THE MOST TELLING moment in the 46th annual Grammy Awards telecast Feb. 8 was the too-little too-late President's Award and tribute to the Beatles in honor of the, er, 40th anniversary of their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Watching the media frenzy surrounding this faux-historic marker, you have to wonder: what happened on the date's 25th? Who knows – back then, in 1989, we were all busy listening to new music. Now you can only imagine a truly apocalyptic celebration of mop top-mayhem proportions when the 50th rolls around. Watch out.

Thanking the Recording Academy for the award, Beatle widows Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison gave emotional speeches that reached for profundity and ended with pleas to "give peace a chance" and to believe that "the love you make is equal to the love you take," before the living, breathing, actual Beatles took the video screen unceremoniously, thanking all y'all from England and sounding like, well, regular guys. Ringo Starr amiably mumbled something about being on TV many times and 40 years being quite a long time, and Paul McCartney obligingly stroked the guitar he said he played on Ed Sullivan. Talented regular guys who've raked in plenty of awards, acknowledgments, knighthoods, and moola over the years and probably haven't thought very much about Ed Sullivan until recently, regarding it as yet another crazy incident in their long-ago, lively youth.

Aggressive marketing efforts aside, the Beatles-Ed Sullivan post-post-post-hype boils down to yet another extended, self-congratulatory boomer back massage for a "moment" that, of course, only they experienced firsthand. Still, the appearance also signified TV's first major strike on radio and other comers as the 20th-century-music star-making/delivery system of choice. TV continues to be a force with the rise of the American Idol vocalists, Josh Groban, and Hilary Duff (looking rather fluffy Feb. 8), as the New York Times' Neil Strauss recently wrote. What to say now that the concept of pop on TV is 40-plus – it's a middle-aged, even old hat? The award and tribute also signal a changing of the guard at the TV-focused Grammys – there was a time when even the Beatles were woefully underrecognized, but guess who's in charge now? Not Andy Williams, though he teetered out onstage like he was hoping soon to join John, George, Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon, and the like in the big Studio H in the sky.

That was the tenor, those were the tremors, of this year's Grammy Awards. Death and illness – in the form of convalescing Luther Vandross – predominated when the predictable but surprisingly critic-approved choices didn't. I can't recall a convergence of academy voters' and music writers' tastes of this magnitude since the second coming of Beck. There were some moments of reserved ad-libbing – on the part of 50 Cent, who decided that if he wasn't going to win any awards, he might as well mount the stage alongside New Artist winners Evanescence and give them a good scare, and on the part of a flapper look-alike Christina Aguilera, who threatened to jiggle for joy out of her halter-top gown when she won the Female Pop Vocal Performance award for "Beautiful." She needn't have worried – a CBS producer stuck a protective graphic over her chest just in case a "wardrobe malfunction" might cause her to flash one of the few body parts she hasn't yet exposed. "I don't want to have the same thing happen that Janet had done," Aguilera babbled, "if I can keep it together." Coming from the girl who proudly sang "Dirrty" a scant year and a half ago, that says something about the creepily conservative times.

In that sense you can read the coupling of old and new artists in the award presentations and "live" performances (with a five-minute tape delay) as less a graceful generational turnover than a weird one-step-forward-one-step-back gesture. It's kind of like a dance step. The old guard – Sting, Arturo Sandoval, Michael McDonald, Tony Bennett, Chick Corea(?!) – may be passing the baton to young turks like Sean Paul, Justin Timberlake, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, Foo Fighters – or they just may be ... chaperoning. Just to make sure everybody behaves. As the former teen pop idols get their leashes yanked – more apologies, Justin? – and the Recording Academy fetes the golden age of prefab pop – Motown's Funk Brothers and once-Brill Building songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King – you feel less nostalgic for those moments of American monoculture (and aren't OutKast the closest thing to that?) than for those aberrant industry outcasts like Prince and George Clinton. Clinton's messy Parliament-Funkadelic turn as part of a funk-past-and-present meltdown was the double take-inducing Soy Bomb of 2004. Now if only we could go backstage with those party hounds instead of watching Faith Hill hustle herself between OutKast and company with a closing "Thank you!" (read: keep moving, boys). Oh no, stank you.

Talking tall Walkmen vocalist and guitarist Hamilton Leithauser has been through hell and high water. Actually, make that hate and heavy blackouts. And we're not talking about binge boozing-style rug burns here, though I won't put anything past the good-natured, slurred, and slightly nervous Leithauser, 25, who's waiting in the green room to perform on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is the least of his problems. When the Walkmen first emerged with their 2002 debut, Everyone ..., they faced down a gauntlet of loathing – thanks to the fans of Jonathan Fire*Eater. Guitarist Paul Maroon, drummer Matt Barrick, and organist Walter Martin were part of J.F., and it seems some of the band's followers took an intense disliking to the ebullient Walkmen. "It was kind of a negative thing originally," says Leithauser, Martin's cousin and a onetime Washington, D.C., high school bud of the other Walkmen, with the exception of bassist Peter Bauer. "It was the only way we were ever billed when we went anywhere – it was written bigger than our name was in the paper. And the Jonathan Fire*Eater fans hated us."

Picture folded arms and scowling faces. Better yet, check to see if they're still around when the Walkmen perform at Great American Music Hall Feb. 15. It's somewhat inconceivable considering Bows and Arrows (on Warner Bros. imprint Record Collection), Leithauser's way with a catchy, everyday phrase, the band's punchy, ever so New York City sound, and a production that rattles and echoes with a haunted atmosphere seldom found on "new rock" releases.

The recording of their second album was a trial in itself as the band fled a second session in Memphis when storms blackened the city for two and a half weeks. They landed in Oxford, Miss. – Faulkner territory – before they returned to Memphis to face another blackout. On to New Jersey and yet another outage. "It was just funny at that point," Leithauser says.

That penchant for making art out of disaster somehow makes comparisons between the Walkmen and Shane MacGowan apt, which Leithauser is happy to have. "Yeah, we try to rip off his songs all the time," he jokes.