Michael Jackson fans flock to Grammy Museum exhibit

The display is a new version of the one the L.A. institution had shown since February.

Jeanne LaCroix of Woodland Hills gazed with a wistful smile at the images unspooling across two giant screens inside downtown L.A.'s Grammy Museum: a teenage Michael Jackson surrounded by his brothers as they announced the name of a winner at the 1974 Grammy Awards ceremony.

When the montage shifted to the moment 10 years later when he strode onstage in a knockout blue sequined jacket with blinding gold epaulets to collect the producer of the year trophy he shared with Quincy Jones for their work on "Thriller," LaCroix's head snapped around to the glass display case immediately behind her.

"Do they have that jacket in there?" she said to her 13-year-old daughter, Brianna.

No, but there were four other equally dazzling specimens from Jackson's spectacular wardrobe: the turquoise jacket decorated with Swarovski crystal from the Jacksons' 1984 Victory tour; a midnight blue and gold number he wore to the unveiling of his star on Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame; the blood red jacket with sparkling gold piping he chose for an American Music Awards show; and the red, white, blue and gold model he put on for the United We Stand concert after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Positioned amid the glitz-heavy jackets and two sequined gloves circa 1988 -- both right-hand only -- was a simple white Hugo Boss suit. LaCroix and other visitors to the museum Wednesday were momentarily puzzled at the uncharacteristically plain outfit until they recognized it as the one Jackson wore on the cover of the "Thriller" album.

"It's amazing to see these," said a wide-eyed Michelle Wallace, on vacation in L.A. from Waverly, Iowa, with her husband, Scott, and teenage daughters Bailee and Courtney. Michelle wore a black T-shirt with Jackson's image and the words "In Loving Memory -- Michael Jackson."

This morning's news that the Academy Awards will widen the best picture category from five to 10 films has put the Grammys on the opposite end of an award show trend. Earlier this year, the Emmys announced they would expand nominations in a number of categories from five to six.

Should the Grammys follow suit? The Recording Academy's telecast is already bloated, featuring a whopping 109 categories (take that, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and your 24 fields!). Yet it's in the best interest of the Recording Academy to have a high number of categories.The more labels and artists in the running, the more people to recruit for memberships ($100 per year). 

Having such a high number of albums up for consideration also allows Recording Academy voters to save face. Among the 109 fields, there's plenty of quality work, even if it's not represented in the major categories. When Radiohead lost album of the year, it was still a Grammy winner, having earlier taken alternative music album.

Everyone's a winner, and everyone's happy.

Carrie Underwood may have been the entertainer of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, but the baton was passed to Taylor Swift last night at Country Music Television Awards gala. The artist won video of the year for her "Love Story," and while the telecast is nothing but a mega-commercial for the video network, expect it to be the beginning of T-Swift's award show winnings over the course of the next year.

She won the top prize at the video ceremony last year, but now she's begining her victory lap for her sophmore effort "Fearless." Swift's Disney-esque "Love Story" clip also won female video of the year, and she closed the ceremony performing "Pour Some Sugar on Me" with Def Leppard. The appearance was to hype the DVD release of Swift and Leppard's "Crossroads" special, but it also felt like a nod to the arena-pop era of country that was ushered in by Leppard's producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange and Shania Twain.

Other major winners included Brad Paisley, who took home best male video for "Waitin' on a Woman," and Rascal Flatts, which won group video of the year for "Every Day." Sugarland won duo of the year for "All I Want to Do," and the Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" was named breakthrough video.

Spectacle reigned supreme tonight, with the B-52's joining Sugarland for a cover of "Love Shack," and Swift opening the show by donning Vulcan ears and playing "Star Trek." A few moments later, she joined T-Pain for a novelty rap titled "Thug Story" -- a certain iTunes hit if it gets released (it's embedded below, and we apologize for the ad in the clip). Playing the character of "T-Sweezy," Swift declares that she's never really been in a club, still lives with her parents, and charmed while delivering Weird Al-worthy lines. Rapped Swift, "What? What? I knit sweaters, yo!"

Indeed, the night was largely a showcase for the young star, who still seems to be on the rise despite already being the top-selling artist of 2008. Her 2008 album "Fearless" has already sold more than 3.3 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, and with a sold-out tour, as well as the ability to not take herself too seriously, Swift further set herself up for a massive number of nominations come Grammy time at the end of this year.

Her "Fearless" was released too late to be considered for the Grammys that aired in February, but its momentum isn't slowing. Expect a sales bump going into next week, and expect her to score an album of the year nod. Can we she win? We're not putting it past her. As she rapped tonight, "You don't want to fight me / In my extra-small white T." Did you catch that, Kanye? 

What: Mariah Carey's "Obsessed," the first single off her upcoming album.

How is it: This is a feistier Mimi than we're used to, as she comes out firing in the song's opening moments. "Why are you so obsessed with me?" questions an obviously irritated Carey. 

Is she lashing out at Eminem? The gossip hounds? A simple scolding at a new breed of pop divas? It doesn't really matter. Either way, it will help Mariah stay in the headlines for weeks to come -- long enough to fuel hype for her album "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," which will be conveniently released (on Aug. 25) in time to make the cut for the new Grammy eligibility rules. 

With The-Dream and Tricky Stewart sharing production credits, Carey has been molded to fit current trends. The still-ubiquitous Auto-Tune is here (a look she played with on "E=MC2's" "Migrate); this time, it's used to bring a slight electronic manipulation to her trademark wails. No need to worry about hitting high notes when computers are all the rage these days, and the thick, pointed keyboards will allow Carey to fit comfortably on Top-40 play lists that are currently obsessed with Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."  

Ultimately, that's the point here, as this seems like a tune pointedly designed to get radio play and provide us press types with some new topics to try to get Carey to address on the red carpet, which she will artfully deflect from now until mid-November. 

The song is put-down after put-down, with Carey declaring that she "ain't gonna feed you / Gonna let you starve," and the hard-not-to-quote, "You're a mom and pop / I'm a corporation." She doesn't really sound angry -- just a little bemused at her attackers, even if the high road would have been to ignore them. But the sophisticated route doesn't always generate hype, and "Obsessed" is certainly more lively than her earlier work with The-Dream (the bedroom slow-dance "My Love"). 

Unfortunately, it's an even more anonymous Carey than ever before. One of the biggest selling points of "E=MC2" was Carey dropping the over-the-top howling, and learning how to sing with a more restrained range. She thankfully left the showboating to the "American Idol" kids, and stayed closer to the rhythms. Yet "Obsessed" again sells out the songbird to her producers. 

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Island Def Jam

First Miley Cyrus, then John Mayer and now T-Pain? Everyone seems to want to partner with country superstar princess Taylor Swift, and Swift seems happy to play along. 

When Swift teased via Twitter that she might be in the studio with T-Pain, which came a few months after Mayer teased he was in the studio with Swift, we were either being fed trinkets from what would surely be one of the oddest and warped mainstream duet albums in history, or simply watching a pair of young media masters do their work. The latter appears to be the case with the T-Pain announcement, as Swift will indeed be working with the Auto-Tone kingpin, but there may or may not be music involved, and if there is, it may or not be a novelty number for a sketch at the "Country Music Television Music Awards," which air Tuesday night.

The folks at CMT have shared a photo to generate some hype for the pairing. But this is well played, Mr. T-Pain, well played. While the CMT Music Awards aren't exactly the cream of the crop, they do kind of mark the unofficial start of the music award season. Yes, it's here. 

With the Grammys having shifted their eligibility period from the last day of September to the last day in August, now is the time to take part in a stunt to get your album back in the minds of Grammy voters, a notoriously unadventurous lot. Swift doesn't have anything to worry about, but T-Pain's "Thr33 Ringz" drifted off the U.S. pop chart a few weeks ago, and the time is ripe for the artist to get back on the campaign trail. 

Additionally, let's not forget that there's precedent. Shoring up the country base worked well, come Grammy time, for Lil Wayne, who appeared with Kid Rock at the Country Music Assn. Awards in 2008.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Downtown's 4-month-old Grammy Museum is doing its part to get guests hip to Eleni Mandell's recent album, "Artificial Fire." The local chanteuse will bring her jazz-stoked pop songs to the institution April 14, engaging in a Q&A with museum chief curator Ken Viste before the performance. Tickets are $15 and come bundled, Prince-style, with a CD (2007's live effort "Voxhall and WUK").  

Mandell, long a local favorite, will perform in the museum's pristine 200-seat theater, which recently has played host to the likes of Tom Morello, Nas and Annie Lennox, among others. "Artificial Fire" sees Mandell exploring the pop songbook with a deft, vintage flair. "I got tired of the weepy, dark songs," she recently told The Times.

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

Should the Grammys follow Oscars' lead?

This morning's news that the Academy Awards will widen the best picture category from five to 10 films has put the Grammys on the opposite end of an award show trend. Earlier this year, the Emmys announced they would expand nominations in a number of categories from five to six.

Should the Grammys follow suit? The Recording Academy's telecast is already bloated, featuring a whopping 109 categories (take that, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and your 24 fields!). Yet it's in the best interest of the Recording Academy to have a high number of categories.The more labels and artists in the running, the more people to recruit for memberships ($100 per year). 

Having such a high number of albums up for consideration also allows Recording Academy voters to save face. Among the 109 fields, there's plenty of quality work, even if it's not represented in the major categories. When Radiohead lost album of the year, it was still a Grammy winner, having earlier taken alternative music album.

Everyone's a winner, and everyone's happy.

Carrie Underwood may have been the entertainer of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, but the baton was passed to Taylor Swift last night at Country Music Television Awards gala. The artist won video of the year for her "Love Story," and while the telecast is nothing but a mega-commercial for the video network, expect it to be the beginning of T-Swift's award show winnings over the course of the next year.

She won the top prize at the video ceremony last year, but now she's begining her victory lap for her sophmore effort "Fearless." Swift's Disney-esque "Love Story" clip also won female video of the year, and she closed the ceremony performing "Pour Some Sugar on Me" with Def Leppard. The appearance was to hype the DVD release of Swift and Leppard's "Crossroads" special, but it also felt like a nod to the arena-pop era of country that was ushered in by Leppard's producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange and Shania Twain.

Other major winners included Brad Paisley, who took home best male video for "Waitin' on a Woman," and Rascal Flatts, which won group video of the year for "Every Day." Sugarland won duo of the year for "All I Want to Do," and the Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" was named breakthrough video.

Spectacle reigned supreme tonight, with the B-52's joining Sugarland for a cover of "Love Shack," and Swift opening the show by donning Vulcan ears and playing "Star Trek." A few moments later, she joined T-Pain for a novelty rap titled "Thug Story" -- a certain iTunes hit if it gets released (it's embedded below, and we apologize for the ad in the clip). Playing the character of "T-Sweezy," Swift declares that she's never really been in a club, still lives with her parents, and charmed while delivering Weird Al-worthy lines. Rapped Swift, "What? What? I knit sweaters, yo!"

Indeed, the night was largely a showcase for the young star, who still seems to be on the rise despite already being the top-selling artist of 2008. Her 2008 album "Fearless" has already sold more than 3.3 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, and with a sold-out tour, as well as the ability to not take herself too seriously, Swift further set herself up for a massive number of nominations come Grammy time at the end of this year.

Her "Fearless" was released too late to be considered for the Grammys that aired in February, but its momentum isn't slowing. Expect a sales bump going into next week, and expect her to score an album of the year nod. Can we she win? We're not putting it past her. As she rapped tonight, "You don't want to fight me / In my extra-small white T." Did you catch that, Kanye? 

What: Mariah Carey's "Obsessed," the first single off her upcoming album.

How is it: This is a feistier Mimi than we're used to, as she comes out firing in the song's opening moments. "Why are you so obsessed with me?" questions an obviously irritated Carey. 

Is she lashing out at Eminem? The gossip hounds? A simple scolding at a new breed of pop divas? It doesn't really matter. Either way, it will help Mariah stay in the headlines for weeks to come -- long enough to fuel hype for her album "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," which will be conveniently released (on Aug. 25) in time to make the cut for the new Grammy eligibility rules. 

With The-Dream and Tricky Stewart sharing production credits, Carey has been molded to fit current trends. The still-ubiquitous Auto-Tune is here (a look she played with on "E=MC2's" "Migrate); this time, it's used to bring a slight electronic manipulation to her trademark wails. No need to worry about hitting high notes when computers are all the rage these days, and the thick, pointed keyboards will allow Carey to fit comfortably on Top-40 play lists that are currently obsessed with Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."  

Ultimately, that's the point here, as this seems like a tune pointedly designed to get radio play and provide us press types with some new topics to try to get Carey to address on the red carpet, which she will artfully deflect from now until mid-November. 

The song is put-down after put-down, with Carey declaring that she "ain't gonna feed you / Gonna let you starve," and the hard-not-to-quote, "You're a mom and pop / I'm a corporation." She doesn't really sound angry -- just a little bemused at her attackers, even if the high road would have been to ignore them. But the sophisticated route doesn't always generate hype, and "Obsessed" is certainly more lively than her earlier work with The-Dream (the bedroom slow-dance "My Love"). 

Unfortunately, it's an even more anonymous Carey than ever before. One of the biggest selling points of "E=MC2" was Carey dropping the over-the-top howling, and learning how to sing with a more restrained range. She thankfully left the showboating to the "American Idol" kids, and stayed closer to the rhythms. Yet "Obsessed" again sells out the songbird to her producers. 

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Island Def Jam

First Miley Cyrus, then John Mayer and now T-Pain? Everyone seems to want to partner with country superstar princess Taylor Swift, and Swift seems happy to play along. 

When Swift teased via Twitter that she might be in the studio with T-Pain, which came a few months after Mayer teased he was in the studio with Swift, we were either being fed trinkets from what would surely be one of the oddest and warped mainstream duet albums in history, or simply watching a pair of young media masters do their work. The latter appears to be the case with the T-Pain announcement, as Swift will indeed be working with the Auto-Tone kingpin, but there may or may not be music involved, and if there is, it may or not be a novelty number for a sketch at the "Country Music Television Music Awards," which air Tuesday night.

The folks at CMT have shared a photo to generate some hype for the pairing. But this is well played, Mr. T-Pain, well played. While the CMT Music Awards aren't exactly the cream of the crop, they do kind of mark the unofficial start of the music award season. Yes, it's here. 

With the Grammys having shifted their eligibility period from the last day of September to the last day in August, now is the time to take part in a stunt to get your album back in the minds of Grammy voters, a notoriously unadventurous lot. Swift doesn't have anything to worry about, but T-Pain's "Thr33 Ringz" drifted off the U.S. pop chart a few weeks ago, and the time is ripe for the artist to get back on the campaign trail. 

Additionally, let's not forget that there's precedent. Shoring up the country base worked well, come Grammy time, for Lil Wayne, who appeared with Kid Rock at the Country Music Assn. Awards in 2008.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Downtown's 4-month-old Grammy Museum is doing its part to get guests hip to Eleni Mandell's recent album, "Artificial Fire." The local chanteuse will bring her jazz-stoked pop songs to the institution April 14, engaging in a Q&A with museum chief curator Ken Viste before the performance. Tickets are $15 and come bundled, Prince-style, with a CD (2007's live effort "Voxhall and WUK").  

Mandell, long a local favorite, will perform in the museum's pristine 200-seat theater, which recently has played host to the likes of Tom Morello, Nas and Annie Lennox, among others. "Artificial Fire" sees Mandell exploring the pop songbook with a deft, vintage flair. "I got tired of the weepy, dark songs," she recently told The Times.

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

'Thug Story' and beyond: The Taylor Swift award show reign begins

Carrie Underwood may have been the entertainer of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, but the baton was passed to Taylor Swift last night at Country Music Television Awards gala. The artist won video of the year for her "Love Story," and while the telecast is nothing but a mega-commercial for the video network, expect it to be the beginning of T-Swift's award show winnings over the course of the next year.

She won the top prize at the video ceremony last year, but now she's begining her victory lap for her sophmore effort "Fearless." Swift's Disney-esque "Love Story" clip also won female video of the year, and she closed the ceremony performing "Pour Some Sugar on Me" with Def Leppard. The appearance was to hype the DVD release of Swift and Leppard's "Crossroads" special, but it also felt like a nod to the arena-pop era of country that was ushered in by Leppard's producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange and Shania Twain.

Other major winners included Brad Paisley, who took home best male video for "Waitin' on a Woman," and Rascal Flatts, which won group video of the year for "Every Day." Sugarland won duo of the year for "All I Want to Do," and the Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" was named breakthrough video.

Spectacle reigned supreme tonight, with the B-52's joining Sugarland for a cover of "Love Shack," and Swift opening the show by donning Vulcan ears and playing "Star Trek." A few moments later, she joined T-Pain for a novelty rap titled "Thug Story" -- a certain iTunes hit if it gets released (it's embedded below, and we apologize for the ad in the clip). Playing the character of "T-Sweezy," Swift declares that she's never really been in a club, still lives with her parents, and charmed while delivering Weird Al-worthy lines. Rapped Swift, "What? What? I knit sweaters, yo!"

Indeed, the night was largely a showcase for the young star, who still seems to be on the rise despite already being the top-selling artist of 2008. Her 2008 album "Fearless" has already sold more than 3.3 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, and with a sold-out tour, as well as the ability to not take herself too seriously, Swift further set herself up for a massive number of nominations come Grammy time at the end of this year.

Her "Fearless" was released too late to be considered for the Grammys that aired in February, but its momentum isn't slowing. Expect a sales bump going into next week, and expect her to score an album of the year nod. Can we she win? We're not putting it past her. As she rapped tonight, "You don't want to fight me / In my extra-small white T." Did you catch that, Kanye? 

What: Mariah Carey's "Obsessed," the first single off her upcoming album.

How is it: This is a feistier Mimi than we're used to, as she comes out firing in the song's opening moments. "Why are you so obsessed with me?" questions an obviously irritated Carey. 

Is she lashing out at Eminem? The gossip hounds? A simple scolding at a new breed of pop divas? It doesn't really matter. Either way, it will help Mariah stay in the headlines for weeks to come -- long enough to fuel hype for her album "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," which will be conveniently released (on Aug. 25) in time to make the cut for the new Grammy eligibility rules. 

With The-Dream and Tricky Stewart sharing production credits, Carey has been molded to fit current trends. The still-ubiquitous Auto-Tune is here (a look she played with on "E=MC2's" "Migrate); this time, it's used to bring a slight electronic manipulation to her trademark wails. No need to worry about hitting high notes when computers are all the rage these days, and the thick, pointed keyboards will allow Carey to fit comfortably on Top-40 play lists that are currently obsessed with Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."  

Ultimately, that's the point here, as this seems like a tune pointedly designed to get radio play and provide us press types with some new topics to try to get Carey to address on the red carpet, which she will artfully deflect from now until mid-November. 

The song is put-down after put-down, with Carey declaring that she "ain't gonna feed you / Gonna let you starve," and the hard-not-to-quote, "You're a mom and pop / I'm a corporation." She doesn't really sound angry -- just a little bemused at her attackers, even if the high road would have been to ignore them. But the sophisticated route doesn't always generate hype, and "Obsessed" is certainly more lively than her earlier work with The-Dream (the bedroom slow-dance "My Love"). 

Unfortunately, it's an even more anonymous Carey than ever before. One of the biggest selling points of "E=MC2" was Carey dropping the over-the-top howling, and learning how to sing with a more restrained range. She thankfully left the showboating to the "American Idol" kids, and stayed closer to the rhythms. Yet "Obsessed" again sells out the songbird to her producers. 

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Island Def Jam

First Miley Cyrus, then John Mayer and now T-Pain? Everyone seems to want to partner with country superstar princess Taylor Swift, and Swift seems happy to play along. 

When Swift teased via Twitter that she might be in the studio with T-Pain, which came a few months after Mayer teased he was in the studio with Swift, we were either being fed trinkets from what would surely be one of the oddest and warped mainstream duet albums in history, or simply watching a pair of young media masters do their work. The latter appears to be the case with the T-Pain announcement, as Swift will indeed be working with the Auto-Tone kingpin, but there may or may not be music involved, and if there is, it may or not be a novelty number for a sketch at the "Country Music Television Music Awards," which air Tuesday night.

The folks at CMT have shared a photo to generate some hype for the pairing. But this is well played, Mr. T-Pain, well played. While the CMT Music Awards aren't exactly the cream of the crop, they do kind of mark the unofficial start of the music award season. Yes, it's here. 

With the Grammys having shifted their eligibility period from the last day of September to the last day in August, now is the time to take part in a stunt to get your album back in the minds of Grammy voters, a notoriously unadventurous lot. Swift doesn't have anything to worry about, but T-Pain's "Thr33 Ringz" drifted off the U.S. pop chart a few weeks ago, and the time is ripe for the artist to get back on the campaign trail. 

Additionally, let's not forget that there's precedent. Shoring up the country base worked well, come Grammy time, for Lil Wayne, who appeared with Kid Rock at the Country Music Assn. Awards in 2008.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Downtown's 4-month-old Grammy Museum is doing its part to get guests hip to Eleni Mandell's recent album, "Artificial Fire." The local chanteuse will bring her jazz-stoked pop songs to the institution April 14, engaging in a Q&A with museum chief curator Ken Viste before the performance. Tickets are $15 and come bundled, Prince-style, with a CD (2007's live effort "Voxhall and WUK").  

Mandell, long a local favorite, will perform in the museum's pristine 200-seat theater, which recently has played host to the likes of Tom Morello, Nas and Annie Lennox, among others. "Artificial Fire" sees Mandell exploring the pop songbook with a deft, vintage flair. "I got tired of the weepy, dark songs," she recently told The Times.

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

Mariah Carey: Are we 'Obsessed'?

What: Mariah Carey's "Obsessed," the first single off her upcoming album.

How is it: This is a feistier Mimi than we're used to, as she comes out firing in the song's opening moments. "Why are you so obsessed with me?" questions an obviously irritated Carey. 

Is she lashing out at Eminem? The gossip hounds? A simple scolding at a new breed of pop divas? It doesn't really matter. Either way, it will help Mariah stay in the headlines for weeks to come -- long enough to fuel hype for her album "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," which will be conveniently released (on Aug. 25) in time to make the cut for the new Grammy eligibility rules. 

With The-Dream and Tricky Stewart sharing production credits, Carey has been molded to fit current trends. The still-ubiquitous Auto-Tune is here (a look she played with on "E=MC2's" "Migrate); this time, it's used to bring a slight electronic manipulation to her trademark wails. No need to worry about hitting high notes when computers are all the rage these days, and the thick, pointed keyboards will allow Carey to fit comfortably on Top-40 play lists that are currently obsessed with Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."  

Ultimately, that's the point here, as this seems like a tune pointedly designed to get radio play and provide us press types with some new topics to try to get Carey to address on the red carpet, which she will artfully deflect from now until mid-November. 

The song is put-down after put-down, with Carey declaring that she "ain't gonna feed you / Gonna let you starve," and the hard-not-to-quote, "You're a mom and pop / I'm a corporation." She doesn't really sound angry -- just a little bemused at her attackers, even if the high road would have been to ignore them. But the sophisticated route doesn't always generate hype, and "Obsessed" is certainly more lively than her earlier work with The-Dream (the bedroom slow-dance "My Love"). 

Unfortunately, it's an even more anonymous Carey than ever before. One of the biggest selling points of "E=MC2" was Carey dropping the over-the-top howling, and learning how to sing with a more restrained range. She thankfully left the showboating to the "American Idol" kids, and stayed closer to the rhythms. Yet "Obsessed" again sells out the songbird to her producers. 

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Island Def Jam

First Miley Cyrus, then John Mayer and now T-Pain? Everyone seems to want to partner with country superstar princess Taylor Swift, and Swift seems happy to play along. 

When Swift teased via Twitter that she might be in the studio with T-Pain, which came a few months after Mayer teased he was in the studio with Swift, we were either being fed trinkets from what would surely be one of the oddest and warped mainstream duet albums in history, or simply watching a pair of young media masters do their work. The latter appears to be the case with the T-Pain announcement, as Swift will indeed be working with the Auto-Tone kingpin, but there may or may not be music involved, and if there is, it may or not be a novelty number for a sketch at the "Country Music Television Music Awards," which air Tuesday night.

The folks at CMT have shared a photo to generate some hype for the pairing. But this is well played, Mr. T-Pain, well played. While the CMT Music Awards aren't exactly the cream of the crop, they do kind of mark the unofficial start of the music award season. Yes, it's here. 

With the Grammys having shifted their eligibility period from the last day of September to the last day in August, now is the time to take part in a stunt to get your album back in the minds of Grammy voters, a notoriously unadventurous lot. Swift doesn't have anything to worry about, but T-Pain's "Thr33 Ringz" drifted off the U.S. pop chart a few weeks ago, and the time is ripe for the artist to get back on the campaign trail. 

Additionally, let's not forget that there's precedent. Shoring up the country base worked well, come Grammy time, for Lil Wayne, who appeared with Kid Rock at the Country Music Assn. Awards in 2008.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Downtown's 4-month-old Grammy Museum is doing its part to get guests hip to Eleni Mandell's recent album, "Artificial Fire." The local chanteuse will bring her jazz-stoked pop songs to the institution April 14, engaging in a Q&A with museum chief curator Ken Viste before the performance. Tickets are $15 and come bundled, Prince-style, with a CD (2007's live effort "Voxhall and WUK").  

Mandell, long a local favorite, will perform in the museum's pristine 200-seat theater, which recently has played host to the likes of Tom Morello, Nas and Annie Lennox, among others. "Artificial Fire" sees Mandell exploring the pop songbook with a deft, vintage flair. "I got tired of the weepy, dark songs," she recently told The Times.

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

First Miley, and now T-Pain: Taylor Swift to slowly take over all of pop music?

First Miley Cyrus, then John Mayer and now T-Pain? Everyone seems to want to partner with country superstar princess Taylor Swift, and Swift seems happy to play along. 

When Swift teased via Twitter that she might be in the studio with T-Pain, which came a few months after Mayer teased he was in the studio with Swift, we were either being fed trinkets from what would surely be one of the oddest and warped mainstream duet albums in history, or simply watching a pair of young media masters do their work. The latter appears to be the case with the T-Pain announcement, as Swift will indeed be working with the Auto-Tone kingpin, but there may or may not be music involved, and if there is, it may or not be a novelty number for a sketch at the "Country Music Television Music Awards," which air Tuesday night.

The folks at CMT have shared a photo to generate some hype for the pairing. But this is well played, Mr. T-Pain, well played. While the CMT Music Awards aren't exactly the cream of the crop, they do kind of mark the unofficial start of the music award season. Yes, it's here. 

With the Grammys having shifted their eligibility period from the last day of September to the last day in August, now is the time to take part in a stunt to get your album back in the minds of Grammy voters, a notoriously unadventurous lot. Swift doesn't have anything to worry about, but T-Pain's "Thr33 Ringz" drifted off the U.S. pop chart a few weeks ago, and the time is ripe for the artist to get back on the campaign trail. 

Additionally, let's not forget that there's precedent. Shoring up the country base worked well, come Grammy time, for Lil Wayne, who appeared with Kid Rock at the Country Music Assn. Awards in 2008.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Downtown's 4-month-old Grammy Museum is doing its part to get guests hip to Eleni Mandell's recent album, "Artificial Fire." The local chanteuse will bring her jazz-stoked pop songs to the institution April 14, engaging in a Q&A with museum chief curator Ken Viste before the performance. Tickets are $15 and come bundled, Prince-style, with a CD (2007's live effort "Voxhall and WUK").  

Mandell, long a local favorite, will perform in the museum's pristine 200-seat theater, which recently has played host to the likes of Tom Morello, Nas and Annie Lennox, among others. "Artificial Fire" sees Mandell exploring the pop songbook with a deft, vintage flair. "I got tired of the weepy, dark songs," she recently told The Times.

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

Grammy Museum taps Eleni Mandell, Billy Bob Thornton for April events

Downtown's 4-month-old Grammy Museum is doing its part to get guests hip to Eleni Mandell's recent album, "Artificial Fire." The local chanteuse will bring her jazz-stoked pop songs to the institution April 14, engaging in a Q&A with museum chief curator Ken Viste before the performance. Tickets are $15 and come bundled, Prince-style, with a CD (2007's live effort "Voxhall and WUK").  

Mandell, long a local favorite, will perform in the museum's pristine 200-seat theater, which recently has played host to the likes of Tom Morello, Nas and Annie Lennox, among others. "Artificial Fire" sees Mandell exploring the pop songbook with a deft, vintage flair. "I got tired of the weepy, dark songs," she recently told The Times.

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum: Political activism, music biz lessons and what about another Rage album?

Prior to Tuesday evening, when Tom Morello was last seen on stage in Los Angeles, he was spearheading a benefit for various homeless advocacy groups at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, performing with the likes of Wayne Krame and Slash. The one-on-one setting Tuesday night at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles was a bit more grown-up than a rock 'n' roll show, but the Rage Against the Machine member stayed on point, and even brought a little unpredictably to the recently opened nonprofit institution.

The Grammy Museum launched with a politics-in-music exhibit titled "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom," and the discussion, led by the museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, neatly tied in with the theme. With a nod to one of the artist's at the centerpiece of the exhibit, the night closed with Morello, who rose to prominence as one of the alt-rock era's most adventurous guitarists, leading the 200-seat theater through a determined take on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Disregarding the nervous glances from the small security staff, the suburban Illinois-raised artist instructed the audience stand and jump through the final verse.

Before the rousing finale, however, Santelli led an engagingly thoughtful discussion through Morello's career, focusing largely on the influence of politics and activism. Everything from schoolyard racism to the music business to Morello's thoughts on President Obama were touched on. As Morello pointed out, there's more than one similarity between the artist and our nation's 44th president. In addition to ties to the Chicago area, both were born to a Kenyan father and white mother, and each did time at Harvard in the '80s.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

How will changes in Grammy eligibility affect the awards? Neil Portnow answers our questions.

Changes are coming to the 2010 Grammy Awards.

As reported Thursday, the Recording Academy has shifted the Grammy telecast up one week, moving it to the last Sunday in January from the first Sunday in February. With this move, the Recording Academy also altered the eligibility period, upping it from the last day of September to the last day in August.

The changes will have repercussions on nominated albums. Pop & Hiss has noted some artists who would have been affected -- releases from Metallica, Kings of Leon and Jazmine Sullivan would not have been up for Grammy consideration in 2009 had the rules been in place last year. Additionally, the album of the year-nominated "Year of the Gentleman" from Ne-Yo would have had to wait until 2010.

With 110 categories, and countless submissions for each, the Recording Academy has the annual chore of confirming eligibility and ensuring that each is submitted to the proper category. But will the move affect the relevancy of the Grammys moving forward, as albums released in early September will now have to wait a full year to be recognized?

Pop & Hiss chatted with Recording Academy head Neil Portnow about the moves, and how it will affect the awards. Portnow also touched on other topics as the Grammys look to the future -- the Recording Academy's shifts into the digital arena and the potential return of a live nomination special on CBS.

So why does moving the broadcast up seven days require a full four-week shortening of the eligibility period?

When you look at the calendar, and all the elements -- the holidays, the times you don’t actually have to work on certain things, the fact that our entries have grown every year -- it just worked out this way in terms of having the proper amount of time to vet and go through and to get all the processes done that require our intention and manpower.

Will it ever be possible for the Grammys to operate on a standard calendar year, like the Oscars? This seems to move further away from that.

You could. There’s nothing that says that’s impossible. Part of the difficulty in switching is a) you have certain habits and expectations from both the membership and the industry, and b) you have the issue of where you place the broadcast, and where you are on schedule with the network you’re in business with. That would be a fairly radical piece of business for us to do. We’d have to change our fiscal year, from an accounting standpoint, to get into a calendar year situation. It’s not as simple as making a determination and moving.

Everything is interlocked. When you do something like that, that would mean that we would change every single element of everything that we do -- our membership dues, our trustees meeting, our elections, etc. That’s not to say that it can’t be done and would never be done, but it is to say in order to do that, we would have to have a bit of a process to get to that point. We would have to make sure we were taking care of the other business of the academy that builds off of when we have our telecast.

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

Grammys change eligibility period. Awards to feel even more dated?

The Recording Academy has changed the eligibility period for it Grammy Awards, shortening the window by one month. In conjunction with the change, the annual awards gala has been moved up one week to the end of January. The 2010 Grammy Awards will air live for the East Coast on CBS, and once again be held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

A Recording Academy press release states that the eligibility period was shifted to “accommodate an earlier date.” This year, the 51st Grammy Award were held on Feb. 8. Moving the date of the telecast up a week, therefore, has resulted in a four-week difference in what albums will be considered.

Such a move will have a noticeable effect on the telecast. The music industry tends to release some of its biggest albums during the holiday season, and in 2008, a number of major artists released albums too late to be represented on the Grammy telecast. Last year, Grammy eligibility ended on Sept. 30, and releases from such artists as Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Fall Out Boy, the Fireman, Brad Paisley, Britney Spears and Q-Tip, among many others, were not eligible for the 2009 Grammys.

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press

Tom Morello to talk, perform at Grammy Museum

Local rock activist Tom Morello has a March 31 date with the Grammy Museum. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist will appear at the institution's 200-seat, second-floor theater for an interview and a brief acoustic performance. Tickets go on sale Monday for members of the downtown Los Angeles museum. Tickets for nonmembers will go on sale Thursday (March 5).

Morello is the latest artist to sign on for the museum's "an evening with" program. The Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will conduct the interview with Morello, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with fans and a short acoustic performance. Artists who have previously appeared on the Grammy Museum stage include Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson and Charlie Haden.

Morello, who also performs folk rock under the Nightwatchman moniker, ties in nicely with the museum's first major exhibit, the politically focused "Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom." Morello is reported to be working on an album with Boots Riley, leader of Bay Area hip-hop act the Coup. The two performed together in Los Angeles toward the end of 2008.

And for those still in need of Saturday night plans, the Nightwatchman will perform tonight at 514 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles as part of a benefit for International Women's Day. Doors open at 8 p.m., and it's $20.

Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Tuesday, March 31, 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.95 for museum members and  $19.95 for the general public; they go on sale for members on Monday. Members can purchase their tickets by calling the museum box office at (213) 765-6803. For more information, call (213) 765-6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Sean Ricigliano /Associated Press