The Oppenheimer Report - 2/22/16

Next Year's Grammy Award Winners

I know this is old news, but did I hear that singer Kanye West was $53 Million in debt and that he asked Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to bail him out? My heart bleeds for Kanye. I saw a funny post the other day, depicting a group of people in a crowd with labels indicating their net worth. Of course, Kanye was the one most in debt, but almost everyone in the picture owed money. The only person with a positive cash flow was a homeless man with seven bucks in his pocket. Funny, but maybe true. Admittedly, I do not know much about HipHop or Rap, but  - I never thought I’d say this -  I do like some of the music. I appreciate the poetry and meter of the lyrics, and some of the storytelling intrigues me. Although it’s a little out of my wheelhouse, I like the performances I’ve seen by Rap artist Kendrick Lamar, and I like it when artists mix up genres. I’m impressed by what I’ve heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new hit musical Hamilton. Miranda has broken new ground and made Rap more accessible to dumb white guys like me. Whenever music can unify, I’m all for it. I think that hosting the "Lyrical Workers" radio show has made me a little more open-minded about all the music I hear. I have yet to see or hear any performance by West that I liked. The fact that he is deluded enough to think he deserves to be bailed out after losing millions, when there are five million guys waiting for their shot, seems ludicrous to me. Also, he married Kim Kardashian, a woman who had surgery to make her butt into a coffee table. Life is a carnival.

On my radio show, I occasionally play Pop songs from the past fifty years that somehow drew me in. These days, I am more inclined to deconstruct songs and to listen to the arrangements more carefully than I once did. I find much to admire about even the most vacuous Pop songs from the past decades, and this in turn has influenced my song writing. The more I research artists that interest me, the more offended I become about what is going on today. I compare a song I absolutely HATED back in the 70s –a song like “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe – to almost any one of Beyonce’s songs, and I am astounded. By comparison, “Dizzy” sounds like a classic.

Speaking of my growing alienation from today’s Pop music, a week or so ago, Shauna and I sat through the entire Grammy Awards. We do it every year. This might have been the worst one ever. Last year, I thought the Grammys were somewhat entertaining, but whoever produced this year’s event really dropped the ball. There were only several performances that moved me, including Stevie Wonder and various artists doing an a capella cover of an Earth, Wind, and Fire song, and Chris Stapleton’s performance of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” Nashville needs more guys like Stapleton and less of the formulaic, soul-starved tripe they’re churning out now. There were so many technical glitches (Adele for instance) in this year’s Grammys! How does that happen?! Any of you reading this probably wonder why I even bother to watch the awards ceremony, and I suppose my rationale is that I want to follow the direction of contemporary Pop music. I’m a glutton for punishment, but I like watching a freak show. I can’t stop myself from staring at the spectacle, any more than I can stop eating a Big Mac after that first bite. I know I’m going to be sick, but I do it anyway. While there has always been the Grand Canyon separating serious music from Pop, I have never before seen so much money spent on so little. Maybe I’ll write some Rap verse one day, in the interest of expanding my repertoire. “Squirrel-haired politician / spewin' his rendition of perdition / pissin’ on the human condition / listen, we shouldn’t be killers we should be kissin’ / that’s my mission / love is what we been missin.” Yeah, I know, but I don’t even have a day job.

- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED