Velvet Rope Catastrophe

Ink Pen Shmee brings you one perspective on the
Velvet Rope Catastrophe A.K.A. the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards

It's a little late but, since I just started blogging, lemme talk for a minute or five about the MTV Video Music Awards. I watched it in my living room while playing a card game (Hell! Nothing beats high-speed competitive solitaire) with three friends -- a radio exec, a musician, and a music distribution exec, hmm -- who kept begging me to turn off the agitating madness (the Awards show).

I kept it on, but it was like hard to keep my eyes from rolling all over my head -- Chris Brown, I mean seriously...nice Charlie Chaplin immo, lamewad. And then JT, who probably speaks in that butchered lilt because his natural voice (which breaks through when he gets real excited "We got a moon man. We got a moon man.") is the kind of high-pitched squeal that brings shame to 12-year-old boys across the world, compliments him with an inarticulate: "whatever Chris Brown just did reminded me that I'm getting older, cause damn." Oh, now I get it. I hope that this year is the last that we'll see of Chris Brown, but even more than that, and this is an aside, I hope we've seen the last of Akon, the man who throws human beings at other human beings. Akon throws human beings at other human beings.

With its suite-structure and reheated line-up, the MTV Awards was a total velvet rope catastrophe. The velvet rope has one and only one function: to generate the illusion of appeal through mystery and unspoken rejection. In other words, every time you see a velvet rope recognize that someone behind it is desperate to generate hype. You don't know what's inside because you can't get inside and you don't try cause you might be embarrassed if were to seek entry and be rejected, but more often than not, velvet ropes hide what's not happening inside. The divided crowd and the hotel suite party rooms relieved performers from really having to bring it in front of an audience and, I would imagine, gave MTV control over how and when to air each performance.

Here's a question: Why is Pete Wentz so famous? He's short, not very cute and, how very rock 'n' roll, dating lip-synching, surgically reconstructed, sister-coattail-riding pop tart Ashlee Simpson. When he smashed his guitar after his awards show performance it was an insult to rock 'n' roll. I covered the MTV Video Music Awards in 2005, and there were a few rock bands present at the awards: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Green Day. No greats, no real keeping of pace with the rock bands who are filling stadiums and large venues throughout the country, performing mind blowing, meaningful music that speaks to the actual state of peoples' minds.

A lot of important things are happening in music right now, but you won't see them on MTV.
Besides his Katrina blurt, what's so awesome about Kanye West? His name is pretty cool and "Golddigger" was a catchy tune, sure. I even bought Late Registration a couple of years ago because I thought it would be fun to listen to Golddiger while I drove around, and it was fun for a minute. But the rest of the album was unlistenable. Maybe I didn't get it, and I don't claim to have listened to his new album, so...all I can say is that I grow tired of watching his cocky antics -- embarrassing himself at the European MTV Awards ("If I don't win, the Awards show loses credibility") and his self-promoting face-off with 50 cent. But what's really off the mark about Kanye's talk is this quote that I found on People.com in which Kanye West says, "I told the guy at MTV, There's only a couple things important in music this year: Umbrella, Amy Winehouse," he said. "It's not just about me. Britney Spears is not important in music."

He's definitely right about Britney. Why should the public fight for her to make her comeback when there's no meaning to it? She's got tens of millions of dollars and the best producers in the biz at her back, so what's the big deal if someone can manufacture a beat and distort her vocals to sound good as they go along with it? Let someone else have a chance. She should be on permanent vacation in Fiji or Cabo. What does she have to contribute?

But to say there's only a couple of things important in music is to overlook a great deal. Granted, Kanye can sell records and he should be at the MTV Music Awards to represent himself, and, if he wants, be able to make blanket statements about what's happening in music. At least he speaks his mind. The problem is that the greats of music, those who define today's era, are not being honored and are not present to represent themselves. Eh, hem, hello, we're Arcade Fire, and we're not sure if you caught our era-defining new album Neon Bible or not, but oooh wait, look Danity Kane is wearing Ed Hardy swag, so nevermind us! Hi we're Band of Horses and we write our own songs, which have feeling, so see you never. And, is there not room for MF Doom?
All of this begs the question, are today's artist just popular for being popular? Also, do all artists have equal access to the airwaves? Are today's DJs informed, savvy musicphiles, or just engineers who speak banalities in between pushing buttons to switch between pre-programmed set lists?

Don't even get me started on the Pam, Kid Rock and Tommy Lee feud. The fact that these names are a part of today's pop culture vocabulary stalls the tongue. Kick a bunch of rock 'n' roll corpses around and call it drama if you want to, but I don't buy it.

Here's a question: If the MTV Music Video Awards were to really represent the best in music in 2007, who would have been there?