December 04, 2008 12:00 AM ET
A Billboard staff report
** Overheard in the bathroom: "Green tea drop to Christina Aguilera has been done" (security guard). "We're missing Dad!" (a Jonas Brother outside the bathroom).
** Kathy Griffin revealed that, like the Jonas Brothers, "I am not ready to lose my virginity. I am looking for the right girl, just like them." Griffin, who was wearing Dave Grohl's sweatband around her wrist, got a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album with "For Your Consideration" -- a set she specifically recorded and released to GET a nomination.
** Does anyone care about the Grammys anymore? Not surprisingly, five-time winner John Mayer does. "I'd be worried without the Grammys because without the Grammys, there's no other true way to gauge merit," he said.
** "Wayne's World" actress/babe Tia Carrere got a Grammy nomination for Best
Hawaiian Music Album.
** The Foo Fighters got a standing ovation for their performance of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain," but the night's best-received performance by those in attendance at Nokia Theater was Mayer's and B.B. King's. An emotional King said backstage of Barack Obama's election, "I never thought I'd live long enough to see a black President-elect in my lifetime. But I believed all my life that someday, like Dr. King once said, that people would be thought of and loved for what they did and not their color. America has grown up. Not enough yet, but America has grown up."
King said he'd been invited to the White House by every President since Gerald Ford. With Obama in the White House, "should I be invited, I'd take a plane in a hurry."
** Seconding that notion, Ne-Yo's favorite thing that happened this year, besides being nominated for six Grammys? "I think Barack Obama becoming President."
** The beans were spilled on several nominations hours before the show. TV monitors in the print press room, which allow reporters to watch the nominations ceremony, showed a run-through of nominees' album covers being flashed up on a screen inside the hall -- albeit not in the proper categories.
** Lindsey Buckingham on the upcoming Fleetwood Mac tour, which kicks off Mar. 1 in Pittsburgh: "If I knew what to expect, I would tell you. It's been a little convoluted emotionally. We have some work to do." Only 16 dates have been announced so far, but Buckingham said there would be about 40 in the U.S. As to who might put out a Fleetwood Mac album after the tour, Buckingham said nothing was set in stone, but that "we have a strong relationship with Warner Bros."
** iTunes will release a compilation of songs by independent artists Dec. 15 that will be free to the first 150,000 customers, according to ex-OneRepublic member Tim Myers, who says he has a song on the comp. The singer/songwriter is working on a solo album for release in April. "I would love to do it indie. I love being in control of my own music," says Myers, who has already had songs licensed for Target, Saturn and Google Chrome ads, as well as for the DreamWorks/Nickelodeon movie "Hotel for Dogs."
** On announcing the Grammy nominations in a televised
concert, Recording Academy chairman Neil Portnow called the untested idea "the Wild Wild West," but one that could give the music business a badly needed boost in the fourth quarter. "I think it's very important to always try to raise the bar of what you're doing." And unlike the Oscar or the Emmy nominations, "we have the unique ability to make a concert out of it."
Is he looking for a certain ratings share to
judge the night's success, given the disappointing ratings of the Grammys' 50th anniversary awards last year? "I don't view this as an evaluation that could be simply codified by ratings numbers," says Portnow, attributing poor ratings last year to lowered TV viewership overall because of the writers' strike.
Source: http://www.billboard.com
