51st Grammy Awards - Greatest Hits

Sunday was the big show for the music business. The televised clustering of popular artists, random CBS-sponsored presenters (ahem, Gary Sinese, WTF?), and awkward bravado of the industry is often just a basic intrusion to personal preference – littered with opulent lip-syncing. The actually awarding aside, this year the Grammys had a couple notable performances. Here are our favorites:rnrnLil Wayne, Robin Thicke, & The Dirty Dozen:rnWhat begins as Lil Wayne & Robin doing a sensitive ode to New Orleans turns into an exuberant tribute to the true musicianship of the home of jazz. A crooning Thicke adds weight to Weezy’s responsive ‘Tie My Hands’ lyrics – complete with background screens of Katrina-imagery. The set picks up into the legendary N.O. musician, Allen Toussaint’s boogie-woogie piano and the Dirty Dozen brass band cues up ‘Big Chief’. Complete with dancers in purple-green and toting traditional jazz procession handkerchiefs and umbrellas, trumpeter Terence Blanchard walks into the celebration. Pure Mardi Gras… minus the beads.rnrn rnrnRadiohead featuring the USC Marching Band:rnAmazing. Radiohead transformed the dubstep-like track ’15 Steps’ by accompanying the haunting song with rows of drum lines and brass-blowing college students. Yorke jitters around the stage and the Trojans juxtapose with precision choreography.rnrnM.I.A, Lil Wayne, T.I., Jay-Z, and Kanye West:rnThe ‘hip-hop summit’ sucked all the color out of the broadcast as M.I.A. and her well-developed unborn child opened with ‘Paper Planes’… curtains dropped and the quadruplet took turns with ‘Swagga Like Us’.