February 15, 5:00 p.m. PST, 8:00 p.m. EST, the Grammys show will air. Riding on the never-ending success of her record 1989, Taylor Swift will open. And paying tribute to decades before will be performers honoring the artists who left us last year. Lady Gaga, however, is seemingly everywhere. And her influence is spreading; just type a search into Youtube for a promo commercial and you get results from people saying she’s Lucifer. Whatever she’s doing with Intel, whatever technology she’s going to show in some collaboration with them, to me that’s the news no matter what the conspiracy theorists claim about her being Lucifer. I hope it’s creative.

Best of luck to the performers who are having to pay not one but four tributes: Lady Gaga, honoring David Bowie, by covering at least three or four of his songs and paying homage to his fashion legacy; Chris Stapleton, Bonnie Raitt, and Gary Clark Jr. honoring B.B. King; members of the Eagles — Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, Timothy B. Schmit, and Joe Walsh — plus band-collaborator Jackson Brown honoring Glen Fry with a performance of one of the band’s songs, and Hollywood Vampires, the “supergroup” of Johnny Depp, Alice Cooper, Duff McKagan, and Joe Perry, paying tribute to Lemmy with their TV debut set to play a Motörhead song, and seizing the opportunity to debut a new song of their own.

People complain that there is no rock, but even outside of these four tributes, I guarantee the country performances will feature Gibson guitars. Plus because of these tributes, the show will have a much stronger rock feel than it has had in the past few years. I just really wish we didn’t have to lose rock legends for the mainstream to actually air rock. Plus I can’t wait to hear the pop radio djs afterwards. Will they take note? What will they think of the rock music? More on that later….

 

(Note the corrected date; I really thought it was today-Sunday. Oops!)