Saluting TV Performances That Rocked

With the category count for tonight’s Grammy Awards up to 101, you’d think the recording academy could add a few more without anyone noticing. So how about a new field saluting pop music on television, the medium that’s delivered the awards show to the world for four decades? Here’s a sampling of some moments that might have earned the honors.

Sudden Impact Award: Appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” by Elvis Presley (1956-57) and the Beatles (1964). With the pre-cable U.S. television audience concentrated on three broadcast networks, the King and the Fab Four were able to snap an entire nation to attention with their culture-bending performances on the Sunday night variety show.

Topo Gigio Award (For vigilance at the Gates of Decency): To Sullivan and his colleagues for 1) Keeping Elvis’ pelvis out of the picture, 2) forbidding Bob Dylan to sing “Talking John Birch Society Blues” on the program, 3) having the Rolling Stones change “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” and 4) not allowing the Doors to sing their line “girl we couldn’t get much higher.”

They Got the Guns but We Got the Numbers Award: To Jim Morrison, for singing the line anyway.

Best Performance by a Stage Hand: The “Smothers Brothers” show staffers who inadvertently loaded extra charges of powder into Keith Moon’s drum kit when the Who appeared on the CBS variety hour in 1967. The British band’s guitar-smashing, drum-demolishing climax was literally explosive, with a blast that sent pieces of drum into the audience and seriously damaged Pete Townshend’s hearing

Best New Artist: Soy Bomb. That’s the name that New York performance artist Michael Portnoy inscribed on his chest, revealed to the viewers of the 1998 Grammy telecast when he stowed away among the extras sitting on stage behind Bob Dylan and then danced around wildly to Bob’s rendition of “Love Sick.” Portnoy later said it was a publicity stunt to jump-start his career. Any other ideas?

Best Sacred Performance: Sinead O’Connor, who followed her a cappella rendition of Bob Marley’s “War” on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992 by saying, “Fight the real enemy” as she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II. The Irish singer later explained that she was trying to start a dialogue on the Roman Catholic Church’s policies on such issues as birth control, abortion and homosexuality.

Worst Performance by an Audience: The crowd at Madison Square Garden that, two weeks later, booed O’Connor off the stage at a pay-per-view Dylan tribute concert. Honorable mention to the night’s other performers, who made no comments on the incident.

Best Eulogy With Subject Present: David Letterman, for devoting an entire show last October to Los Angeles singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, who had recently gone public with the news of his terminal cancer.

Best Dance Move: Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, introduced to a startled nation on the Motown Records 25th anniversary special on CBS in 1983. The performance of “Billie Jean” that featured the impossible backward-sliding maneuver instantly transformed Jackson from mere pop star to full cultural phenomenon.

Can’t We All Get Along Award: Elton John and Eminem’s duet on the 2001 Grammy telecast. The gay pop star’s willingness to collaborate with the rapper helped turn down the heat Eminem had been taking from gay advocacy groups for the crude epithets in his lyrics, and Eminem’s participation set the stage for the less abrasive Shady that would arrive in 2002.

“The 45th Annual Grammy Awards” airs Sunday at

8 p.m. on CBS.

Cover photograph of Ed Sullivan and the Beatles

by Associated Press.