The Grammys were on last night? I didn’t notice

I tuned into the Grammys at the tail end of the broadcast, when Usher and Quincy Jones announced the award for Album of the Year. I didn’t even realize Foo Fighters, Vince Gill and Herbie Hancock made enough a ripple to earn a nomination. The fact Hancock won didn’t surprise me — Grammy voters go with the most familiar — but I wouldn’t recognize his album if it were blaring from someone’s stereo.

The Grammys stopped being relevant to me as far back as high school, but these days, the gap between what’s recognized by the industry and what’s playing on my media player is the size of a canyon. The game I play these days is to see how many nominees and winners I actually have in my collection. Not many, as would be expected.

I’ve gone so far as to root for bands I downright abhor to win the Best New Artist category. That category is the kiss of death for just about anyone who wins it. Amy Winehouse’s win should be of great concern to her fans.

But bashing the Grammys is a time-honored sport, and I was never any good at sports.

The Washington Post, however, has a great article about the classical Grammys, which seem to reflect the direction of recorded classical music more closely than its pop brethen. The classical nominees were quirky, a good number of them surprisingly including a lot of modern works. I don’t remember seeing so many of them nominated in a single year.

Many of these albums are also independent releases, a sharp contrast to the days when EMI, Universal and Sony dominated the classical categories. Joan Tower’s Made in America has been on my eMusic Save for Later list for a number of months now.

I’ve always looked up who won the Best Contemporary Classical Composition after the awards are announced — the Recording Academy sometimes gets it right, if Steve Reich’s 1989 win for Different Trains is any indication.