Grammy Winner: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill- Lauryn Hill
Grammy Deserver: Version 2.0- Garbage
I can’t bash the Grammys choice on this one. Lauryn Hill isn’t my particular brand of smoke, but I applaud the choice of a younger artist who sold a lot of albums and had a lot of fans. At the same time, they did miss out on selecting one of the most technically sound rock albums ever released.
Garbage’s Version 2.0 from a production standpoint, is about as close to perfect as you can get, and while I have found myself getting a little tired of the tracks of late from so many listenings, the album is like classic cinema. You need to put it away for a while, and come back to it maybe one or twice a year to truly recognize the mastery of the recording. I enjoy this album so much I have purchased it, loaned it out, not gotten it back, and re-purchased it three times since it’s release… Thanks to the MP3 age, I no longer need to hold on to my hard copy if anyone else needs to borrow it and never give it back…
While the total number of good albums was pretty lacking, there’s some great selections in there that would have been potential nominees had Garbage not perfected the art of rock recording… Tori turned in another great work with Choirgirl, the formation of Liquid Tension Experiment was a Prog-Rock-Geek dream come true and thrashes more than any album without words aught to, Dave Matthews turned in what is in my opinion his only listenable album from front to back with Before These Crowded Streets, and the Bare Naked Ladies managed some long overdue chart success with Stunt. Quality trumps quantity, so 1998 isn’t nearly as mediocre a year as 1996 was… That’s still no excuse for picking Celine though… Grammy Bastards…
Other releases of note: Do or Die- Dropkick Murphys; All The Pain Money Can Buy- Fastball; Liquid Tension Experiment- Liquid Tension Experiment; Space Heater- Reverend Horton Heat; Darkest Days- Stabbing Westward; Better Than Raw- Helloween; Mezzanine- Massive Attack; Before These Crowded Streets- Dave Matthews Band; From The Choirgirl Hotel- Tori Amos; No Substance- Bad Religion; Munki- The Jesus and Mary Chain; Stunt- Bare Naked Ladies; Hello Nasty- Beastie Boys; Whitechocolatespaceegg- Liz Phair; Follow the Leader- Korn; Hellbilly Deluxe- Rob Zombie; Frank Black & The Catholics- Frank Black; Mechanical Animals- Marilyn Manson; Painted From Memory- Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach; Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie- Alanis Morissette; Americana- Offspring
1999: I hate you 1999. You ruined EVERYTHING!!
Grammy Winner: Supernatural- Santana
Grammy Deserver: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner- Ben Folds Five
Have I mentioned before how angry it makes me when artists are given awards based more on their total body of work rather than the piece they’re being recognized for? Way too many times? Man, it’s a good thing this is the last year of the decade then… Just go back and read everything I said about every other over-the-hill act that one an award it didn’t deserve and apply it all to Santana and we’ll call it a day shall we?
Everything bad about 1999 culminated on January 12th when Brittney Spears appeared on the scene… Now I’ve managed to avoid bashing bubblegum bullshit up to this point, mostly because I don’t want to sound like either a typical Interblog-Rant-Bag, or like an old foagie not down with the youngun’s hip music choices, but I can keep quiet no longer… 1999, you ruined a decade that was so close to being over, and for that I can never forgive you… Stop clicking your tongue at Brittney, Lou Bega, you’re part of this mess too… Thank God before the year was over I was old enough to buy liquor…
Is the Mambo #5 the one where I get to put my foot up your ass?
Not everything about 1999 was horrid, but like 70’s porn, the good is far outweighed by the bad… Tori Amos and Nine Inch Nails both put out new albums, but both were comparatively lacking in spite of the fact that Tori’s Glory of the 80’s off To Venus and Back is one of my favorites of hers. Counting Crows returned with another good album that not enough people bought, and Joe Strummer’s work with The Mescaleros on X-Ray Style is so reminiscent of Mick Jones’ with Big Audio Dynamite that we’re left wondering why The Clash broke up in the first place…
On to the should-have-been honoree… Another thing 1999 ruined was this fine, fine recording, because TUBORM seems like a ‘best of the worst’ selection because of all the crap being slung around it, but in actuality, there was many a year in this decade that this album could have won, and would have garnered serious consideration in all of them, even 1993, the granddaddy of the decade… I admit, it helps that I’m a sucker for story albums, and this one definitely fits the mold… Each track blends seamlessly into the next and with the possible exception of ‘Army’ and ‘Your Redneck Past’ the songs are greatly improved by listening to them in the context of the album rather than on their own… At the end of the day, if you give yourself a chance to sit and listen to the work, you’ll probably feel like I do, that there’s a little bit of Reinhold Messner in each of us… Excuse me while I go grab an app for that job opening at the Chik-Fil-A…
I draw the line at growing a mullet...
Other releases of note: Clarity- Jimmy Eat World; The Hot Rock- Sleater-Kinney; Pistolero- Frank Black; Enema of the State- Blink 182; Play- Moby; Californication- Red Hot Chili Peppers; LTE2- Liquid Tension Experiment; The White Stripes- The White Stripes; To Venus & Back- Tori Amos; The Sweetest Punch- Elvis Costello & Bill Frisell; The Fragile- Nine Inch Nails; Temperamental- Everything But The Girl; Reload- Tom Jones; Brand New Day- Sting; Hooray for Boobies- The Bloodhound Gang; The Distance To Here- Live; Modified- Save Ferris; Rock Art and the X-Ray Style- Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros; No. 4- Stone Temple Pilots; This Desert Life- Counting Crows; When The Pawn…-Fiona Apple
Ah… Glad that’s done with… Next, non-Grammy related content and less ranting!!
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