The handwringing around Herbie Hancock's win for The River as album of the year brought about this tired horse argument from the NY Times. Essentially Ratliff argues that this is exactly the type of "august and exquisitely acceptable" album that the Grammy voters would pick. He argues that "best album" catagory is unrepresentatively awarding oldtimers in a moment that is radically changing the concept of the recording arts:

It can amount to a sentimental, history-minded celebration of album culture. At this point it can conjure and lament a lost world of musicians and styles from the 1970s or before, those who actually played instruments, sometimes very well, and trusted their listeners to pay attention to them in 40-minute chunks.

His observation, reciting the current philosophy about the death of the album (sale or form?), supports his argument about taste, but I think it misses the larger point about what the Grammys are and what their votes represent. NARAS, the National Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences, is an industry peer-voting organization with something like 6,000 members. If you'd like to join in, here is the registration form. Its members are not all tastemakers per se, but many of them are working musicians, educators, business people, etc. They have vested interests and in that regard they maintain a history of the industry that is different than the critical (maybe cynical) one told from the fan/critic reception side. It's not a "fans" award and has never been about innovation - the organization does not represent its own demise or fringe, that would be absurd. As such, voting in "sentimental, history-minded celebrations" is what these people do best - they maintain tradtion.

Perhaps that is the real logic behind Ratliff's riff about "good taste" in voting, which in this article seemed like a smug upbraid to non-avant gardists rather than an exploration of what goes into the making of consensus. Good taste is actually used ironically as sentimental, back-looking, safe (middle-class), defined against the unnamed but alluded to "good taste" that would have given Hancock the Grammy in the 60s. And so, in a way, Ratliff's article is just another part of this Grammy/fan argument cycle that keeps the two in their respective corners, one rewarding the past now while the other chastises now for not being now in the past.