Son of Sammie

And the winner is … members of the thriving live-music community in Sacramento and their fans. Oh, and us here at the News & Review.

As many of you read this issue, we will be recovering from the Sammies party held Thursday night. Yes, party. It had always been an award show in the past, and that format carried all the baggage that award shows carry: the overdressed hosts pretending that Sacramento is Hollywood, the scripted introductions to awards that made you want to crawl under your seat in embarrassment, and the I’m-too-cool-to-accept-this-award antics from musicians who felt the need to rebel against the man with their pat rebellion speeches. It always seemed like the little award show that tried real hard to be like the Grammys but just couldn’t. (Why try?)

So, instead of in-house live television coverage from two stages and plodding speechifying, we went way, way out on a limb and decided to showcase … drumroll here … live music!

The organizers at the newspaper decided to hold a little pre-show ceremony to award the plaques and thank the musicians for providing their art, and then let the party begin! It was moved to the Empire, and there were three extended sets from local Sammie- winning performers. As we go to press, I’m predicting much more fun and a focus on all that is local music.

But not all local music is covered by these efforts. As hard as our staff works to bring out the best of the scene, much escapes. We recognize that, in the end, much of the Sammies is a popularity contest. So, to offset that, we sent writer Christian Kiefer on a quest to find the most avant-garde music (or noise) in the area that isn’t so popular and easy to categorize (see “Outside noise”). So, now I think we have it mostly covered, except for the solution to this headache.