A Rotten Day In Cleveland

The whole idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is ridiculous. True Rock and Roll is free and uncontrollable. You can't quantify it. Sure, there's record sales and the charts, but they fail to tell the entire story.

So every year a pretentious bunch gets together in Cleveland to honor those it thinks worthy of being immortalized. Unlike the NFL Hall of Fame, criteria is too subjective. I may despise Brett Favre, but I know his record and his statistics merit inclusion in the football hall. But what of Bob Seger?

This year's induction ceremony was marked by one word: exclusion. The Sex Pistols, seeing the hall as a joke excluded themselves. Blondie tried to exclude former members Frank Infante, Nigel Harrison and Gary Valentine. Learned Skynyrd was missing several of their most important members, including singer Ronnie Van Zant died in a plane crash in 1977.

However, the most bizarre exclusion was lead singer Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath. He replaced Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 and helped resuscitate the bands career over the course of two studio and one live albums before leaving in 1982. In 1992 he returned for a reunion album of sorts. Next to Osbourne, Dio was the next most popular singer in the band and deserved induction. The snub broke the Fleetwood Mac precedent. In their 1998 induction Peter Green, Danny Kirwin and Jeremy Spencer were inducted alongside eventual replacements Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, despite the fact that the Buckingham/Nicks era was clearly responsible for the bands largest commercial successes.

Dio was robbed and Johnny Rotten got it right.

SISYPHUS ADDS: I've corrected the Nyhylyst's shameful misspelling of one of the greatest bands in the history of western civilization.