Welcome to the First Annual YOGMAEL Honours.
Yes,
the one "awards" were George can't help but win. In these, his only
competition was himself, and from what the
electorate tells me, it was still
pretty stiff competition. Said Shelley: "Dammit. These are hard, that's why
voter
turnout sucks, you know. It's like a real election, but just the
opposite.
You like them all."
Voter turnout was
fair, of 545 addresses, 185 checked in, for a whopping
34%.
As this is an awards ceremony of sorts, we have to present some
sort of
award. My first thought was a Spliff--the Koala mascot of YOGMAEL (we get
joint mail you know, wrote David, "To
Amanda and her Koala"), not a joint--
but I thought that might be taken the wrong way...Carla suggested an "Amanda
figurine",
but even I am not that much of an ego-maniac. So I have settled
on
the Golden AE, or Æ if your mail formatter permits.
Anyway,
I won't bore you with too many details, but here's how we decided
George should be awarded:
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In the
first category we recognize the most primitive of all music, the
drums.
Bearing in mind that George has been drumming since
age 12, it is not
surprising that we should find such strong beats behind his music.
In the category of Best Drum Pattern,
the nominees were:
* I Want Your Sex
* Hard Day
* Waiting For That Day
And the golden AE award goes to I Want Your
Sex. OK, so it was not live
drums, but as Sarah said: "ok so the synthesizer got possesed and it was
an accident...but
its still legendary..."
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Next we reward my favourite instrument, the bass. Is there a sexier
instrument?
I
think not, which is why I own one myself... George has been a bass player
since his Executive days, and now does all of his own
session work, having
parted company with the amazing Deon Estus.
In fact, we should present an honourary Golden AE to Deon. In
Francie's
words: "deon estus should get his own award for most charismatic (and
happiest) bassist. and best opening
act..."
But we award George's bass line writing here, and there have been some
greats.
In the category of Best Bass
Line, the nominees were:
* I'm Your Man
* Cowboys and Angels
* FastLove
And the golden AE goes to "I'm Your
Man", which contains the best bass solo
ever written!
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The third award honours best
keyboards/piano/synths. Someone said I should
have separated this into 3 categories, but I adhere to the KISS school of
thought.
Which is of course, not until after the second bottle of wine...
And the nominees for Best Keyboards/Piano/Synth were:
*
Too Funky
* I Want Your Sex
* Older
* Kissing a Fool
And the winner is Kissing a Fool. My mom loves this one, she was
pleased.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next up is the award for best backing vocals. There was dispute on this,
were we voting for
Jo Bryant or Shirley Lewis, or George? We settled on
ANYTHING. Newcomer Jo did pretty well, Shirley got a lot of
"Sorry's".
And the nominees for Best Backing Vocals were:
* Star People
* Waiting For That Day
* They
Won't Go When I Go
* FastLove
And the AE goes to FastLove, with a number of you commenting on Jo's
"forget me
nots".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The category of best cover is a particulary tough one with George. This is
the man who
named his last tour "Cover to Cover". For a superstar, George
sings as many as most bar bands.
And the Best Cover
Track nominees were:
* I Can't Make You Love Me
* They Won't Go When I Go
* Killer/Papa Was a Rolling Stone
* Calling
You
And the AE goes to I Can't Make You Love Me. Feel the power we did indeed!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next award is
offered to the best duet. George's duets are always well
received, he s Everything She Wants. Even George still likes this
one
enough to perform it...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George is easily the BEST songwriter of his generation. Madonna writes
good
dance tracks, Prince's can get anybody laid, but George gives us
lyrics to cry along with...
And the nominees for Best
Lyrics were:
* Father Figure
* The Strangest Thing
* Praying For Time
And the AE goes to Praying For Time.
Maybe it's not too late...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next category is best dance/uptempo track. George is more of a
balladeer,
but he's no slouch when it comes to getting us on the dance
floor.
And for Best Dance/Uptempo Track the nominees were:
*
I Want Your Sex
* FastLove
* Freedom '90
* Hard Day
* Monkey
* Too Funky
The golden AE goes to FastLove, which,
for the record, scored 69 votes...
"Gotta get up to get down" indeed.
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George once said he
considered ballads to be his strong suit, and I think we
can all agree that he has written some of the best ever.
And the
nominees for Best Ballad were:
* Father Figure
* Jesus to a Child
* Kissing a Fool
And the AE goes to Kissing a
Fool. According to Trevor "I believe that
Kissing a Fool is the greatest song of all time..."
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The
second to last category is the one you people hated me for...you even
told me so. But this is the pressing question you
know...can you pick your
fave? According to Margarette: "another nearly impossible category--depends
on my mood/love
life!"
And the nominees in the category of Best Song (Overall) were:
* Something to Save
* Freedom '90
*
Cowboys and Angels
* Father Figure
* The Strangest Thing
* You Have Been Loved
And the AE goes to Freedom '90.
Heavily autobiographical, and I guess we
like that kind of honesty.
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And lastly, we award the best
album. Three TOTALLY different entities yes,
but that's what makes it all the more fun to judge...
And the nominees for
Best Album were:
* Faith
* Listen Without Prejudice Volume I
* Older
And we present the final golden AE to Listen
Without Prejudice Volume I.
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Now George is not available to collect his awards at the moment, but I'm
sure
we'll hear something from him somewhere down the road. For now, I shall say
on his behalf, and my own: "Thank you
very much, good night, take care."