Nevermind The Posers

See ya in the pit.

GO BIG, GO BOLD…WE GOTTA BEAT GAGA! LIVE PERFORMERS STEP UP THEIR GAME AT THE 2010 GRAMMYS February 4, 2010

Filed under: Can You Believe This?! — NVMP @ 6:39 PM
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{The 2010 52nd Annual Grammy Awards Edition!}

By Dave “The Klone” Maresca

“Well, it’s Grammy time again, and this year fans of the music industry are in for quite the treat – watching all of their favorite artists perform at a higher level of showmanship than ever before.  You may be asking, “Why’s that, Dave?  What’s the big deal this year?” and if I gave you two guesses, you’d probably only need one.  In my opinion, after an entire year of extrava-GaGa-nt  performances from now heavy-hitter Lady GaGa, going all the way back to her self-sacrificial MTV VMA performance in September, the rest of the music industry is revamping their game for the Grammy stage.  With that perspective in mind, let’s look at some of the more notable GaGa Reactionary performances.”

Pink goes nude.  So cool.

When she appeared scantily clad in the 2001 “Lady Marmalade” video, I remember finding Pink rather unremarkable.  Awkward and sort of not as feminine as the other ladies she was covering the song with, I kind of never wanted to see her even close to nude again.  Tonight has completely erased that last thought from my mind.  She picked a terrible song to perform, “Glitter in the Air”, but she combined eroticism with grace wearing little more than strategically placed ribbons, and pulled off an aerial acrobatic beginners’ routine that kept my eyes glued to the screen.  Can’t wait to see the rebuttal from camp GaGa next year.


Black Eyed Peas 2.0
Armor clad, and ready to throw down, the fearsome foursome of pop-candy hip-hop are propelled up through the floor of the stage by some kind of behind-the-scenes movie magic.  I find it hard to imagine that we would’ve seen a performance like this if we didn’t have an entire year of goo-goo for GaGa’s techno-drenched dominance of the digital and analog airwaves.  Am I supposed to really buy that the same peeps who flowed “Let’s Get It Started (Get Retarded)” would really be sharing the stage with retro Beastie Boys robots, if Lady wasn’t the performance sensation of the year?  Is this supposed raising of the bar for the entire awards show simply an industry-wide knee-jerk reaction to the next generation’s Madonna, Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Lindsey Lohan all wrapped into one?  If this performance says anything, it definitely says, “You know it”.

The Economy Blows, Anything Goes.
Slash performed with Jamie Foxx, T-Pain and Doug E. Fresh doing some awful atrocity of a lip-synched, phoned-in, “we don’t give a crap anymore, people will love it” excuse of a song (commonly known as “Blame It”).  Oh how the mighty have fallen.  Slash must really be hurtin’ for cash, what with no touring money or G N’ R royalties being what they used to be.  A little piece of me died tonight.  When the market crashed, it really crashed, huh?
 

“I want to thank my record label…for letting me write my songs”? February 3, 2010

Filed under: Can You Believe This?! — NVMP @ 6:18 PM
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{The 2010 52nd Annual Grammy Awards Edition!}

When Taylor Swift accepted her award for Best Country Album of 2010, she made it a point to thank her record label Big Machine Records for letting her write every song on her album.  “I want to thank my record label for letting me write every song on my album.”  said Swift.  Does that not strike anyone else as, oh I don’t know, kind of an odd thing to have to thank a record label for?  Politics aside, doesn’t there just seem to be a major logic disconnect here?  If record labels could write the songs themselves, why would they need the singer/songwriters they produce?  Are they simply producing mouth-pieces for stables of in-house songwriters who just never made it as music stars?  (That was the sound of my hand slapping my forehead in the standard “DUH!” fashion.)  I think it’s a sad statement about the industry.  What’s next?  “I’d like to thank my record label for letting me strum my guitar the way I like to, it really helped make a great record.  Thanks everyone!”  I just threw up in my mouth a little.

– Dave “The Klone”

 

The 10-Year “Bad Day”: Billboard Announces Daniel Powter’s Single is ‘One-Hit Wonder of the Decade’ December 30, 2009

Filed under: Can You Believe This?! — NVMP @ 8:56 PM
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by: Dave “The Klone” Maresca

     Now, I know any decade that begins with a world-altering terrorist attack on the globe’s last-standing super-power is not going down in the history books as “The 10 Years of Humanity at its Best”, but was the first installment of the new millennium really deserving of Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” as its defining anthem?  According to popularity, the answer is “Yes”.  Ahead of their full “Best of 2000’s” content roll-out, on December 9th Billboard.com released its “Top Ten One-Hit Wonders of the Decade” list, with Powter’s “Bad Day” at number 1.  Spending five weeks in the top slot of Billboard’s pop charts in 2006 gave the track the bragging rights that let it pull ahead of other dance-floor favorites like “Lean Back” from Terror Squad (2004) and Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” (2001).  Billboard also does disclaim the facts that the contenders for this years list were artists and acts from the years 2000 through 2007 to account for any acts that may be taking an extended break or touring on the success of their first hit.  To qualify as a one-hit wonder, an artist or act’s second hit had to have not cracked the top 25 in the same chart listing. 

     Facts and figures aside, let’s look at some of the real implications here.  The first ten years of the new millenium could be considered, for some people out there, among the last of humanity’s golden years.  Recent pop-culture phenomena surrounding ancient Mayan prophecies dealing with the end of the world, any myriad of stories on the evening news covering the several wars happening at once, even artistic renderings as far back as Rush’s classic 2112 album all point to a spot on the not-to-distant horizon as the official start of humanity’s decline, if not the actual rapture itself.  Take all that into account, do we really have to say that we’ve all “had a bad day” everyday for the last ten years?  Regardless if the world is about to end, and that the political machine is constantly scaring us into believing we’re seriously screwed in every way you can imagine, are there no more moments in the sun to make us happy to be alive?  Realizing that the last two years have been completely omitted from consideration (explaining why Daniel Powter was even able to compete with newcomers like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, or dare I even mention Miley Cyrus), does the fact that “Bad Day” was the featured “Thanks for trying, better luck next year” send-off music for the most recent season of American Idol mean it defines the last ten years (minus ’08 and ’09) for the music loving public?  Have sales popularity and commercial regurgitation replaced all the standards of quality by which we, the music loving public, decide what music is good or bad, or defines the times in which we live? 

     You tell me music lovers, I’m just giving you the news.  Do you agree with Billboard’s choice?  Does a song’s commercial success determine its social relevance?  Are your spent dollars the ballots by which you vote?  The floor is yours, let the discussion begin, and as always, keep it poser-free.

Related Articles:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/daniel-powter-named-onehi_n_382293.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/bad-day-tops-billboardrsquos-onehit-wonders-of-the-decade-1837141.html