The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: piss stain or wax polish?

To start, I’m not going to vent about why T. Rex and Kraftwerk haven’t been justly lauded, whether it really was an injustice to induct Black Sabbath after being eligible for ten years, or whether the judges are a bunch of ignorant Caucasians who’ve never heard a reggae tune besides Jammin’? There are more than enough obvious inequalities and glaring omissions in the overall list, which is kind of an irony because the ceremony itself is notorious for inducting an much more inflated number of artistic icons than your typical hall of fame. What inspires me to discuss its current relevance is, fairly simply, fun and games.

 

As the music industry goes through the recession climate, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame fights for relevancy in an age where the typical artist is more and more thought of as dispensable. So why does it still matter? Does anyone really care except to witness that special case when a band embarrassingly fights against the system with a first grade grammar letter (Sex Pistols), or is there to make amends by pleasing their fans and showing grace for the sake of it (The Talking Heads’ awkward reunion a few years back)? Is anyone else tired of Eddie Vedder preparing more dreadfully monotone speeches or of different members of Red Hot Chili Peppers recalling how drugged-out they were when they discovered their supposed muse?

 

In theory, the ceremony itself is a half-assed attempt at keeping the spirit of rock n’ roll (or what’s left of it) alive and well. In fact, even the judges themselves express their views as if they arrived from the Monterey Festival in a flower-decorated, rundown van with a flat tire, muttering such phrases as, "It’s rock n' roll, man", or, "peace and soul, rock n’ roll". Attending the ceremony itself costs more in dollars than the number of records Marquee Moon has sold to date, and mainly consists of mummified record executives and their young wives spending some spare change to cringe at the sight of Iggy Pop taking off his shirt and showing his veiny muscles. Oh, and how about Billie Joe Armstrong taking one for "Team Punk", smiling gleefully as he uses his socially friendly persona to passionately induce some nostalgia into a bunch of old fogeys while his friends have all the fun at an outside pub?

 

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - grow up a little bit, will ya? You’re dangerously running on empty, trying really hard to figure out which omitted artists are actually relevant to the current musical scope. So while you get over the fact that Alex Chilton was a bit too strange for your taste, you amass a dubious hodge-podge of genres to demonstrate to the rest of the world that you’ve still got it. While you deny that your little shindig isn’t about popularity, album sales, or subjective criteria, you seem to forget that you’ve been mostly working on autopilot. The Beatles? Not even a sweat. Bob Dylan? We need our eccentric troubadour in there. The Kinks? Well, they’re a tad too British, but that You Really Got Me song is bloody brilliant. The Velvet Underground? Let me think about it for a few years.

 

As the years keep winding down, the Hall of Fame will have to, you know, actually think long and hard about which artists to induct. Since they’ve basically crossed out all the obvious favorites, the anonymous nominating committee has increasingly found itself struggling to define its real purpose. The potential class of 2011 proves to be the most polarizing yet, and not in a good way. If the ceremony is a beauty pageant, then you have the likes of hotel lobby singer-songwriter extraordinaire Neil Diamond and jock-rockers Bon Jovi to make a truly memorable (and money-draining) night to remember. Or better yet, how about if fitness guru, LL Cool J, actually gifts us some grade A ass while he Makes it Hot on stage? That’d be a first. I have to admit that it’d be a bit bizarre to watch Alice Cooper personifying his shock-rock shtick on stage instead of endorsing a few new golf clubs. And since they need to appeal to leftfield (ahem, actual) rock n’ roll fans, then there’s the possibility of Tom Waits taking a long-deserved minute at the podium. 

 

So while they wait to induct Coldplay with blindfolds on in 2023, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has ample time to rethink their mission statement. Though these kinds of non-profit organizations are never perfect, at least the judging committee still holds enough integrity to acknowledge the value of contemporary music history and not entirely sell itself. Even if many important musical periods are still vastly ignored, these next years will begin to unveil the Hall of Fame’s true agenda. Will they start to induct out of their back catalogue of long-deserving hopefuls, or will they succumb to undeserved crowd pleasers? We’ll see about that. Oh and if you ask me, they’ve rightly ignored KISS for all these years.