Word for word, this could not be a more perfect ode to music. I'm posting the whole letter here, and I'd urge you to read word for word - it's worth the effort, trust me. Full respect to you, Mr Grohl!
Oh, what a
night we had last Sunday at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. The glitz! The
Glamour! SEACREST! Where do I begin?? Chillin' with Lil'
Wayne...meeting Cyndi Lauper's adorable mother...the complimentary blinking
Coldplay bracelet.....much too much to recap. It's really
is still a bit of a blur. But, if there's one thing that I
remember VERY clearly, it was accepting the Grammy for Best Rock
Performance...and then saying this:
"To
me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is
what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument
and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to
do... It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct,
it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here
[your heart] and what goes on in here [your head]."
Not the Gettysburg
Address, but hey......I'm a drummer, remember?
Well, me
and my big mouth. Never has a 33 second acceptance rant evoked such caps-lock
postboard rage as my lil' ode to analog recording has. OK....maybe Kanye has me
on this one, but....Imma let you finish....just wanted to clarify something...
I love
music. I love ALL kinds of music. From Kyuss to Kraftwerk, Pinetop Perkins to
Prodigy, Dead Kennedys to Deadmau5.....I love music. Electronic or acoustic, it
doesn't matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift
that ALL human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one
musician's personality to the next is what makes music so exciting
and.....human.
That's
exactly what I was referring to. The "human element". That thing that
happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That
thing that makes people sound like PEOPLE. Somewhere along the line those
things became "bad" things, and with the great advances in digital
recording technology over the years they became easily "fixed". The
end result? I my humble opinion.....a lot of music that sounds perfect, but
lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first
place.
And,
unfortunately, some of these great advances have taken the focus off of
the actual craft of performance. Look, I am not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not
John Bonham. Hell...I'm not even Josh Groban, for that matter. But I try really
fucking hard so that I don't have to rely on anything but my hands and my heart
to play a song. I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and
accept that it sounds like me. Because that's what I think is most important.
It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real.
I don't
know how to do what Skrillex does (though I fucking love it) but I do know that
the reason he is so loved is because he sounds like Skrillex, and that's
badass. We have a different process and a different set of tools, but the
"craft" is equally as important, I'm sure. I mean.....if it were that
easy, anyone could do it, right? (See what I did there?)
So, don't
give me two Crown Royals and then ask me to make a speech at your wedding,
because I might just bust into the advantages of recording to 2 inch
tape.
Now, I
think I have to go scream at some kids to get off my lawn.
Stay
frosty.
Davemau5
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