss a moment of Mick's great performance. But it's not like that anymore.

They stand now for two reasons. One, they want to watch an old man run full tilt around a stage because they know it is almost impossible to do at that age, and two, they want to be able to say, I saw Mick Jagger perform in my lifetime. Of course in regard to the latter and the years that have passed since Mick first took to the stage, most everyone in the Western World can say they have seen him perform.     

 

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• « The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 17
• The John Birch, Nut Job, Glenn Beck Ideology »

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