[FM] Come on mammy, throw me that Wammie

[Tom Neff]

Ahh, beautiful Cleveland.  My socks in the drawer, my laptop on the rickety
little hotel desk, and a few responses on the WAMA thing.  I guess I'll
clarify, since Pete says he doesn't understand what my complaint was.
Actually I don't really have a complaint so much as a question, which I
asked directly in the first posting: Are the Wammies an example of award
inflation?  For example.  Does one metro market need approx. 100 prize
categories?  Especially when so many successful acts, the Kennedys being one
example, are successful in part because they straddle quite a few
categories?  Does this make the Wammies a better or worse portrait of DC
musical excellence?  And most importantly, what are the lessons to be
learned from this in other regions and metro areas.

Now I gather, since it's passed on as an "interesting statistic" that I'm
not one of the 1300 WAMA voters, that they feel nobody else has standing to
raise the issue in public discussion.  This doesn't really make sense, since
if I were a WAMA POOBA then I would presumably be fixing it in private
rather than discussing it here.  All we can do in the national community is
look on from the outside and try to learn something.

Anyway, honestly, this really isn't about the Kennedys, whom I have bent
over backwards to remind everybody I admire in bunches.  It's not _their_
fault they have 42 Wammies, and no matter how the Washington area awards
were structured, they'd deserve a lot of them.

I guess my primary concern is that a situation may be created where
deserving new talent who DO win the award get something of diminished value.
I am curious how other boards have dealt with this.  If WAMA doesn't want to
participate, that's ok.

> Anyway, in the spirit of fun and support that typify the wammies,
> we'll present Tom with a new, ad hoc award--most curmudgeonly
> congratulator!

Nothing would surprise me at this point! When in doubt, add a category :)

PS  I suppose in this tiresome age I should spell out that the title is a
B-52's reference.