Dixie Grammies

Did anybody else catch the Grammies last night? I began watching the grammies a few years ago to keep up on the music industry and happenings. This time, though, I lost a lot of respect for them.

The Dixie Chicks cleaned house.

For any who haven't followed the story, they made some anti-Bush, anti-war comments a few years ago and ticked off a large part of their audience - the country music fans. Then as revenues and tour dates began to take a hit, the Chicks got ticked. Now they began bashing not only the war and the president, but their fans as well. Country music stations stopped playing their music.

Then came their new album, which is all about how mad they are at everybody. It was picked up by liberal artists and was met with some moderate sales despite the road they had taken.

Here's my trouble with the album - it's not that good.

Free speach is great and reguardless of my opinions of the Chicks' political statements, I continued to listen to their music. I could list out several of ther previous songs that I have quite enjoyed, but "White Trash Wedding" tops the list. It's fun, it's funny, and it's musically impressive. But that's off of an old album. There is no "Goodbye Earl" on this album. It is by their standards and by the standards of great music in general, forgettable.

So what's up with the industry giving them so many awards?

Does it all boil down to a political statement? Should we pass out accolades for a viewpoint at the expense of the art that communicates that viewpoint?

The answer, at least from the record company exectutives that vote for the Grammy recipients, is apparently a "yes".

Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon a view as we begin to look past the Grammies and into our own back yard. There was a time when the church was the epicenter of great art. Walk the halls of any art museum and you will see that the greatest artists were inspired by for the message of Christ. The greatest composers were passionate about the same message.

And somehow over the years, many churches took the opinion that the message transends the messenger.

It does, of course. At its root level the messenge does transend the messenger. But communication also transends intention. Too many times in my life I have intended to communicate a messenge and walked away from a conversation only to find out later that the person I was talking to walked away with a completely different mental picture than the one I was painting. At times my words of compassion have failed to cause my adversary to bow at my feet and thank me for my my thoughtfulness.

A messenger that never delivers his message is a failure.

Is the packaging important? You bet your aspirin it is. (I get headaches. Aspirin is important to me.)

Is the excellence of the artwork important? To the artist it is. Art isn't simply reminding people of a passion they already have. It's insighting passion where it doesn't exist.

That's where the Dixie Chicks failed in this last foray. And it's why they don't deserve a reward for their work.

And it's why the rest of us artists don't deserve a reward when we don't give it our best. I believe my biggest pet peave of the moment is artists who get lazy. It's the painter who finds that it's a lot of fun to take paint buckets and splash their contents at random onto a huge canvas and call it "art". It's the musician who loves loudness so much that he thinks whatever he plays will be good enough. It's the actress that loves the approval of the audience so much that she believes her job to be done because she's memorized some lines.

For the actress, the artwork doesn't even begin until the lines are memorized. There's hand movement and blocking and facial expression. Tone and accent.

For the vocalist, the artwork doesn't even begin until the lyrics and the notes are known. The art comes in the dynamics and the tone. The attacks and the releases of the note. It comes in the cry she puts in her voice at just the right moment. It's in the emotion she communicates. It's in the transitions between the phrases.

So here's to those artists who don't check the "complete" box on their project before the art has even begun. Here's to those who hold to excellence to the end, who realize that the message does transcend the messenger, and that such a statement means that the message must be delivered rather than dropped too early.