Grammy Awards
The Grammy Awards are an annual music award ceremony, held in New York City since 1958.
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Frank Zappa and the Grammy Awards
On 29 February 1968, Zappa and The Mothers played at the pre-Grammy Awards ceremony dinner at Hilton Hotel in New York. He reflected on the event in Thou Shalt Honor Thy Father And Thy Mother (1985): "We were the entertainment at the Grammys 1967 or 68 in New York. I saw this piece of paper and it said in part that: "These selections are made on artistic merit alone that have nothing to do with unit sales. Right? Sure. NARAS does not listen to 25'000 individual 4-minute songs every year in order to pick somebody who gets a Grammy. It's obviously fake, okay? Now how do they expect that somebody is going to, in good conscience, listen to that volume of music? Not you can't, let's suggest once." In They're Doing the Interview of the Century, Part 2, Zappa also remembered: "Well, we were hired as the entertainment at this Grammy awards show, and Duke Ellington was actually in the audience, by the way. [30] Woody Herman, I believe, was the band that would play the music when people got awards, and we were brought on to do a little fifteen-minute set, and this is a room full of people in tuxedos, and y'know, all fancy, fancy, fancy ... (...) So, we did our show with broken dolls, and rancid versions of ... y'know, just the type of ugliness that we used to do in 1967 [including "Satin Doll"]. After our set was over, I walked out, I think it was in the Hilton Ballroom, where we did this, and I walked off of the stage, and I was on my way to the toilet. This woman in an evening gown was walking towards me, and as she passed me, she said, under her breath, "That's the most DISGUSTING thing I've ever seen in my life", and I went "HEY! YOU! C'MERE!" And she stopped dead in her tracks, and walked over to me, just right up to me, and I stuck my face right in her face, and I, just as loud as I could, said "YOU'RE A PIG!" [laughter], and she was STUNNED! [laughter] It was like, the result was like if you took a wind-up toy, and hit it with a hammer, and it went crazy [laughter], and it started twirling around the room. [laughter] She didn't know where to go. She was "[Frank imitates the sound of a matronly socialite in befuddled confusion, which is impossible to translate into print]" [laughter], and she was just going around in circles out there in the lobby. [laughter]".
"I've always had suits. As a matter of fact, one time, I went to the Grammy Awards in this beautiful blue suit and no shirt. Try it some time. Got a suit? Wear it without a shirt. It looks great, especially if you've got a tan. You got to do your neck, though. Hold a cigarette lighter up there." - 20 Questions: Frank And Moon Unit Zappa, David and Victoria Sheff, Playboy, November 1982.
On 28 February 1984, Zappa was interviewed by Charlie Rose on Nightwatch, where he was given a list of various songs nominated for the Grammies and asked which one was the record of the year with the most artistic merit? Zappa felt none of the mentioned songs qualified and came up with an example of his own: The Message (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. When Rose told him that it wasn't nominated, Zappa stated that, in that case, he wouldn't vote at all. [1]
"In order for the lowliest piece of musical trash to get played on the radio, it too must adhere to an iron-clad set of structural and stylistic regulations, in their way EVEN MORE RIGOROUS AND CONFINING THAN THE ONES CELEBRATED IN YOUR UNIVERSITIES ON A DAILY BASIS … and they have to tell their miserable little stories in three minutes or less. Sad and fake as they are, the GRAMMY AWARDS seem as perfectly suited to be the celebration of this sort of 'craftsmanship' as the sad, fake Fromms and Pulitzers craved by many of the denizens of this convention." - Frank Zappa, There Goes Your Tenure!, April 5, 1984.
Rat Tomago (...) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition. Now, it's not a bad solo, but a Grammy nominee? That should tell you how fake the Grammys are." - Frank Zappa, The Art Of Being Frank, Philip Baste, International Musician and Recording World, June 1985.
"Things can't be that bad in the creative community that we must be subjected to hearing the same 20 songs over and over again for a year on end. I think there's room for diversity here. But one of the reasons why the record companies don't opt for diversity is they have a merchandising theory that goes something like this: If a year produces one major blockbuster hit – and it's a record that everybody must have, like Thriller or something like that – then the stream of customers who goes into the store to pick up Thriller stands a good chance of picking up something else while they're in there. So [the labels] don't care what it is that gets to be the big hit, but they want one every year. You'll notice that every year somebody sweeps up all the awards on the Grammies. And [the labels] manufacture these artificial phenomenons in order to just increase the foot traffic in the stores. This is a merchandising theory that the majors have to sell all the rest of their major catalog." - Frank Zappa in Maverick, J.B. Griffith, Pulse! Indie Special, 1988.
During his lifetime, Zappa only won one Grammy Award for Jazz From Hell (1988), in the category: Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Interviewed in Frank Zappa 89-12 (for High Times, by Elin Wilder, December 1989), Zappa explained what he did with the award: "It's sitting next to the television set in my basement so people can say, "What is that?" I tell them it's a joke."
Grammy Award nominations for songs or albums by Frank Zappa
- Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for Dancin' Fool (1980)
- Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for Rat Tomago (1980)
- Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal : Valley Girl (1983).
- Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition': The Perfect Stranger (1985)
- Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition: Jazz From Hell (The Track) (1988).
- Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance: Frank Zappa: Guitar (1989)
- Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album: Broadway The Hard Way (1990)
Grammy Awards won by Frank Zappa
- Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance (Orchestra, Group or Soloist) (1988) for Jazz From Hell.
- Grammy Award for Best Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package (1996) for Civilization Phaze III, given to Uri Balashov.
In 1997, Zappa received a posthumous lifetime achievement award, for which Jello Biafra wrote a tribute in the official Grammy Awards program book. In 2016, award was auctioned, after Zappa's former home in 7885 Woodrow Wilson Drive was sold. [2]
