Thursday, April 26, 2007

26 April 2007: Doves

Chapman Only Wins One Award At Own Ceremony

The 38th Annual Steven Curtis Chapman Awards last night proved successful for artists Chris Tomlin and Aaron Shust, while leaving Chapman himself to reflect on the fact that he might have to start producing new material in order to win any awards in the future.

While Shust headlined the big awards for 'Best Song' (My Savior, My God) and 'Best Songwriter', Tomlin carried off a total of six 'Stevies', including 'Artist of the Year' and 'Male Vocalist of the Year', carrying on his 2006 success where he won everything that Casting Crowns didn't.

"Like wow," said Tomlin, a Texas man who says he spends his time writing and recording songs.

Shust, meanwhile, garnered his first successes at the 'Stevies' on the back of the massive radio single 'My Savior, My God' which last year spent about 3000 weeks at number one in the various charts that reflect downloading and radio play.

"My mum used to let me sing into a turkey baster when I was three," he said as he accepted his award from someone on the stage. "Fortunately my producer gave me a real microphone when it came to recording the recording. What? Braves lost in the ninth after being three nothing up? Oh fiddlesticks."

Shust denied reports that he really is Sanjaya from American Idol.

It wasn't all male-dominated, however, as Natalie Grant proved, doubling up as awards host and winner of 'Best Female Vocalist', an award she also won last year, probably for the same song. Amy Grant also won one of the little awards down at the bottom of the page for a video or something.

"There are other women here tonight, honestly," one of the Grants told reporters at a secret telephone Press Conference. "And no, I'm not related to Hugh Grant. Or Cary Grant. How did you get my number, anyway?"

Group of the year Casting Crowns won the award for 'Group of the Year' and stated they were "looking forward to meeting Rob at Kentish Town in June", referencing reports that Rob will be attempting to heckle the band into singing "Is this the way to Amarillo" during their forthcoming London concert.

Chapman, meanwhile, had to suffice with a minor credit on 'Instrumental Album of the Year', a far cry from the days when he would win every category (including all the female ones) whether or not he actually released any material during the year.

"It's good of them to name the awards after me," Chapman said, speaking through a cheap megaphone from the back of a rented three-wheel motorised watermelon. "Now stop following me."

In other awards, Kirk Franklin won 'Urban Recorded Song of the Year' for "Imagine Me", encouraging this reporter to dig out his old gospel/hip-hop crossover album and maybe even a do a little Stomp. Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber won a 'Stevie' for some vegetable-related children's material, although their winning album did not contain the controversial song that encouraged children to only eat bunnies. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything stayed true to their word and did not win anything.

The Steven Curtis Chapman Awards are also known as the Dove Awards or the GMA Music Awards.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This has nothing to do with your blog but do you happen to know anything about Complexity Science? My cousin happens to be doing a Master's in it at Southampton University and obviously I assumed that any two given postgrad students at the same university will know each other!

P.S. I hope you had a nice birthday the other week.

DuncMcRae said...

Sshh, there was no birthday, nor will there ever be a birthday.

Complexity Science seems to be something Prof Dave Marathon Runner Cliff would be up to, and our AKT buddy Sri would seem to be in on it too. I've no direct dealings with the SENSE group - I'm in IAM myself, with occasional Java teaching trips to ITO - but yes, we're all one happy ECS family...

Anonymous said...

Well, as I understood virtually none of that, I'll just nod, smile and back away quietly ...

His name's Tom Hebbron, should you ever run into him.

DuncMcRae said...

Glossary:

AKT = Advanced Knowledge Technologies, the 6 year project that sponsored my PhD and lent its name to this blog.

ECS = School (formerly Department) of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton.

SENSE and IAM = Particular research groups within ECS, most of which are so big that members of these groups have little to do with anyone in any other group.

ITO = Information Technology for Organisations, a degree course for people who want something more business-oriented than a straight Computer Science degree.

Science = The thing in the air that makes things fall to the ground.

Complexity = The female mind.

Marathon = Snickers.

Java = Indonesian computer language that would like to be independent, but had too much coffee and thus remains tied to native implementation details. Or something.

Trips = Out of mind experiences, kind of similar to watching 'In The Night Garden' on CBeebies.

"Uh-oh, the Tombliboos' pants have all fallen down again..." - how can this not be regarded as extremely dodgy??