As you probably already know, the Dallas Observer held its annual music awards shindig on Tuesday night at the Granada Theater. I was not there, but judging from the photos and the tweets and so on, a good time was generally had by all. I would expect no less as the actual show is always — always — the best part of the music awards process, and pretty much everything else ties for last place. I know this very well because I steered the ship on five editions of the DOMAs, and was involved, with various levels of responsibility, with a handful of others.
The only thing that is more certain than the awards show being the best part of the whole thing is this: nothing will make the music editor of the Observer regret being the music editor of the Observer more than the DOMAs. Because there is absolutely no way that you can get it right. No one can. It’s not just that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. It’s that the people you can’t please — and there are many, and they are constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone — all think they can do it better. All the people who think they have better suggestions would fail. Miserably. I promise you this. When someone figures out how to come up with a bulletproof ballot and ensure that every winner is the correct choice, I will happily step off my hoverboard and give that person a firm, All-American handshake. Or, at least, I will instruct my clone, Zac 8, to do so.
I never got it right. I tried, as hard as I could. We changed the way nominations were gathered. We changed the way voting occurred. We even ceded the entire process to the voters one year, making the entire ballot write-in. That was, as we say in the business, a clustercuss.
Bands get put into ill-fitting categories, and sometimes end up winning. Less-deserving bands are smarter at marketing themselves. Big-name bands, some of whom even deserve the award, don’t care enough to try, and inevitably lose. Straight-ticket voting, just like in politics, screws things up. And on and on. All these problems reoccur every year, and every year, people complain. Or they complain that there shouldn’t even be a competition anyway, that music isn’t about that.
I think the Observer did a decent job this year. It’s not perfect. I disagree with some of it. But that’s fine. And I hope that Pete Freedman did what I did every year at the Music Awards: get as drunk as possible.
