The recent deaths of Davy Jones and Ronnie Montrose got me thinking of 3 snubs that the elitists in the music biz pulled during the "In Memoriam" piece on the Grammy show as well as the snubbing of the rock n' roll hall of fame. The hall of fame has been beaten to death by others so I'm not gonna spend much time on that, however the hall would be wise to hear fans of bands such as Rush, Kiss and many others, especially when they put in others who are nowhere near deserved as those previously mentioned. I really want to focus on how someone could really be this elitist and snub someone even in death.
When the Grammy's aired their "In Memoriam" piece it went on and on and as usual had lots of behind the scenes type people. I kept seeing producers and execs and so on but I saw no Mike Starr (Alice In Chains bassist), no Mikey Welsh (Weezer bassist) and most notably no Jani Lane (Warrant singer). At first I thought the snubs were because these were drug related deaths, but they spent most of the show remembering Whitney Houston who was a well known drug abuser and speculation of her death has been mostly drug related. My belief is that these men were just not considered "important" or "cool enough" for the Grammys.
For me the one that is the most perplexing is Jani Lane. The man wrote all of Warrants hits and sold millions of albums making the music biz tons of money yet when he passes the Grammys act like they have never heard of him and it's bullshit! Maybe Warrant wasn't the Beatles, but they had a very large fan base at one time and Jani was a well known personality, his later years not being that different then Whitney's (Drug/alcohol abuse, reality TV, poor record sales). Why can't they add a simple photo, let alone a song clip? Maybe a song like... I don't know.... "Heaven"? It was just really disrespectful to him and to fans of 80s music basically telling them that their favorite bands and music was not important to the Grammys.
Will Davy Jones (from the Monkees a band that critics hated) or Ronnie Montrose (a guitarist who had a low profile) make the cut? today yes, a year from now? Maybe not. And that is just pathetic.
