Music Magg

Too Many Song Snippets by Barely Identified Artists, and Too Much Whitewashing by MARK GABRISH CONLAN Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Our “feature” for last night was the long-awaited and heavily hyped Motown 60: A Grammy Celebration on CBS, which turned out to be a horrendous disappointment, mainly because instead of the way the previous Grammy tributes to the Beatles, Elton John and Stevie Wonder  (who, as one of the few survivors from Motown’s glory days, was prominently featured last night) have done — both veterans and modern singers doing complete songs from the artists being paid tribute to — the show was co-hosted by Smokey Robinson and the thoroughly repulsive piece of garbage known as “Cedric the Entertainer,” whose attempts to pose as a D.J. in various historical eras of Motown music were disgusting and took the edge off the show. It opened magnificently with Wonder leading the house band in a performance of his beautiful song

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved The April 7, 2019 telecast of the 54 th annual American Country Music awards show on CBS is the “rump” country music awards show created by Dick Clark Productions and performed at the MGM Grand Amphitheatre in that hotbed of country music, Las Vegas. It was bizarre and a bit macabre to realize that this was the same city where there was a mass shooting incident on October 1, 2017 during the final performance of a country-music festival featuring many of the same artists being honored at last night’s show, including Jason Aldean and Maren Morris, that still ranks as the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history (though the way things are going it probably won’t hold that record long), with 58 people killed (not counting the shooter, Charles Paddock, who killed himself after police traced him and barricaded the door of the hotel room from which he was shooting down at the festival-goers). It wa