At this time last week (2:16 PM Sunday), I was gearing up to watch the Super Bore. Even if I don't like the teams, I've always known I could enjoy the commercials (one of the rare times that happens). But something happened this year, someone castrated the ad people and the commercials sucked worse than Lindsay Lohan's attempt at signing.  

This week another big TV event is about to take place, the Shammys! Better known as The Grammy Awards or their unofficial title, "let's get together and slap ourselves on the back and celebrate the worst crap we foisted on the unsuspecting public this past year". Yeah, those awards. 

I think I am the only person I know that actually watches the Grammys. Everyone else has better things to do like laundry. But I've always had a morbid curiosity of just how stupid they could be since the first broadcast I watched as a child and saw the death metal rockers Jethro Tull win the best metal Grammy. (Ok, that's a lie, I was too young to remember that or even understand at the time just how boneheaded that was. But at least Motley Crue didn't win.) The only thing funnier than that is the fact that Fred Durst was actually up for a Grammy in 2000 only to get beat out by Metallica's "Whiskey In The Jar". The Shammys later put up separate Metal and Hard Rock categories. (I'm hoping Motorhead wins the metal award this year, I can't wait to see Lemmy give a middle finger in his acceptance speech!). 

Maybe I'm a little harsh on the academy, we can't expect the suits that decide these things to know anything about credible music, let alone have taste. (I doubt that 99% of the voters have actually heard the Motorhead song, but they'll vote for it because they have heard of Motorhead) These are the same people that thought that Limp Bizkit was this generation's answer to Led Zeppelin. Speaking of the mighty Zep, you know how many Grammy awards they won when they were the best selling band of the 70s? Drum roll please�.    ZERO!  You know who won the best rock album Grammy in 1971 when Led Zeppelin IV came out? Another drum roll please�  No one! They didn't even have rock categories back then. Yeah, but Zep are getting a Life Time Achievement Award this year as the boneheads way of saying, "oops, sorry we had our heads up our asses, you should have received this 35 years ago). 

The ultimate insult is that this very same day that the 2005 Shammys are being handed out is also the unofficial 35th anniversary of heavy metal. (Black Sabbath's debut was released on Friday Feb 13, 1970.. Thanks DeadSun and Keavin for the great Classics article on that). But will we hear anything about it during this broadcast? Will one of the most influential bands in history, the one that started the style of music that one of the shame categories for these shame awards is named for, get honored on this historic anniversary?  You know the answer to that one. 

I would go into a long winded dissertation about how offbase The Shammys have been over the years. But I'll save you that. I'll just be long winded in my bitching and the one thing aside from the shame hard rock and metal awards is that these nitwits waited until Ray Charles after died to give him a tribute. If there is justice, Ray will sweep the Shammys this year, even though that last album wasn't anywhere near his best, this guy is about a million times the artist than the current darling of the music industry, Usher, is. In fact, Usher isn't even worthy to have been an usher at a Ray Charles concert.  Ray put more feeling and soul into one note than this overrated studio creation puts into his overblown self indulgent bad choir warm-up exorcize excuse for music.  I still can't believe how far quality has gone down hill.  It makes me wish I was born two decades earlier. We went from Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder to Usher and Kanye West. Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to Slipknot and Nickelback.  The Grammy Awards were a joke back then too but I find it hard to believe that popular music sucked that bad in those years before I was born when you had labels putting out real quality in addition to the pop fluff.  Now the quality is fewer and farther between, especially on major labels. It's all lowest common denominator and that is just sad. 

And who made The Grammy Awards king? I mean everybody and their brother has an awards show now. I hear Monistat 7 is thinking of jumping into the overcrowded waters. Why is this sham considered more legitimate than the other sham "awards" shows? 

But you know what? It doesn't matter. I doubt that many of you will waste your time to watch the Shammy Awards tonight. I suspect I will sit alone screaming at the screen. And that's ok, I like to be angered but this program demonstrates something that the recent over abundance of awards shows also demonstrate, awards shows are bullsh*t. And 9 out of 10 times, the music being honored is just plain sh*t.  
 

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