“Pretty good, for a law professor…”

Glenn Reynolds, among other things, is a voting member of NARAS by dint of his record production. On his new GlennReynolds.com blog he discusses the Grammys:

Even more than in previous years, I was forced to realize just how far my musical tastes diverge from the Academy’s. Most of the music I listen to, which falls loosely into the Techno/Electronica/Trip Hop category, gets shunted into the Academy’s “Dance” category, where you get to vote for one, count ’em, one, award. (That’s as many as “Polka” gets. Or “Traditional Pop.” I voted for Tony Bennett there; I didn’t vote in the Polka category.) And three out of five choices in “female pop vocal performance” were Pink, Avril Lavigne, and Britney Spears. (I voted for Norah Jones). (Note to self: make a Polka album. It’s your best shot, statistically, at getting a Grammy. . . )

….looking at the categories among the Grammy nominations, I couldn’t help but notice the faintly musty feel of a bygone age, an age when it was plausible to believe – as it isn’t, really, now – that a critical mass of people would have listened to a lot of the same music. But I doubt that very many of the people who voted had listened to all, or even most, of the nominated records. And the nominated records represent the tiniest sampling of the music that’s out there. There are so many good bands now, releasing so many good albums – most of them beneath the radar of the Recording Academy – that the whole exercise seems like a waste of time.

And that’s with 104 categories – you can almost see the cracks developing in the entire edifice.