Thursday, September 20, 2007

morsel:

Rod Stewart's 'Do ya think I'm sexy' always makes him think of the Grammy Awards, possibly the earliest memory he has of watching a music award show. Stewart's foray into disco had been nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance (which is worth an essay all by itself...) and for his performance a white shag rug was spread over the stage. Years before Madonna would personally clean the floors at the MTV Video Music Awards, Rod spent the end of the song rolling around on the shag, achieving more or less the same shocking erotic effect. In the previous fall, when the song was on the charts, he remembers arriving late one Saturday with his family at their friends' home, just in time to catch a special edition of Saturday Night Live with Bob and Ray, during which they sat on overstuffed chairs to deadpan the chorus of 'Do ya think I'm sexy'. Since his family didn't watch much television at all, much less SNL, it felt incredibly sophisticated.