The rehearsals for the 51st Annual Grammy Awards could be considered the calm before the storm of the ceremony -- except, well, they haven't been all that calm and rain has been falling on Staples Center for days. The show will air live on the East Coast on Sunday night on CBS and, with an unprecedented 24 musical numbers, the producers are struggling mightily with a dizzying number of moving parts and compelling subplots.
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Practicing for the Grammy Awards
There is plenty at stake this year -- relevancy being paramount.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 55 words Type of Material: Correction
Grammy Awards: An article in Saturday's Calendar section about rehearsals for the Grammy Awards said that Herbie Hancock's "River: The Joni Letters," which was named best album last year, had sold fewer than 40,000 copies in the U.S. It should have said the album had sold fewer than 40,000 copies at the time it won.
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One scheduled performer, Kid Rock, almost didn't make it to Los Angeles because of a courthouse entanglement from a Georgia assault case. Another, British star M.I.A., is nine months pregnant, which raises the possibility that the 31-year-old nominee might deliver more than an acceptance speech if she wins the record of the year Grammy for her track "Paper Planes."
There also had been talk in recent days that Coldplay, the English rock group nominated in the record of the year category for "Viva La Vida," would be served with court papers at the ceremony as part of a pending plagiarism claim.
Attorneys managed to avoid that potential red-carpet disaster, but the band must know that any trophy it wins will come with plenty of pressroom inquiries about the claim by guitar-hero Joe Satriani that the song sounds too close to his 2004 tune "If I Could Fly."
Other scheduled performers were dealing with more run-of-the-mill anxieties. For newcomers, the prospect of standing on stage and looking out on audience members such as Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and U2 can stir up more than just emotions.
"Standing on the stage is going to be a mixture of honor and humility and chaos and beauty and vomit all at the same time," said Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland, who will perform the group's hit "Stay." "You just don't want to throw up on stage."
Other artists set to play on the telecast include Justin Timberlake, Radiohead (with the USC marching band), Chris Brown, and Kanye West. Many of them will take the stage in tandem performances that cross generations and genres -- McCartney will team with Foo Fighters' leader Dave Grohl, Wonder with best-new-artist nominee Jonas Brothers.
"The beauty of that," said Jack Sussman, CBS' executive VP for music specials, "is that Stevie is an icon that the Jonas Brothers look up to. He believes in them and their talent, and the audience will see that they are really good musicians, which they sometimes don't get enough credit for. You have to give them props for walking out there with him."
