Fire Neil Portnow.

We’re at an historic point in the music business.  The decline of the power of the major labels.  Only two albums went double platinum last year and the four remaining majors look more like Lehman Brothers than Apple.  They’ve mismanaged while extracting untold profits and sky-high salaries, bitching all the while that it’s not their fault.  Believe me now when I tell you that Ticketmaster is the new major label.  Because Irving controls all the acts.

So, NARAS must stop looking to the four families.  Must stop acting like someone who’s extracted protection from these ancient mobsters.  It’s time for NARAS to escape its handlers, spread its wings and truly execute its mission.  Which is to spread music throughout the land.  Getting people exposed to what they might enjoy if they knew it existed, helping artists create and reach an audience.  NARAS shouldn’t be about a TV show, but music itself.

As for that TV show…  It’s about awards.

The nineties are over.  Michael Greene’s plan was to add so many categories that it would drive up membership.  We’ve still got the categories, but membership is declining, significantly.  The only way to rescue this, to increase membership, is to increase the prestige of the awards.  And that’s by eliminating almost all of them.

No more categories than the Oscars.  If you made an album no one bought in a genre no one cares about you’re not entitled to the same statuette a gigantic star gets.  Just like student movies are not awarded at the Oscars.  It devalues a Grammy when anybody can win one.  And believe me, anybody can.  If you can’t get nominated for a Grammy, you didn’t make an album.  There’s a category for everybody!  So, twits in penguin suits hold little statuettes while big stars go home empty-handed.  Huh?

So, your minor masterpiece is better than the mainstream crap.  Maybe I’ll buy that.  Which is why NARAS should take a clue from the CMAs.  There should be an ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR AWARD!  You reward one of the big five sellers/grossers, everybody is interested in that.  Kenny Chesney wins because he’s got the biggest grossing tour, year after year.  Whereas Herbie Hancock gets the biggest Grammy for reinterpretations of old Joni Mitchell songs.  I played that album.  Once.  Because I’m a huge Joni Mitchell fan.  If you think that Hancock album deserved the Grammy, you never heard "Head Hunters".  Certainly not Miles Davis.  Never mind the phenomenal work of Joni Mitchell herself.

Speaking of rewarding the oldsters, ONLY ONE A SHOW!  There’s only one Irving Thalberg award.  Stop parading endless has-beens across the stage.  It looks like a casting call for a wax museum.

So, the Grammy Awards show should have few awards, a lot of music and the script should be written by the guys who do the tutorials for Rock Band.  Get rid of those old hacks.  Irreverence and honesty are in.  Not lame jokes akin to sixties variety shows read off prompters by squinting stars who can barely read themselves.

Make the show a show.  Not a big tent, but an arena spectacular.  Think of one band headlining the Staples Center, not a cavalcade of who gives a shit stars performing for charity.

But the Awards and the show are secondary…  Grammy must be a year-round thing.

That Elvis Costello TV program?  The Grammys should have done that.  There should be a Grammy TV show, EVERY WEEK, showcasing new talent and classic talent.  Immediately viewable on YouTube the next day.  With FREE downloads of the live material available right away on iTunes.

There should be a Grammy store on each and every online service.  If a major label wants to be featured there, it’s got to give up twenty percent of the action.  Indies get featured for free.

Bottom line, it’s time to bring NARAS into the twenty first century.  Make Steve Jobs honorary chairman.  Let Eddy Cue preside.  Maybe even give Shawn Fanning a title.  Show the world that you’re not beholden to the old masters anymore.  That you’re truly about music.  Stop worrying so much about spreading the brand, just worry about spreading the music.  Enough with the fucking museum and all that crap.  It just smells of rank commercialism.

You want to make the Grammys work?  Put a strong-willed emperor in charge.  Someone like Jimmy Iovine, but who is hip and tech-savvy.  Cancel the perks.  Like those idiotic meetings in Hawaii.  If you don’t see it on the screen, if it doesn’t directly help expose music, it goes.  Only the charitable foundation remains.

The image of NARAS sucks.  In a world where Twitter is on the cutting edge and may be eclipsed at any moment, there’s no Grammy tweets, telling us honestly what great new acts exist.

If people were that fucking interested in Mariah Carey, her album would have gone double platinum.  Get rid of those old phony nineties Tommy Mottola hypes.  You say you’re about music?  Only expose great songs.

There’s incredible opportunity here.  If only NARAS would stop genuflecting towards the calcified major labels and stop seeing itself as a serf on the CBS plantation.

Fuck Ken Ehrlich.  You’re better off having the show run by Cirque du Soleil.  If Ken Ehrlich had a show in Vegas, no one would go.

Enough with the usual suspects.

Where’s the online Grammy radio station?

God, you’d think the Internet didn’t exist listening to these Grammy fucks.

Who gives a shit about your low-rated TV nominations announcing show.  TOM RUSH got more hits on YouTube!

Wake up. The tools are extant.

If only someone familiar with today’s musical landscape was in charge, instead of someone beholden to the old fucks.

Hell, I’m willing to let Portnow keep A job.  Demote him.  Make him an administrator.  Make him earn his exorbitant pay.  But put someone who understands all of the above in charge.  PLEASE!