Grammys: Is there anything left to care about?

If the Grammy's were worth it, The Black Keys
would be up for best rock record.

This weekend, CBS will air that great big musical farce we call The 53rd annual Grammy Awards. It is a glitzy, silly show that seems to get more and more cosmically distant from actual music making with every passing year.

So out of touch are the Grammys when it comes to rock that it's getting difficult to distinguish Grammy nominees from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame counterparts. Consider the nominees for "Best Solo Rock Performance": Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Neal Young and John Mayer. If not for Mayer, you'd swear you were looking at a list from 1973.

With all the mewling and caterwauling about the death of the music industry and the culpability of file sharing in its demise, The industry fails to see its own role in all the destruction. It seems oblivious to the fact that it has been completely ineffective at promoting new and interesting music for more than 20 years now (a generous estimate) and nowhere is the evidence of the growing gap between the music industry and the music listening public more evident than at the Grammys.

It would be easy to shrug off the Grammys, but I find it slightly depressing that our great big national musical awards show is so embarrassingly bad. The UK's Mercury Prize is a much better top honors with recent winners including the xx, Franz Ferdinand, Elbow and P.J. Harvey -- cool, interesting acts that would probably, if they won anything at the Grammys, not make the cut to be included in the actual telecast. The Mercury Prize, for that reason, retains a cultural significance that that Grammys gave up long ago.

The only interesting contest in all of the Grammys -- the only category in which there is more than one even semi-interesting nominee -- is in Best Alternative Music Album. In that category, all five nominees are legitimate: Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, The Black Keys' Brothers, Band Of Horses' Infinite Arms, Broken Bells' Broken Bells and Vampire Weekend's Contra. All are at least good records and all are by very good acts. Even if the weakest record -- Infinite Arms -- wins, I'll still be pleased.  All five are more deserving of  Grammy awards than evening's other nominees.

However, there are problems even in thinking about that category.

1) Why are the Black Keys "Alternative Music" and not Rock? The same goes for Arcade Fire and Band of Horses. The fact that best rock record nominations include releases by Jeff Beck(!), Tom Petty and Neil Young, suggests that the Recording Academy views rock music as a museum piece, one in which old acts doing the same kind of music -- even if it is "good" -- are lined up for prizes while newer acts in the form with energy are shuffled off to "alternative." (I can't explain how or why the ridiculously awful UK prog rock outfit Muse was nominated for a best rock album award. I won't even try.)

2) And how about Alternative? Alternative clearly means rock not exclusively in the style of the British Invasion and Chicago Blues. The Black Keys are blues based, but less so on Brothers than ever. Or maybe its just the cateogry for music that Baby Boomers aren't buying. If you're younger than 50 and have heard of The Pixies, you're into "Alternative." perhaps the academy believes that any music discussed by music bloggers and bespectacled rock critics must be alternative. New rock acts should be considered such, clearing the Alternative category for real alternative music.

3) How in the name of all that's music doesn't the National's High Violet get at least a token nomination? Not even a "Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group" nod for "Blood Buzz Ohio"? Oh right... They're definitely not Rock by academy standards... I'm also surprised not to see LCD Soundsystem's This is Happening or Deer Hunter's Halcyon Digest nominated. Both records might not have been on the Billbord Hot List, but both were widely praised by critics and music fans alike.

That the Academy of Music clearly sees no compelling reason to honor interesting and progressive musical acts, showering all its attention instead on earners, is a big part of the reason why the industry is just so self-destructively out of touch. Insteads of touting exciting advances in musical and, it instead rolls out a bunch of old war horses sure to further alienate any young people who might still be paying attention. It is a culture stuck light years behind even the slightly above-average tastes of your everyday gen x-er.

It's time for the Grammys to change its selection process and let people with a bit of taste participate in the nominating process. Or it should just do the right thing and deterimine award winners based on their SoundScan and iTunes numbers. At least then there'd be a scientific explanation for why they continue to be the most unimaginative and uninspired awards distributed on prime time television.