FollowingJohnKeane: And the Winner Is…

Not John.

We go to the pre-telecast awards ceremony where there are 98 awards to be presented. The pre-telecast starts at 1:00. You have to be in your seats at 4:45 for the night telecast or miss the opening remarks. You know, the three-hour time difference. If you are not seated in time, then you must wait until the next commercial break, about 15 minutes, certainly missing the opening performance.

John’s category is number 7 in the program listing. The categories are going quickly because they run a tight schedule to finish before the televised show. In fact, I notice that as the one person is accepting the Grammy, the overhead slide changes to the next category. So, I prepare for this to snap a photo of John’s “name in lights.” I am snapping the picture as they announce that NOT JOHN has won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording Non-classical. We joke that it takes four engineers to make John Mayer’s record sound good… and therefore four engineers to beat John! Actually, one of the four winners, Michael Brauer, is also a former client of our host, Greg Spotts. So, if somebody else has to win, we are glad it is him. The whole thing goes by so fast that I don’t have time to be disappointed, yet… or at least to realize that I am disappointed. Really though, by the time you see all those names on the screen, you notice the company of the nominees is quite an accomplished group. Just being in the group of nominees is quite a validation. And, the road to winning is reportedly quite a process of smoozing that John just doesn’t do. The industry buzz was that Battle Studies was the favorite, so he never really expected to walk away with the trophy. And, we were having so much fun, it was hard to notice that he didn’t win. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that if you actually win, there is a whole other level of fun to be had! But, John not winning, didn’t slow us down a bit.