OK, it's just me, really. But after looking at
the nominees for this year's
Grammys (to be awarded Sunday, January 31), a few additional thoughts:
1) First, congratulations to all the nominated artists.
2) Well, I already said it, but I was surprised that Peter Himmelman wasn't nominated for
My Trampoline. Quality of the album aside (and it's a great album), he was nominated last year -- surprising that he wasn't nominated again.
3) Because being nominated before definitely helps -- Cathy & Marcy and Buck Howdy both have previous nominations in the category (with C&M winning twice before), and Ziggy Marley's won 4 Grammys as well.
4) It looks like Milkshake took the "Brady Rymer" slot I had the Sippy Cups pegged for. I thought their constant touring to places like LA and NYC would help them. Insufficiently, it turned out.
5) Preschool teachers around the country are cheering Greg & Steve's nomination -- seriously, those guys' disks are in literally every classroom at Little Boy Blue's preschool.
Here are the three final points:
6) People more closely tied to the industry had some sense this would happen -- not only did Buck correctly pick Milkshake (not so surprising) and Greg & Steve (very surprising), but I'd also heard about Jonathan Sprout getting some attention.
7) Of the 6 artists nominated this year, 4 of the 6 played the
Grammy Museum kids' series. Only Greg & Steve and Jonathan Sprout did not. I'm thinking booking agents should be calling to offer their clients' services for the 2010 series, because it couldn't hurt to play in front of Grammy voters, no?
8) Finally, the
arcane voting rules make it hard to project what might happen in selecting a winner. Folks can only vote in 8 of the 29 fields. That means that people have to want to vote in the kids' category and that will keep Ziggy Marley from running away with the award. It means, in basest vote-gathering terms, that Marley needs to convince his reggae fans in the Academy to crossover just as it means that Cathy & Marcy need to convince their folk fans in the Academy to do the same. My money's on Ziggy (note: not actual money), but I wouldn't be totally surprised to see Cathy & Marcy take the award.
We are no longer the Imagination Movers' target audience, if indeed we ever were. Back before they were a Disney sensation, they were known to us only via CDs, CDs that I was just sort of "meh" about. And their good fortune (based on a lot of work) of securing a Disney TV show didn't help us, a non-cable-TV household. (We've only seen the show maybe a couple times.)
So while I was definitely interested in seeing the band in concert on their West Coast swing, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, either from my own perspective or that of Miss Mary Mack and Little Boy Blue.
First off, I expected, and found, a sizable audience for the band. The lovely new Mesa Arts Center was hopping Friday with attendees for various events, but the Movers had the biggest theatre and given that the Ikeda Theatre seats nearly 1,600, I'd guess that at least 1,000 of those were filled, which, well, beat out Dan Zanes when he last came through on a Friday night.
It helps to have Disney's muscle backing the band, I suppose, so I got this shot of labelmates' TMBG's cover/reworking of "Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)" playing on the video screen before the show. (I have chosen to omit photos of my kids' slackjawed appreciation of the familiar video.)
But 7:08 rolled around, the scrim went up, the band came out, and we were off.
I've had a 
