Thursday, March 16, 2006

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.

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't care *what* my S.O. says, Cleveland has nothing to do w/ R & R.

10:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice to see another commentator ragging on the stupid-ass R&R Hall of Fame. Besides being a big music fan, I've been playing in small-time rock bands for 20 years and have made many records, known many great unheralded groups. I think I have a decent handle on what the spirit or Rock and Roll is, and I think the R&RHOF is a joke. How "rock-n-roll" is it to be feted by a bunch of music industry phonies? Should there be a rock and roll establishment????

Why such a Hall of Fame (should just be a museum) would be anywhere but Memphis is also a mystery. The whole thing is a crock.

Mr. PC

12:21 AM  
Blogger JB said...

Yeah, keep it real PC! (rolls eyes). Playing to 20 people at the Turf Club is so much more legitimate than those sellouts who entertain millions.

Nihilist, your biggest sin was misspelling Lynyrd Skynyrd. Notice the absence of A's!

There are no A's in Skynyrd.

Please take immediate note of this.

8:44 AM  
Blogger Nicko McDave said...

I believe that Mr. Pants was trying to make the point that the Hall of Fame might just as well have inducted Lynard Skynard as Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Or, indeed, the legendary Mr. Leonard Skinner.

10:16 AM  
Blogger Chad said...

Seymour Skinner has about as much right being there as Miles Davis does.

10:20 AM  
Blogger Chad said...

PMB-

Believe you me, if the day ever comes for the NIGP to sell out to man, he'll do so in a heartbeat.

3:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Alright, jb.
I don't believe playing to 20 people is any more "real" than playing to 80,000. The "real" comes from the musicians, no matter the setting. I cite small-time bands like my own because they are motivated just by the love of doing the rock thing. There are many hugely successful rich, groupie- nailing bands that do it for the love of rock (U2 comes to mind). I can't tell you how many ambitious phony poser bands I've seen performing at tiny dive clubs. They probably burn out early because they don't "make it".

I just think that having an established institution honoring achievement in rock-n-roll is stupid.

btw, I used to work as a stagehand and I carried Dickey Betts's guitar. It would have been an honor if I knew anything about Dickey Betts.

PC

1:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry, came up as anonymous on previous post

PC

1:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't get sucked into it. JB believes all merit in music is conferred by sales.

To him, Madonna is better than John Hiatt.

Music loses worth in inverse proportion to the side of its audience.

4:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hugh, I appreciate a word of encouragement, but I can't agree with your formulation regarding the worth of music being in inverse proportion to it's sales.

What about the Beatles???

I bet recordings of Bach sell more than Telemann (totally found him on Google). That doesn't make Bach's contribution less valid.

There are tons of mega-selling crap acts, but still there are there is Elvis, the Beatles, Sinatra etc....

12:50 AM  

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