Please see Part 1 here and Al Barger's analysis here.

We left off with the Dixie Chicks winning Best Country Album - a fine and rootsy choice. The Recording Academy was much less frivolous in its voting this time around, perhaps reflecting the precarious and volatile state of the industry: "We'd better get this 'quality' thing down right this time to prove we have a handle on something. Let's see, who really deserves it this time?"

Next we saw an odd medley of members of the NY Philharmonic doing a mambo from West Side Story, then backing Coldplay in what could have been the evening's biggest disaster: pretentious English knobs, backed by the full force of establishment orchestral pomposity on a very long mini-symphony with eccentric spelling: "Politik." But instead it worked. Singer/pianist Chris Martin's naked, plaintive voice wove the elements together beautifully, for some reason sending me all the way back to Procol Harum's Edmonton Symphony Orchestra album from 30 years ago, which bizarrely seems to be out of print. That one is ripe for the digital remastering, kitchen sink "enhanced" approach. Get on it Universal.

So anyway - Coldplay-con-orchestra was riveting, although I became concerned that the drummer's maniacal pounding of his cymbal would send the disc into a lethal flight, decapitating orchestra conductor Michael Kamen. Now THAT would have been reality TV.

Then there was the spectacle of Harvey Fierstein in flamboyant drag from his Broadway role in Hairspray - I can only assume he is playing the Divine character - who made quite a threesome with Rod Stewart and Robin Williams (Best Comedy Album) as they staggered off the stage, leaning on each other like a trio of particularly colorful middle-aged drunks.

I want to like Avril Lavigne: she rocks, she writes her own songs, she is 18, she has attitude, her band is good. But she was very blah performing "Sk8er Boi," a song with no particular melody or hook, and her voice was undistinguished. It's not that she sucks or anything, and she IS only 18, but I was not impressed. How's that for my Simon Cowell impression?

It seems pretty clear that CBS laid on the "ixnay on the olitics-pay" because there were only a few fleeting references to the war. The most obvious was when little dufus Fred Durst made this statement: "I think we are all in agreeance that this war should go away as soon as possible."