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PEOPLE & ARTSWednesday 17 February

No Grammy Awards for audio

as fans fume over glitches

BETH HARRIS cess to the live stream had The audience never saw
Associated Press reported glitches. two other scheduled per-
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Sam Hunt and Carrie Un- formers. An ill Rihanna was
woman who created the derwood had an early a late no-show on doctor’s
most popular album in the medley of songs that had orders to rest her vocal
U.S. last year had a trying one commentator de- cords for 48 hours. Lauryn
Grammy Awards. clare, “This performance is Hill didn’t appear after be-
Recording Academy presi- the worst.” Another want- ing invited by The Weeknd
ed to know: “Who is mix- to join him for the second
In this Monday, Feb. 15, 2016 ing the audio at the Gram- of two songs, which was
file photo, Adele performs my’s?” intended as a surprise for
at the 58th annual Grammy Paul Inder, the son of Mo- the crowd. Portnow said
Awards in Los Angeles. torhead frontman Lemmy she attended rehearsal
Kilmister, was critical of the Monday morning and then
Associated Press audio mixing during the didn’t return for the eve-
Hollywood Vampire’s trib- ning show. In a statement,
dent Neil Portnow said ute to his late father. Inder Hill’s representative of-
there was a “technical said backstage that while fered a different version of
glitch” after a microphone he appreciated the seg- events, which Portnow said
inside a piano fell onto the ment featuring Alice Coo- was inaccurate.
instrument’s strings during per, Joe Perry and actor The night’s final two
British superstar Adele’s Johnny Depp, he couldn’t awards were given out by
performance Monday hear Depp’s guitar very people different than what
night of the tender “All I well and blamed the audio was listed on the order of
Ask.” mixing. presentation handed out
The result was that the hit- The show had 16 live per- before the show. The origi-
maker sounded very mor- formances and Portnow nal order indicated Earth
tal — TV audiences heard noted that each one re- Wind & Fire would present
a pitchy song and saw quired different sound, record of the year and Be-
an unsettled Adele, who lighting and set-up done yonce would announce
appeared disconcerted under tight time constraint album of the year. Instead,
when the song ended. by what he called “an A- the ‘70s funk band an-
The singer later consoled plus crew.” nounced Taylor Swift as al-
herself by getting a burger “Our show is the most com- bum winner for “1989” and
from a popular local joint. plicated in terms of audio Beyonce presented Mark
“Something like that can of any show on television,” Ronson and Bruno Mars
easily be distracting or off- he said. “We rarely have with record honors for “Up-
putting,” Portnow said. “To technical issues.” town Funk.”q
her credit, she killed it. She
did a fantastic job. That
was an issue on our be-
half.”
Portnow said the mic fell
when the piano was lifted
onto a satellite stage lo-
cated in the audience at
Staples Center.
“It means when the ham-
mer of the piano hits the
strings it sounds like some-
thing is in there,” he said
backstage after the CBS
telecast ended.
Portnow said the sound
was switched to a backup
system, but that involved
cutting off the original sys-
tem.
“You had a couple sec-
onds where you did not
have audio in the house,”
he said. “It was fixed in a
matter of seconds, but
we’ve never happy when
something like that hap-
pens.”
It was one of a few epi-
sodes during the telecast
that had some users of so-
cial media fuming about
mismatched singers or
sound problems. Even ac-