Another Grammy Awards is nearing and before we enjoy what the music academy body deems to be the best out there, it's a fine time to look back at a period in which it could be argued that the members of the Grammy academy were on controlled substances.
There have been questionable winners in select years when it came to the category of Best New Artist (Shelby Lynne in 2000 over Brad Paisley and Jill Scott, Marc Cohn in 1991 over Boyz II Men, Color Me Badd and Seal and the all-time biggest blunder, Canadian singer-actor Robert Goulet over such "lightweights" as Peter, Paul & Mary and the Four Seasons in 1962). Everyone's allowed to make mistakes.
But how do you make these memorable mistakes and do them in consecutive years. You have to have sat in a room full of white powder during this four-year period to completely blow the category like Academy members did.
1976
Nominees who did not win: Boston, The Brothers Johnson, Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, Wild Cherry.
And the winner is ... Starland Vocal Band.
Now I understand the allure of the Starland Vocal Band. They were once called Fat City and toured with the great John Denver and even co-wrote the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads," which makes every West Virginia native get a lump in their throats when they hear this song. But Starland Vocal Band won the Grammy for Best New Artist for one song and one song only ... the kitsch king of 1976, "Afternoon Delight." Sure, we know we want to resist it, but we can't avoid it. And yes, Ron Burgandy and his pals do a great rendition of the song.
But come on!! Other than a TV variety show they hosted that introduced the world to a gap-tooth comedian from Indiana named David Letterman (who so prophetically said, "Right now, televisions all over the country are being turned off."), the band did nothing. The husband-and-wife teams that made up the four-person group divorced and whatever there was of the act was never the same. The Brothers Johnson? Yeah, they had a few Top 40 and R&B hits and were both involved on Michael Jackson's landmark album, "Thriller." Wild Cherry and Dr. Buzzard's ... yeah, they were as kitschy as SVB. But Boston? One of the greatest debut albums of all time with songs such as "More Than a Feeling," "Long Time" and "Peace Of Mind." Yeah, I realize that leader Tom Scholz releases an album with the group every almost generation, but still, it was better than that flash 'n the pan outfit known as Starland Vocal Band.
1977
Nominees who did not win: Stephen Bishop, Andy Gibb, Shaun Cassidy, Foreigner.
And the winner is ... Debby Boone.
Debby Boone? Yeah, I know the lineage that was her family musical tree, starting with dad Pat Boone. It was a great story when "You Light Up My Life" scampered to No. 1 and spent 70 days at the top. But let's face facts, by the time 1977 became 1978, most everyone wanted to put a stick of dynamite underneath their radios and light the fuse when "You Light Up My Life" came on the radio ad nauseum ... still! We needed a follow-up. "California" was such a follow-up. But does anyone know the words to that song. Is there any sheet music for that one? How about an actually recording!? Yep. That was the last of Debby Boone before she settled into a life with Rosemary Clooney's son and raised a family. She's doing infomercials now and she looks great! I have no doubt she's a sweet lady, but the luster that was her "promising" music career came off around, umm, 1978.
Sure, Shaun Cassidy didn't last long and became more a novelty than anything else musically. He went into movie and television directing actually after a short stint around 1987 on the soap opera "General Hospital." But Andy Gibb was the hottest thing musically. A monster No. 1 smash as his debut with "I Just Want To Be Your Everything," followed by two more No. 1 hits after the Grammys show that year, "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" and "Shadow Dancing." Sadly, he never was able to outrun the shadow of his famous brothers, the Bee Gees, and substance abuse eventually did him in four days after his 30th birthday in 1988. Stephen Bishop hit the Top 40 in late 1977 with the tropical-sounding "On And On," so the voters must have thought he was more novelty than Debby Boone and Shaun Cassidy. All he did was go on and earn Oscar nominations for writing "It Might Be You" for "Tootsie" and "Separate Lives" for "White Nights." And Foreigner? Yeah, they didn't have much of a career at all -- if you don't count their nine Top 10 hits, the millions of records they sold and the following they still have today even as they replaced their famous lead singer, Lou Gramm. As Don Addams used to say as Maxwell Smart on "Get Smart" ... missed it by thaaaaat much.
1978
Nominees who did not win: The Cars, Elvis Costello, Toto, Chris Rea.
And the winner is ... A Taste Of Honey.
Apparently, academy voters heard "A Taste Of Honey" and thought this was a Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass spinoff thanks mainly to the title of their most famous song. Hazel Payne and Janice Johnson were the driving forces of the band, one playing bass, the other guitar. And they had a really cool disco hit out in the summer/fall of '78 called "Boogie Oogie Oogie." Still a great-sounding song. But after that? One more top 40 hit -- the very different sounding remake in English of Kyu Sakomoto's 1963 No. 1 hit "Sukiyaki." Then ... buh-byyyyye!! See ya on the disco oldies circuit!
Chris Rea was a one-hit wonder with 1978's "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," but he had other albums/CDs over the year, including a 1989 bare-knuckled album-rock track called "Workin' On It." Still sounds good today. How about the other hacks? The Cars gave us great album rock songs like "Just What I Needed," "My Best Friend's Girl," "Shake It Up," "Let's Go," "You Might Think" and "Tonight She Comes" before disbanding. They worked out fairly well. Elvis Costello? Yeah, he gave us even more great songs like "Pump It Up," "Allison," "Everyday I Write The Book" and "Veronica" and in 2003, the unthinkable happened -- he got inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!! Betcha the academy never saw that coming. And Toto? Yeah, the Academy "made it up to them" by naming the 1982 album "Toto IV" the Album of the Year. Thanks, guys! The band made up of studio musicians continued to do its thing until 2008, ending a 31-year association together.
1979
Nominees who did not win: The Blues Brothers, The Knack, Dire Straits, Robin Williams.
And the winner is ... Rickie Lee Jones.
This was considered "girl power" to see Rickie Lee Jones win this Grammy Award before the ladies took over the musical landscape when the 1980s took off. And in all fairness to Ms. Jones, she switched up from a pop career in the early 1980s to the jazz scene where she's done fairly well. She's made a name for herself there and I say good for her in that regard after she came out of the box in '79 with "Chuck E's In Love" and "Youngblood," her only two Top 40 hits.
But let's see who got left at the alter without a Grammy: The Blues Brothers could have been something big had it not been for John Belushi's sudden death in 1982. Who knows what might have happened. They had a No. 1 album with "Briefcase Full Of Blues" and three Top 40 hits in 1979-80, all remakes. And they made their own Blues Brothers movie in 1980. The jury is out there. The Knack, sadly, were here and gone. They were unfortunately labelled as that "next Beatles" thing. Big mistake! Following up "Get The Knack" and the songs "My Sharona" and "Good Girls Don't" proved to be a hazard to the band's health as "But The Little Girls Understand" and the first hit from that album, "Baby Talks Dirty" was an absolute dud ... and mistake to sound all like the last album. The band broke up, got back together again, broke up, got together again and stayed together until Doug Feiger's death in 2010. Dire Straits got bigger after "Sultans Of Swing" in 1979, scoring a number of critically acclaimed albums, then scoring a monster hit in 1985 with the album "Brothers In Arms" and the No. 1 hit "Money For Nothing." They didn't do much after that, but still, they had gone a little further pop and rock wise as Rickie Lee Jones did. And Robin Williams ... well, we all knew he had a great career ahead of him. But in comedic work ... not musically. It would have probably been just as awkward as seeing Rickie Lee Jones win that honor.
The next year, Christopher Cross, who had a monster year, won the Best New Artist Grammy over such acts as Robbie Dupree, Amy Holland and Irene Cara. Of course, nominated that year was a little act called the Pretenders.
Oops. That was not good.
But compared to that four-year period of "oops," that was minor.
That four-year period was pretty freakin' bad to say the least.
