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Grammy commentary

Just found this thread... so what I thought...

I tuned in at the beginning and saw the first three performances - Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and the new country boy, and the Weeknd guy. Blech blah bland yawn. Turned it off and went to play bass to cleanse.

Later on went to bed to read a book and decided to flip the grammies on again to see if anything more interesting would happen. I guess I missed Lionel Richie, the Eagles, the kid on piano and one or two other things you guys are talking about.

Bieber was bland and boring, no surprise. Adele was off-kilter, that was disappointing.

I saw the Kendrick Lamar thing and my overwhelming reaction was that it was very theatrical. I kind of thought it would have been more in place at the Tonys, and the rapping was more poetry slam than anything musical, but it was interesting.

I liked Alabama Shakes. They're a good solid act. I'm curious how they won best Rock performance for an R&B song, though. I guess that shows how far rock has been banished from the top 40 charts.

The BB King tribute was the highlight of what I saw. Actual musicianship, and you could hear them each trying to reflect his style in their playing.

Did not like Gaga's Bowie tribute. Too much jumping from tune to tune without letting a musical idea develop and get across. Would have been much better if she picked just one song and did it well. I thought the staging ideas were cool.

Hollywood Vampires were a mess. Looked like they just jumped on stage without practicing, kind of meandered about like a half-baked garage band. Like they sort of knew in theory they were supposed to move around and ROCK OUT and all that but no one really had any idea where to move TO.

Turned the TV off after that.
 
Lotta hate from you people eh?
Grammys seems to be all about publicity. And they clearly succeeded as we have an 8 page thread about it.

Anywho, I didn't see anything but pictures of my future wife/employer Tori Kelly. I'm gonna play bass for her one day, then she'll fall in love with my sweet low notes and marry me. /endofstory
 
So - now I am watching what I didn't last night.

Alabama Shakes - *** was with the sound man?? Maybe I wasn't paying attention last night - I know there were issues, but that one seemed particularly bad.

The BB King tribute - the best thing of the night, without question. Bonus points for being the first time I have ever enjoyed Gary Clark Jr. I have tried to like him in the past, and just couldn't get into it, but this was soulful and emotional, good stuff.

The Vampire thing.....whatever.....too many flipping strobes for one. And the music just wasn't that good. Glad to see Duff singing Ace of Spades (even though it was a mess overall).
 
My favorite moment of the night was Mark Ronson giving a major shout-out (and point-out) to George Clinton, and thanking other funk legends as well:

"I see George Clinton over there, a man who has done more for the word funk that we could ever hope to dream of in our entire lives. So I want to thank James Brown, George Clinton...Prince, Earth Wind and Fire of course."
 

Nice, I had not seen that. I have seen footage of the songs, and heard some of the back story - but this had a lot of detail.

I love this part:
Based on Warner Bros.'s faith, Galfas put the 'Mats on a shortlist of acts for the show — without having seen the band play live. "That," said Galfas, "may have been a mistake."


LOL!!!

The only bummer about the story was the bit about Bob knocking his wife around - I didn't know any of that.

This is also worth noting:

"The Replacements wouldn't appear on American television for another three years."

And when they did, they were still pushing the limits. Not sure if this is the first time they made it back on, but the time would be about right. They are singing Talent Show on some awards show, and there is a line "feeling good from the pills we took" that the network dumps, and you see Paul roll his eyes.

Well, he gets 'em in the end. At the songs end, they sing "it's too late to turn back, here we go!" repeatedly. Well, Paul changes the lyric to "its too late to take pills, here we go!"

Classic, and the network doesn't catch it. HA!

 
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Re: Jackson Browne and the Eagles.

If I recall correctly from watching 4 hours of a biography of the Eagles, Jackson Browne had the downstairs apartment under Frey and Henley back in the old, old pre-Eagles days. I think those guys go back a long way together and it wouldn't be surprising to see them enjoy working together.

For my part, I thought that Timothy B. Schmidt looked cadaveric, while Joe Walsh looked surprisingly clean and healthy. It'd be nice to think that Joe had some good years left in him. Such a lovely talent.
My recollection is that Tim Schmidt played Carvins. At the Grammys, he was playing an old Fender P bass.
 
My recollection is that Tim Schmidt played Carvins. At the Grammys, he was playing an old Fender P bass.

Nope, he was playing a stack knob Jazz bass of some sort, which is the only thing I have seen him playing for quite some time now.

image.jpeg
 
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I'm guessing a 1962 Fender Jazz, original

Well, if original, more likely '61. The 62RI from fender is a bit inaccurate, and was done for marketing consistency most likely (to tie in w/ the 62P). Most (but not all) Jazz basses rolling off the line even in late 61 had the three knob controls, and laminate FB, not slab.

But anyway, yeah, a close look at the picture I posted seems to indicate the real deal, or an amazing job at recreating details by someone.

Clay dots, the burst pattern, the 12th fret dot spacing, the wear, the holes from the original mutes.

Only thing I question is the knobs. The originals are a bit shorter than the RI knobs, and while it's hard to tell in this pic, these don't look like the originals to me. Actually, I question the PG a bit too.

Interesting to note - he has a foam mute, only under the D string. Weird.
 
Bridge looks normal to me. The foam I just pointed out might be throwing you off.

Nope, on the bridge in the picture, each string seems to be on an independent structure, like the high end Ibanez models. There's no curled up tail plate. Compare that bridge with the one from the Glenn Frey tribute. The latter one looks completely traditional. I don't think it could be the same bass, unless it got a lot of touch-ups—although there's those same oddball holes drilled below the bridge pickup that appear to come from some other bridge assembly again.

Screen Shot 2016-02-17 at 11.44.55 AM.png
 

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