I shall never get back the hours of my life I wasted watching the Grammys last night. I'm still trying to figure out why watched when I knew it would only cause me great personal suffering. No, it was my mother who had forgotten how bad these award shows are. She insisted I sit with her to fill her in on who was who. Truly, I am a wonderful daughter.
Despite my snobby principles, I watched all the way from Simon and Garfunkel to the Clash tribute. Everything in between was pretty bad. However, these five moments stand out as the most painful for me:

1. 'N Sync's off key "tribute" to the Bee Gees. I had an earache this morning and I blame them.
2. John Mayer's epileptic seizure during "Your Body is a Wonderland". Too many Dave Matthews and David Gray records for this guy!
3. The inexplicable superlatives heaped on Coldplay before they literally bashed out one of their songs, overpowering the NY Philharmonic. Now, I admit that Coldplay have some decent tunes. I quite enjoy "The Scientist". But surely to be worthy of terms like "innovative" and "groundbreaking" you should at least have a good rhythm section? Coldplay's is so lumpy and uninspired it makes Travis sound like Parliament in comparison.
4. Avril Lavigne's very presence, as always.
5. Erykah Badu's childish "turn back the teleprompter" routine during the all-to-brief tribute to Alan Lomax Show a little respect.

Norah Jones will be the latest edition to the Women of the Grammys: Where Are They Now? special which will air in a few years (featuring the likes of Lauren Hill, Alicia Keys, Macy Gray and Erykah Badu). Enjoy all that industry support while you can, Norah. It won't last long. The Powers That Be are no doubt already plotting the marketing campaign for next year's female soul singer "success story".

No more whining! It would take up precious energy I could be using for reading a book or something. Ta.

Postscript to that last post: I did a Google image search for Tim Wheeler and this. Not quite the type of hot bod I meant…

My self-directed education isn't going as well as I'd hoped because I've been so busy with other stuff. But that's OK since the point of the exercise is to fend off boredom. February is supposed to be Jamaican music month but I have only purchased one record so far -- a Desmond Dekker compilation. Fortunately, I really enjoy it and I will definitely be looking for similar stuff if I ever find time to get to a record store again.

Along with Dekker, I also picked up the Teenage Fanclub retrospective and Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack on my last shopping excursion. Regarding Curtis, I now realise that a little bit of falsetto goes a lonnng way.

But the Fannies comp just gets better and better. In the past I've never been able to muster the motivation to buy one of their records but this time the lure of the "best of" was too much to resist. I don't know why I've never bought one of their records before. It's strange, especially when Bandwagonesque is always on sale for dirt cheap. In my head Teenage Fanclub fall prey to what I call the "scene veteran syndrome". They've been around for so long that they've been taken for granted. They've got a dedicated fanbase and are respected by their peers but their new releases don't receive much attention or hype. A lot like Sonic Youth. (Hey, there's a recent ILM thread on this.)

Like all great power pop bands nobody could figure out why Teenage Fanclub weren't huge when they had such great songs. And they are great! I never really listened closely to their stuff until I got the new CD. I stuck it on while I was doing other things, like working on the computer or driving in the car, and found the songs got better each time I heard them. They are like seeds of power pop that germinate in your brain with time and patience.

But at the risk of sounding shallow, I think their lack of image also hurt them. There were times listening to the CD that I would've sworn I was listening to Ash. What's the difference? Easy -- youth and more specifically, Tim Wheeler's hot bod. The flashiest thing about Teenage Fanclub is their name. Poor guys.

Frenchie booted from American Idol! How ultra-convenient for the image-conscious producers that one of the fuller-figured contestants should have a skeleton like this...

The Onion cut o' the week: I wish I was more like my online persona Well...I don't. In fact, my posts are getting increasingly more neurotic lately. Damn you, Woody Allen!

The Smiths - “Still Ill”
Familiarity breeds contempt; absence makes the heart grow fonder -- these are the terms which I unintentionally live by when choosing what music to listen to. I’ve got a peculiar habit of not listening to my favourite music. I’m afraid that if I overplay the music it’ll lose its magic for me.

However, this quirk is exacerbated by my obsession with creating music mixes. I don’t want to appear predictable in my choices and try to avoid too many songs by my favourite artists. This most often occurs when I make mixes for other people. The point of making a mix is to ease someone into an oasis of new sounds, rather than tossing them into the ocean without a life vest. I try to imagine hearing the music through “fresh ears” and choose the most accessible, yet representative, tunes for my victim -- er, I mean listener. So it’s always more “What Difference Does it Make?” than “Barbarism Begins at Home”.

“Still Ill” is one song I’d never consider including on a tape or CD for someone else as an introduction to the Morrissey universe, even though it has some of his best lyrics. It’s probably the equivalent of Chinese water torture for those who hate his voice. It’s got a strange rhythm and is oddly tuneless by mainstream pop standards (although lack of a good melody apparently isn’t a requirement for success nowadays, given the sales numbers of tenth-generation grunge acts like Nickelback).

Because of my self-imposed avoidance of my favourite artists I hadn’t heard “Still Ill” in ages until the other day. But as soon as the song started I knew, I love this song. I knew all the music by heart but still swooned to the tight little jingles of Marr’s guitar and all those glorious words. I realized the “unconventional” and “tuneless” nature of the songs were what made the song so appealing to me! Which made me wonder -- why did I persist in having these musical hangups?

It comes down to still being extremely sensitive to what other people think of my tastes. I’d rather have someone never hear my favourite music instead of hearing it and thinking it’s awful. The more I think about this the scarier it gets -- why bother caring what other people would think of me when I’m listening to something in private? Why should I hold back on sharing my music when nobody else ever considers my feelings when they force their shitty music into my brain? Everywhere I go in public I’m forced to listen to commercial radio stations or an in-store easy listening loop whether I like it or not. Where else in society are we given as little choice in the area personal taste as we are with music? You can complain about commercials all you like but in the end no one forces you to buy Coke or Nike. But if you want to go out in public you’ll find it pretty difficult to avoid hearing a top 40 hit. Some people would tell me to just “tune it out” but I can't. My brain doesn’t work that way.

Yikes! Looks like I’ve gotten a little off track here. All I wanted to do was write about how much I love “Still Ill” and it turned into a rant about the fascism of the contemporary world. There is, of course, a simple solution for all of this which I think I’ll look into immediately after posting this. So if you’ll excuse me I’m going to pull out some Smiths records…

George W. Bush is becoming increasingly less funny as he edges closer to starting World War III, but that doesn't mean you still can't get some laughs out of creating a Virtual Bush Speech or even give him a spankin'!