By: Ben
Johnson
I did not watch the Grammys. I also did not
watch NCIS: New Orleans, or Hair Disasters: Miami Beach, or Dog Wars: San
Diego, or a rerun of Frasier.
I heard some vague outlines of what happened at
the Grammys. Some sort of sad staged thing with Kanye West and Beck happened, I
think. Kanye West is 37 years old and Beck is 44 years old. Neither of them is
the president of a country. Nobody on earth should care what either of them did
or said to each other. I am 35 years old and I am not the president of a country.
I can confirm this.
The Grammys are not for humans. If you watch
them, you will be bored. Some portion of the people there were probably also
bored, like “wow, this is much more boring than I expected.” Maybe that’s just
me projecting. I would be bored at the Grammys. I’d be like “can’t we just sell
the tickets and then go for a hike in one of those Los Angeles hiking places?” I’m
not the only person like me. I’d guess there were some people in attendance at
the Grammys who yawned during the Grammys at least once. I did see a meme that
made it look like Prince was bored. Also: Prince is a weird space alien.
I’d like to apologize, by the way, for writing
about the Grammys. I did not expect this. The Grammys are nothing, really. The
Grammys are not even the Grammys. That seems important to keep in mind when thinking
about the Grammys. They’re not even the Grammys.
I know that the Grammys are not even the Grammys
because I saw this today. I guess
a guy snuck some photos of himself into the Grammy Museum, which appears to exist and be a thing, and nobody noticed because they looked enough like pictures
that would be in the Grammy Museum, and nobody actually cares what pictures of
who are in the Grammy Museum. There are not, like, Grammy Museum “fans” who
love it in there. It’s in downtown Los Angeles, near the Staples Center, and it
is presumably air conditioned, and you can take your brat children there and
pay $12 to go stand around and look at some music person things, and then later
you get to go back to the hotel, and then even later than that you get to
finally die. I have never been to the Grammy Museum, but I have a very strong
feeling that it, like the Grammys themselves, is not for humans. In that way it
is a successful museumification of the institution it represents. Good job,
Grammy Museum.
The pictures of the guy, mostly just of a not
famous guy eating tacos and talking about how tacos are good to eat, stayed in
the Grammy Museum for a month, apparently. I mean, it’s all in that link I
posted. Somebody asked a museum guard about who this unfamous dude was, and the
museum guard said he thought it was a dude from One Direction, and that ended
the inquiry, and this shows just how little the Grammy Museum is for humans.
They have guards in there. In case people want to pay $12 to be in there and
then do bad things. A human being was paid probably relatively not much, but
also probably some five figure amount of money over the course of a year, to stand
guard over some pictures of a random person eating tacos. That is the Grammiest
thing I can imagine.
I don’t even care if any of this is bullshit.
It’s so plausible. Its rank plausibility kills me.
I’m in grad school right now, okay? So I’ve
been reading the most dense, erudite, pointlessly theoretical possible version
of all the things I care most about recently. I’ve been reading about rock and
roll and music by the people who talk about those things with enough authority
and presence and depth to be offered jobs at academic institutions where they
get to talk about those things for a living. They are convincing. To the point
where, at these institutions, which are academy-type versions of the Grammys, everybody
who listens to these people talk about those things and regurgitates their own
version of those things with enough of their own panache gets to be certified “smart”
when they’re done.
There are two versions of events these people
have been able to figure out. One is that the music industry destroys and
distorts some inherently “authentic” quality in music, and that some music has
this quality and some music does not. Another is that there is no “authentic”
quality in music, and that all things are relatively equal, and all of music
and all of culture responds to market forces to take the shape it takes, and
some music uses a “this is authentic” myth to prop up its standing in its own
market. I think they’re both true. One is subjective, the other is more
objective, or at least more transactional. Not that it matters.
Basically the truth is that there is a music industry
whose job it is to convert the feeling you get from listening to music you like
into an experience which you can pay for, and sometimes this is convenient and
sometimes it is alienating. The Grammys are essentially a celebration of this
conversion. “Best Conversion of sound to monetized version of sound” is pretty
much every Grammy category. “Great conversion,” the artists are telling each
other back stage, and “thank you, I’ve enjoyed your conversions for years.” The
Grammys are not “about” music, because nothing can be “about” music. Music is just
music. The Grammys are only music to the extent that everything is, which is to
say some basic amount.
I mention all this because if music and culture
unfold as a continuous response to market forces, and all things along the
varied spectrum of success within this possess the intrinsic potential for relatively
equal merit, then that random taco guy who faked his way into the Grammy Museum
is exactly as important as Pharrell Williams and whatever hat he is wearing, or any of the professors of talking about music things, or any of the rest of us or anything we ever do. I
can live with that. I support that, even. It’s perfect.
The narrative of the Grammys are that, look, the
conversion process of sound into money is a thing itself. But it is not a thing.
The entities involves in it are not, collectively, a thing. These are just random
taco guys, eating tacos, in a museum we constructed arbitrarily. The Grammys
are not for humans. They are for being and becoming an air conditioned place that
costs $12 to be dragged to by your family which has a 13 year old in it who you
can’t relate to and to be honest, can barely tolerate, and so spending $12 just
to be in a room together that you both don’t actively hate is worth it. You go
there, you look at the taco guys, you notice how many of the depicted taco guys
are wearing scarves indoors, you become curious enough to ask a guard about why
an unfamous person is eating a taco next to Rihanna, but not curious enough to actually
find out, and you go on with your life with $12 less money and two hours less
time.
So no, I did not watch the Grammys. But I also
watched the Grammys. We all watch the Grammys. Every day. It’s almost all we
ever do. We watch the Grammys and we go to bed, and wake up and watch the
Grammys. If we’re lucky.
