Too Late for Metal

Regarding Paul Grein’s Jan. 6 article on the Grammys: It is ironic that in the late ‘60s and through the ‘70s, when the best and most creative hard rock/metal was being cranked out, the Grammys ignored it as though it did not exist. And now, in these times of musical Armageddon and lame, silly, stupid, tasteless, crap-bands such as Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica, the Grammys are acknowledging hard rock/heavy metal as if it’s a new dynamic force in music. Too late! The damage is done.

I guess artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, UFO, Rainbow, Scorpions and early Van Halen just weren’t good enough, huh? I don’t know who’s more at fault here, the idiots of the academy or the dim-witted fools who make up 90% of the record-buying public.

Wilson Phillips, M.C. Hammer, Mariah Carey and Sinead O’Connor are just the latest additions to a long line of tailor-made MTV commercial scrap-heap acts that are sure to keep popping up as long as the mass-audience remains tone deaf and stupid.

There must be some kind of way out of here / said the joker to the thief/there’s too much confusion / I can’t get no relief.

MICHAEL LEE REIDER

Downey