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The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences may
take away the Best New Artist Grammy Award given to Milli
Vanilli in 1989. The singers whose voices were heard on
Girl You Know It's True
were not Rob Pilatus and Fab
Morvan, the singers who appeared in the act. The Academy
requires artists to do their own singing, at least when
awards are involved.
That is one way to promote integrity in an industry that
probably doesn't know how to spell integrity,
let
alone define it. The Byrds didn't play their own
instruments on their early albums; the early Monkees were a
lip-synch act, as are the current Mutant Turtles; I once
knew a bar band from Greeley which toured Michigan as the
Archies.
But if the music industry cleans up its act, so that you could accept albums at face value, that could set a dangerous precedent in other areas of American life. Look what might happen if this appalling trend toward honesty continues:
· The American book-publishing industry fears that sales will plummet in the wake of a new policy which requires the actual writer of a book to be listed as the author.
This means no more hot celebrity best-sellers like Iacocca by Lee Iacocca, really written by William Novak, or Trump by Donald Trump, actually by Tony Schwartz. Morrow will pull Millie's Book, supposedly written by the White House dog, from the shelves this week.
This is going to hurt,
an industry spokesman
said. Is it our fault that Americans would rather read
books supposedly written by dogs, tycoons and semi-literate
athletes than books written by writers?
· At Columbia University, the Pulitzer Prize selection committee may rescind the Pulitzer for biography or autobiography given in 1957 to John F. Kennedy for Profiles in Courage.
It was an excellent piece of research and writing,
and it deserved an award,
an official said, but the
work was done by Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger,
not by the
author
whose name was on the cover.
· The American Electoral College said yesterday
that it will probably revoke the Prezzy
award given
to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
Our rules for the award,
a spokesman said,
require a candidate to do his own thinking. We have had
recent revelations that his thoughts actually came from
Peggy Noonan, Larry Speakes and Don Regan. There are also
video tapes which showed that he often turned to Nancy to
get an answer when he was asked a question, although she
denies it.
We find good reasons to believe that he was
lip-synching for the entire eight years. The odd thing is
that even Richard Nixon made his own recordings -- when you
heard that profane snarl, you could be sure it was
Nixon.
The spokesman confirmed that further Electoral College
investigations are planned, even concerning the current
chart-topping Prezzy Award winner, Old-Boy George
Bush. We've heard that it was really rhythm guitarist
Lee Atwater's voice on his 1988 smash hit
Mamma, Please
Don't Let Mean Willie Horton Get Out to Burn my Flag
Again.
And we're trying to find out who was involved with
his other deceptive chart-topper, No New Taxes
-- you
want lip-synching, there's some lip-synching for
you.
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