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| From | Miles Goosens <outdoorminer@mindspring.com> |
| Subject | Re: Grammy thoughts |
| Date | Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:30:08 -0600 |
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At 09:17 AM 2/25/2003 -0500, Harris, Will wrote:
>I guess you can easily argue that
>Aware Records is responsible for helping break some of the most white-bread,
>not-very-alternative-at-all-but-nonetheless-still-called-adult-alternative
>music acts in recent memory (their "Aware Greatest Hits" features tracks
>from Mayer, Five For Fighting, Vertical Horizon, Hootie, and Edwin McCain),
>but they've also helped break Better Than Ezra, the Verve Pipe (who've
>worked with both Andy Partridge and Adam Schlesinger), Shawn Mullins (now
>working with Matthew Sweet), and Guster...so they can't be all bad.
That reads more like an indictment to me. :-)
Seriously, is anything Touched By The Hand Of Pop sacred? I love R.E.M., at least until their last couple of albums, but I don't start acting like Stipe singing on "Kid Fears" means that you can't say bad things about the Indigo Girls. And Better Than Ezra, the Verve Pipe, Shawn Mullins, and Guster aren't bland and white-bread? The only way they look even mildly different and interesting is if you stand them beside... well, Mayer, Five for Fighting, Vertical Horizon, Hootie, and Edwin McCain.
As for John Mayer being a nice, humble guy... he comes off in live interviews like a total egocentric ass, at least to me. I cannot tell you how many times at the show I saw that he made sure to let us know how well his record was selling. It was sometimes cloaked in smarmy faux humility, words that just reeked of "look at me trying to be humble!," but the message was "I am selling MILLIONS! Bow down before me!" Hardly the sort of exuberant goof like Bruce working "Tell your pa I'm on the cover of TIME and NEWSWEEK!" into a live "Rosilita" in 1975-76...
R.I.P. Howie Epstein. Sigh.
later,
Miles
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