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2012 Grammy Highlights

The typical Grammy awards show has too little to offer Rock viewers to make watching it worth the time. The 2012 edition of the music industry schmooze fest lived down to that tradition, but did provide a few worthwhile moments.  Bruce Springsteen opened the show with the advance track from his Wrecking Ball album, We Take Care Of Ourselves (but backed with strings, depriving fans of the chance to see the horn section he will be touring with (story). Paul McCartney closed it with an Abbey Road medley that included Bruce, Joe Walsh and Dave Grohl. In between, Sir Paul did a song from his new standards collection that featured Walsh playing some very tasty acoustic guitar, the Foo Fighters roared through a song for a big crowd outside of the Staples Center and Bonnie Raitt delivered a heart felt tribute to the late Etta James with Alicia Keys.  The rest of the night had a lot less to do with music than spectacle, with the exception of Jennifer Hudson's tribute to Whitney Houston, a feisty performance by Taylor Swift, a high voltage performance by Bruno Mars and Adele erasing any doubts about whether her voice would be as remarkable as it was before she underwent surgery. She collected six awards on the night, sweeping the Song and Album of the year categories. McCartney picked-up his 15th Grammy and, in one of the most unusual match-ups in Grammy history, Derek Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band was the winner of Best Blues Album in a category that pitted the ABB guitarist against his fellow band mates, Warren Haynes and Gregg Allman. Haynes shares his award with his wife, Susan Tedeschi, for the Tedeschi Trucks Band album Revelator.