When Did The Rock Roll Out Of The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame?
Written by Jason Daniel Baker
Saturday, 22 December 2012 04:30
It remains a mystery right up there in significance with the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge and the JFK Assassination. It may in fact be the biggest mystery of all. How does the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame choose its inductees? The manner in which those honored are selected clearly defies simple logic.
This year the Queen of Disco Donna Summer and the rap group Public Enemy join the Hall of Fame as honorees. Englebert Humperdincke, Guy Lombardo, Conway Twitty and Yanni are doubtless waiting in the wings for induction. The longshots for induction are of course actual Rock ‘N’ Roll bands.
Toronto band RUSH finally made it in to the Hall this year as did Seattle band Heart. Staples of Rock ‘N’ Roll radio since the 1970s one wonders how either band and countless other have been left out for so long. The inclusion of each appears merely to be meant to distract from the controversy that adding Donna Summer and Public Enemy would cause.
Many will remember 2007’s induction of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five despite claims that the Dave Clark Five had garnered 6 more votes that year. DC5 were inducted the following year – made peers of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five purveyors of a completely different form of music.
Surviving members of the Sex Pistols reached consensus that the Hall is a “piss stain” a cursory summation of erudite profundity beyond the reach of most Hall members who either embraced diplomacy in assessing the suitability of recent honorees or are passed caring. Many are in fact outraged and shocked beyond the expression of words.
The controversial selections raised the question “What is Rock ‘N’ Roll?” The long, difficult way to answer that question is to provide exemplars of what Rock ‘N’ Roll isn’t. Donna Summer, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Public Enemy, Run DMC among other absurd Hall of Fame inductees are prime exemplars of what Rock ‘N’ Roll isn’t.
Would you say Johnny Cash was a great Rock ‘N’ Roll performer? He was cool in his own way but he played a form of music called ‘Country’. The two are different forms of music and each has its own Hall of Fame yet paradoxically Johnny Cash is in the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and remains one of its less controversial honorees.
Miles Davis is in the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame too despite being a Jazz performer. What is Rock ‘N’ Roll? It quite plainly is not Jazz nor is it Country nor is it Disco nor is it Rap.
Even Leonard Cohen is in the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. Have you ever rocked out to his music? How about to the music of Cohen’s fellow Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Famers Louis Armstrong or Woody Guthrie? The latter two were elected in the nebulous “Early Influences” category which may as well include every musician who ever performed before 1950.
I can just picture the meeting of those deluded individuals who actually decide upon who is honored presumably convened in a padded cell whilst comparing lobotomy scars and sharing the same bong not having changed its water in years. These same people might elect Martina Navratilova or Tiger Woods to the Football Hall of Fame without knowing who George Ramsay or Bobby Charlton were. It is fully that preposterous.
