By the looks of the ratings, most of you didn't watch the 50th Grammy Awards. But that's OK; I watched them for you.

And I've put together my performance grades. A means it was brilliant. B means it was good. C means it was neither here nor there. D means it was poor but repairable and F is an abomination.

Alicia Keys opened the festivities with one of those take-you-back duets between her and Frank Sinatra. It was designed to pay tribute to 50 years of Grammy greatness; however, it came off as extraordinarily hokey.

First, Keys was at the piano but not really playing. There is a reason why the lights were purposefully off her hands. This made me crazy.

* deep breath *

She's at the piano to do "Learnin' the Blues" with Sinatra's ghost, and she's moving her hands but playing nothing. You want to know how I know this? I've only played the standards for 30 years, and there is a certain way your hands move when you play, and hers were moving in very basic, three-chord pop style.

Second, she does this li'l cool "Sing it, Frank" thing that honestly made me want to vomit in my pants. I cringed.

I'm not sure what this cult of Alicia Keys is all about, but she's highly average at best. Yes, I loved "If I Ain't Got You," and "You Don't Know My Name," but what I loved were the songs. Not her.

Grade: D

In one quick paragraph of defense, I did think her live performance of "No One" was actually better than the radio single. However, that might reflect how little I think of that. Lastly, make fun of John Mayer for his obvious SRV mancrush, but the guy is a good musician.

Grade: C+

Morris Day & The Time were wonderful. I still think they're the greatest funk band of all time, and I say that with zero apologies to Parliament, Funkadelic and the eventual Parliament-Funkadelic.

Besides not aging much for 24 years, Day rocked the house with "Jungle Love," and Rihanna was the perfect match-up for them. In a world that Beyonce seemingly owns, I would much rather hang out with Rihanna. Think of Beyonce as the really hot but snobby homecoming queen, and Rihanna is the hot cool chick who hangs out with the nerds.

Regardless, the intermixing of "Jungle Love" and "Umbrella" was a highlight of the night.

Grade: A

Speaking of Beyonce, she and Tina Turner showed off plenty of leg to "Proud Mary," but it again demonstrated Knowles' primary weakness. She can't sing, not when compared with many other pop stars. She's marginal at best.

Tina looked as if she had already joined Ike in the afterlife. She had clearly just been botoxed, and the wig wasn't happening. However, the performance was. The woman can sing.

Grade: B

One of the aspects of live performance Carrie Underwood will have to get used to is the fact that she's not on American Idol anymore. During "Before He Cheats," Underwood merely sang. She sang well, and she was looking smokin' hot, but if one is going to have this elaborate backdrop with Stomp! style drummers and fire, flames and boogeymen behind her, she should do something besides give a good karaoke performance.

On the other hand, she has one of the cleanest voices in music. Might be a tad blase at times, but pitch-perfect she is.

Grade: C+

The best rock band in America did its thing outside, so they could do a little screaming. Foo Fighters played "The Pretender" complete with a John Paul Jones-directed orchestra, and one journalist described it as Jones doing his Kashmir best for Dave Grohl and company.

I have said this before, and I mean no offense. I am not so sure the most talented part of Nirvana didn't play at the Grammy's last night. Grohl is amazing, and "The Pretender" is a great song.

Grade: A

Speaking of a glowing review, I'll give you three of them:

1. Lang Lang and Herbie Hancock. "Rhapsody In Blue" was the first Gershwin work with which I identified as a boy. Still love it, and in retrospect, I loved that Hancock got to play it with the Chinese prodigy just an hour or so before his upset win.

After Hancock won Album of the Year honors, Vince Gill was asked about Herbie's win and the fact that he didn't win for "These Days" and that neither Kanye nor Amy won. Gill said that Hancock was probably a better musician than the rest of them put together.

Mind you, Vince Gill is a great musician. But, he's also right.

Seriously, at some point, we have to start considering Gill a legend, too. I would not have minded one bit if HE would have won. Good guy.

Grade: A

2. Amy Winehouse. No, her voice wasn't up to par, but the performance was. It was buzz-worthy, and her band was smokin', particularly when you consider it was 4 a.m. in London.

If nothing else, you have to give her props for being interesting.

Grade: A

3. Daft Punk. Yes, Kanye West mumbled some words to a Daft Punk song, and -- yes -- I am being completely insulting to the deity who is Kanye West. However, the only thing that is cool about "Stronger" was done by Daft Punk, and it was a terrific performance.

West ruined it by trying to sing and blabbering on about his mother. Like I wrote last night, I mean no offense and certainly sympathize with his loss. However, he comes off sounding like a retarded manchild, what with Donda feeding him soup when he caught a cold as a toddler.

Are we developing a generation of morons? An idiocracy? We can't do better than this?

But I'll give it up for "Stronger." That was some cool stuff in terms of the whole computer-pop vibe. Now, go check out Herbie Hancock when he originated it 25 years ago.

Grade: A but only for "Stronger".

Other performances of note included Feist doing "1234," and I like the song. But her performance sounded like any other offering I could have heard at any other coffee house in North America. Unplugged and subdued, Feist's talent is in her songwriting. So, I cut her a big break there. She's a genuine talent, but this performance was not one to leave a big first impression with the millions who have never heard her.

Grade: C

Keely Smith, Kid Rock and Dave Koz alliteratively took the stage (get it? K-K-K? wait. that's pretty scary.) to belt out the 1958 hit "That Ol' Black Magic," which Smith made famous with Louis Prima.

I felt bad for Keely because Kid Rock was clearly drunk or high. Kid Rock is typically one of those underrated talents, somebody I'll actually defend at a musician's level. BUt last night, he was a waste of space.

Grade: D

I'll be the first to admit I don't like neo-pop classical. I don't get the whole Josh Groban phenomenon. However, Andrea Bocelli is seriously growing on me. There is a subtlety to his voice, an aura to his stage presence that is unlike anything this genre has produced in my lifetime.

Bocelli was paying homage to the late Luciano Pavarotti, but methinks we'll one day pay tribute to Bocelli.

Groban gets a C, but Bocelli gets a Grade: A.

Fergie and John Legend took the stage in a bath of mediocrity. First, there are few performers more overrated than Legend. His artistry is in dire need of some soul, and I hate to say it, but I suspect his popularity is built primarily on the shoulders of white folks who pretend to know something about soul music.

And then we get travesties like Alicia Keys winning an R&B Grammy over the great Jill Scott, over Chrisette Michele. Perhaps Legend simply hasn't convinced me he's the next Donny Hathaway just yet.

On the other hand, I'll say this again, as I have a billion other times. Fergie has a pretty good voice. She thinks she's a hip-hop street chick, even though she's totally upper middle-class suburbanista, and it creeps me out. But her voice ain't that bad, and it is kind of soulful.

My primary criticism from her performance on Sunday is in her song choice. Fergie sang the tune, "Finally," from The Dutchess, and its lyrics make me insane with references to her destiny. It all came off like a bad homecoming dance song, and it was like she had written this song for the finale of Idol or her high school graduation.

I should know. I wrote a song for my high school graduation, and it makes me cringe to think about it.

Grade: C-

There was the obligatory Gospel performance, and this one featured Aretha Franklin, so it was pretty good. But it was also boring. I would have liked to have seen Smokie Norful up there rockin' it Oklahoma style, but that is pretty much the extent of my Gospel knowledge.

The Beatles were featured in music, via some dance thing Cirque du Soleil did and some movie thing George Martin put together. I didn't watch it though because the second I hear Cirque du Anything, I'm out. I hate that crap. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. I hate Riverdance. I hate Cirque. I don't want to see people in tights or people on trapezes unless I'm bombed out of my mind, and even then, I wouldn't want to.

However, bottom line, is that anything including the Beatles' music can't be half bad. And, I didn't think there was a terrible performance last night from anybody. Like Bono has said, the Grammys are a collision between art and commerce, and the academy purposefully joins as many unlikely pairs as possible.

On occassion they produce magic, and often they fall flat.

My only gripe about last night's Grammys is with you, the supposed music fan. All I have heard today is how the Grammys are a joke for one reason or another, and it all centers on Herbie Hancock's upset win for River: The Joni Letters.

I'll be the first to admit that Back to Black was the better album on many fronts. However, there are really no flaws in Herbie's record either, and the academy definitely likes to reward artists for their bodies of work.

Tony Bennett in 1994. Steely Dan in 2000. Ray Charles in 2005.

However, in all sincerity, River: The Joni Letters was more deserving than any of those three. Like Mario Tarradell of the Dallas Morning News put it on their live blog from Sunday night, Hancock's CD is not something one would pop in for fun. However, it is an accomplished piece of work.

Here's the way I judge Herbie's win. Did you see how excited Quincy Jones got when he announced Hancock had won? He yelled, "Unbelieveable! That's unbelievable, man!"

I went to research and review videos from the 2008 Grammys on YouTube this evening, and I found a ton. But I couldn't find one stinking, single video of Quincy announcing Herbie as the 2008 Album of the Year winner so I could show you how hyped Q was for Herbie.

Maybe that just says it all. And it's a damned shame.