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Sunday, February 23, 2003

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

When the Grammy nomination process turned a blind eye and/or tone-deaf ear to Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," easily the most acclaimed release of 2002, Jeff Tweedy shrugged it off in Rolling Stone.

"It's never been one of my dreams to win a Grammy," the Wilco frontman said. "I don't think the Grammys have anything to do with artistic merit."

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Tweedy's right. They don't.

But on occasion, even the Grammys (airing tonight at 8 on CBS) can't ignore a classic album.

If it sells.

Or if, in Bob Dylan's case, it represents a golden opportunity to take a legendary artist off the list of famous Grammy snubs -- the old, "We'll catch you when you're old and not as relevant" approach that Oscar seems to like.

The Rolling Stones have never won an Album of the Year award.

But Toto has.

Glen Campbell's "By the Time I Get To Phoenix" won the 1968 award when Grammy voters -- having given rock 'n' roll its only Album of the Year award the previous year with "Sgt. Pepper" -- chose Campbell's irrelevant easy listening over the clearly superior "Magical Mystery Tour." Other eligible classics Grammy failed to even nominate that year included Aretha Franklin's "Lady Soul," "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society," Dylan's "John Wesley Harding," "The Who Sell Out," two Jimi Hendrix masterpieces ("Axis: Bold as Love," "Electric Ladyland") and Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music."

The following year, Blood, Sweat and Tears beat "Abbey Road," one of two Beatles classics that would have been eligible. But apparently, Grammy didn't feel that "the white album" had what it takes to be a nominee, unlike "The Age of Aquarius" by the legendary 5th Dimension.

And so it's gone, through Christopher Cross, the soundtrack to "The Bodyguard," Celine Dion and, having left his dignity in San Francisco, Tony Bennett going camp for Generation X on "MTV Unplugged."

It's decisions as silly as these that make a guy like Tweedy so indifferent to a Grammy snub.

He's clearly no Celine Dion.

Or Toto.

Still, a win for "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" would have placed his masterpiece in some pretty respectable company, too, beginning with the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which tops our list of greatest recordings to have taken home an Album of the Year award since 1967, the first year the Grammys acknowledged that anything more rock 'n' roll than Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland or Bob Newhart could be album of the year material.

And for the record, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" would have finished second, right between the Beatles and "Time Out of Mind," on the list.