Checklist Of Shame L to M

.....Alphabetically we're reaching the halfway mark on this list of artists unjustly omitted from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The list has its intrinsic limitations, though, and the actual number of outrages is likely twice what I've listed here. You can read them in reverse order by clicking on "older post" at the bottom or forward by finding September 28th in the Blog Archive on the right and read them in the order they were written.

• LOVE- This is the Arthur Lee outfit. It gives us a little bit of insight into what might have happened had Syd Barrett or Roky Erikson or Skip Spence managed to keep their head together just enough to remain band leaders. While many bands have an incredible debut album and coast on its reputation or simply implode, Love had a fairly solid six albums before Lee went solo, the third of which, FOREVER CHANGES, became the best known and best reviewed. It walked the tricky line between innovative (for its time) and accessible.
• LOVE AND ROCKETS- I've already tipped my hat to Bauhaus in the first of these 'MIA' posts, but Love and Rockets really is a different animal, which the band emphasized by frequently dressing entirely in white at the band's commercial peak. Because L&R was actually three of the four members of Bauhaus and because they knew that writers for British music weeklies are generally lazy and stupid, it was easy to predict that articles about this new venture would be filled with recycled descriptions of dark clothes and eye make-up. When readers saw all that next to press release photos of their current outfits it would hopefully cause them to think twice about the robotic criticisms of the music being "dark" or "gloomy". While the new work was still spiritual and introverted/introspective, in other ways it deviated from earlier gothic motifs. Instead of ruminating on decay it was more proactive, always going somewhere, whether it was on the "KUNDALINI EXPRESS" or "BOUND FOR HELL". Bauhaus should take the priority, I feel, but L&R has now reached eligibility, as has Peter Murphy's solo work and it's long past the time that the anti-England embargo be lifted at the Hall Of Fame.
• LENE LOVICH- Boy, if there's anyone the Hall hates more than the British, it's quirky cerebrals. Devo, Buggles, They Might Be Giants, The Residents, Brian Eno, Sparks-- it's just as well that Magnetic Fields isn't old enough to qualify because it sounds as though Stephin Merritt's heart has been broken enough as it is. And whenever you have someone who hates nerds, it seems that they really, really hate female nerds for some reason. It's as though their mere existence offends some pagan god of childish stereotypes. Multilingual and multimedia savvy, Lovich viewed music as just one outlet for creativity among many and took an extended sabbatical from it to raise her kids just as MTV was launched. She would have been a natural for that cable channel's early years, but when she briefly returned to recording at the end of the 1980's she got sidetracked by her involvement in the more militant side of PETA. She continued to write and do soundtrack work and you can find a great interview spread across the booklets of the slipcased CD set of her Stiff albums.
• NICK LOWE- After the dissolution of the Brinsley Schwartz band, ex-member Nick Lowe took a job as a staff songwriter at a major label just as a friend was creating the Stiff label and inviting Nick to sign on as a performer and producer. Nick tried to get out of his contract by writing songs so bad that his label would drop him without a fight. Instead, one of them became a huge hit in Japan. He eventually got out of it and joined Stiff of course, but how good do you have to be if you can't write a song that isn't catchy even when you're trying to?
• LULU- Of all the various 'schoolgirl' acts in 1960's British pop, the only ones who started recording when they were actually young enough to be schoolgirls were Sandie Shaw, Twinkle and Lulu. (Millie would be considered reggae by many, but I wouldn't object to her being placed in this company as well.) Unlike most of the artists I have suggested and will go on to suggest, Lulu was more of an interpreter and not known as a writer. She was instead a tireless performer who has been a notable presence in every decade from the 1960's to the present. Many of these women will be getting 50th Anniversary nods in some form or another. As far as I can tell, only Dusty Springfield has made it into the Hall Of Fame.
• BILL LASWELL/MATERIAL- Better known among musicians, he's played sessions with everyone from John Lydon to the Dalai Lama. Material began as a flurry of 12" records in 1981, but bassist Laswell never settled into any one outfit. Although a headlining performer in his own right, he stands a much better chance of being inducted as a sideman with hundreds of credits among dozens of artists.
• JOHN MAYALL- Considering how many of his ex-flunkies have gone on to induction (Clapton, Beck and Fleetwood Mac) this should be a slam-dunk.
• MC5- The Motor City Five. Undoubtedly kept out because they butted heads with the cretinous Bill Graham. The MC5 were politically provocative by all accounts but when they were booked into one of Graham's venues in 1968 a violent radical organization calling itself The Motherfuckers demanded to take the stage during the show. They objected to the concept of property and insisted that their organization occupy the venue one night a week, starting with the MC5 show. Abbie Hoffman and/or Jerry Rubin were supposedly meant to appear. Band member McCoy Tyner announced that they intended to play the concert as planned. Not only was it ridiculous for anyone to presume to lecture the MC5 and their audience about revolutionary politics but patently dishonest to hijack a captive audience who willingly came for an entirely different purpose. (A year later at Woodstock Hoffman tried to commandeer the microphone to deliver a prepared screed. Unfortunately for him he made the mistake of trying this while the Who were playing; Townsend literally kicked his ass off the stage, as in "foot forcefully applied to backside resulting in a fall from a height and injuries". That might explain Abbie's relatively mellowed approach during the 1970's.) In retaliation, The Motherfuckers destroyed the MC5's equipment and physically beat Graham, who held the MC5 responsible and created numerous financial and legal headaches for the band and their manager John Sinclair. What's not certain is whether Graham's motivation was fear of retaliation from the radical group or from their dilettante connections in the West Coast music scene. That's only one of numerous complaints about Graham, generally coming from bands outside California and generally missing from Rolling Stone's coffee table picture books.
• MEATLOAF- Should he be inducted? "Let me sleep on it; Baby, Baby, let me sleep on it..." Motown artist, cast member of "Hair" and "Rocky Horror" and star of stage and screen. Also, his most famous album, BAT OUT OF HELL, has on its own outsold all the albums in Jefferson Airplane's entire catalog combined. That's including compilations.
• MIDNIGHT OIL- Good enough for Australia's legislature, but not good enough for the Hall Of Fame?
• MINISTRY- Eligible since 2006, this is a band notable for the fact that their career took off when their singles stopped charting in the U.S. Not only that, but Al Jourgensen should get some sort of lifetime achievement award for the sheer number of pseudonyms alone.
• MINOR THREAT- Their entire compiled releases would fit on one CD [they did it first with COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY in 1990 then released a CDEP of their FIRST DEMOS in 2001 and three unreleased tacks on 20 YEARS OF DISCHORD, a label sampler/boxed set in 2002; 37 tracks in less than 70 minutes] and about 90 minutes of video. They also play a memorable part in the documentary "Another State Of Mind" when the tour that the film follows passed through D.C. One of the bands touring, Youth Brigade, features the vocalist from Teen Idles, the band from whose ashes Minor Threat emerged. The Teen Idle's rhythm section, Ian MacKaye (bass) and Jeff Nelson (drums), became Dischord Records after their band graduated from high school in 1980 and spent the summer playing shows in California. In the fall when the band decided to split they took the few hundreds of dollars they managed to save and decided to make something tangible to remind them of the band-- a privately pressed record. When they did that (around December 1980) other punk bands came out of the woodwork to ask "How can we do that?". By making artist control the top priority and making small initial pressings to control costs, Dischord Records became a voice for bands who would never have been given a venue through normal music industry channels. The initial roster came together when three bands (Teen Idles, The Extorts and Untouchables [D.C., not the L.A. band]) fell apart just before that first single was released. The Untouchables rhythm section plus a guitarist and Teen Idles' vocalist became Youth Brigade. The Teen Idles' roadie (the future Henry Rollins) replaced the vocalist departing The Extorts and they became State Of Alert. That Extorts vocalist (Lyle Preslar) left to become a guitarist and had a friend from school (Brian Baker) who had learned bass. Bassist MacKaye had left Teen Idles to become a vocalist. With Nelson still on drums, the four became Minor Threat. Even after its members went on to different bands (Fugazi, Dag Nasty, etc.), Minor Threat not only continued to sell new pressings but became the face of the label and a standard of ethics recognized even beyond the hardcore punk community. They would play all ages (i.e., no alcohol) shows that started at 5PM so that audience members could get to work or school the next day. They refused to give interviews to magazines or broadcast networks that advertised alcohol or cigarettes. They sold new albums postpaid by mail order for less than most labels sold midlines in stores, despite the fact that their lower print runs meant that they were absorbing higher per piece production costs. When the label's ads ran in zines they were more often accompanied by photography taken by musicians on the label or their friends and family than by reproductions of the album's art. None of these decisions was terribly complex and in retrospect it's astounding that they were viewed as being so radical. Every one was met with smug dismissal that it was more evidence that Dischord wasn't a real business, but someone's self-indulgent hobby. More than thirty years later it is still thriving in large part because it could never become dependent on the retailing conventions created to make artists and their audiences serve the interests of labels rather than the other way around. In the internet age the larger music industry's reliance on those conventions and general tunnel vision became a serious costly obstacle to adaptation. At Dischord, a band that had been defunct since 1984 was still a guiding light of sorts.
• ERRATUM- The band Youth Brigade who recorded with Dischord disbanded before the movie "Another State Of Mind" was filmed. The band with the same name in the movie is a different and unrelated Los Angeles band. Nonetheless, when the tour bus breaks down in D.C. Minor Threat allows them to stay at the house used as the headquarters of Dischord.
• MINUTEMEN- They were contemporaries of Minor Threat but based on the opposite side of the country. They also formed a record label, New Alliance, and split in the mid-80's but in the case of the Minutemen it was only because of the accidental death of their guitarist. New Alliance was eventually sold to SST (their original label) and the other band members formed a new band, fIREHOSE, splitting amicably in the mid-90's, at which point bassist Mike Watt became an in demand gun for hire both in the studio and on stage for many better known outfits including the reunited Stooges.
• MISFITS- It wouldn't be Halloween without them. Glenn Danzig's guest appearance (sort of) on an early episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force notwithstanding, The Misfits are an indelible stain visible even on rock's ubiquitous black T-shirt. They evoke Mario Bava the way Gillian Welch evokes Flannery O'Connor or Laurie Anderson evokes undergraduate humanities seminars. Why induct the Misfits? Besides being the often disputed missing link between punk and heavy metal? Because after Danzig left for greener pastures there was a decade of acrimony and intraband royalty suits, but when a settlement enabled the other members to perform their old songs under the name Misfits the audience already was waiting for them.
• MISSION OF BURMA- It would be way too easy (and probably actionable) to make a joke about the Hall Of Fame's nomination announcements being "when I reach for my revolver", but British readers under thirty wouldn't know what I was talking about. When Moby covered that Mission Of Burma song he was forced to change the word "revolver" to get airplay in England. (It became "That's when I realize it's over", also appropriate for most Hall Of Fame news.) MoB not only inspired a blizzard of art-punk bands, they formed many of them themselves after splitting in the early 1980's. Then, after twenty years of playing separately in different styles from MoB and from each other they reunited to record an album for their 25th Anniversary. The results, ONoffON, miraculously was not an incoherent jumble of their later styles or a throwback to the band sound that they had when they broke up. Instead it sounded as though they had continued to be a functioning group the entire intervening time and that the new album had a sound they had gradually and naturally grown into. They've recorded two more albums since, proving that it wasn't a fluke.
• MONKEES- Hear me out: normally a band becomes eligible 25 years after their first record is released. If we count the Monkees debut as their third album, HEADQUARTERS (1967), they've still been eligible for nearly two decades and their case is that much stronger. Their first two albums were made from songs recorded for the television series with the Monkees putting vocals over tracks recorded by session musicians (the same method used for Van Morrison and Them) plus Mike Nesmith recording his own songs. In fact, the second album was released before The Monkees were even aware that there were plans for a second album. The television show became wildly popular as were the records but to avoid prevent any more surprises in the second season they recruited Turtle Chip Douglas to produce sessions featuring songs they wrote or selected. Against the plans of both a record label and a television network they managed to get their records to lead the TV show rather than the other way around. Their projects, including the feature film "Head", financed the movie "Easy Rider" (and probably "Five Easy Pieces"). All the members of the band went on to further work, with Mike Nesmith being the most prolific. He also formed the record label Pacific Arts and video counterpart Pacific Arts Video. His plans to circulate a form of VHS magazine featuring music videos and music industry news was sold and further developed into a cable television network called MTV. In fact, Nesmith alone should be considered as well.
• MOODY BLUES- The Beatles had the idea first with Apple Records, but the Moodies also formed their own label/imprint in the late sixties, Threshold (as in "Threshold Of A Dream", no doubt). It is beyond question that they are deeply imbedded in the pop culture consciousness, having been covered by Stiv Bators, Ozzy Osbourne and Ramsey Lewis alike. And something they have in common with Aretha Franklin, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles and other inductees is that they've recorded Coca-Cola radio commercials. They have ubiquity, longevity, positive critical reviews, gold records and Grammy Hall Of Fame Award for the song "Nights In White Satin".
• MOTORHEAD- When Johnny and Joey were still alive the Ramones and Motorhead had their own sort of mutual appreciation society wherein each band would refer to the other in interviews as "the only band that matters". The Ramones are in the Hall Of Fame, incredibly considering they belong there. Motorhead belong there, too. Perhaps this year's nominees The Beastie Boys could explain to the directors that the expression they used, "No sleep 'til Brooklyn!" is a reference and homage to the Motorhead album "NO SLEEP 'TIL HAMMERSMITH". Whether or not you choose to believe the anecdote behind the title (that the band consumed amphetamines continually until the last date on a UK tour-- the Hammersmith Odeon) is irrelevant to the impact the band has had far beyond heavy metal fandom. And incidentally, anyone who gets kicked out of Hawkwind for excessive drug consumption has had things far less believable yet true happen to him than a week long meth bender.
• MOTT THE HOOPLE- It was Mott's records, not Traffic's, that convinced the Clash that it was worth the risk to work with Guy Stevens. They were the first rock band to have a run on Broadway. As the seventies wore on they lost guitarist Mick Ralphs to Bad Company and keyboardist Blue Weaver to the Bee Gees and eventually Ian Hunter and Luther Grosvenor to solo careers. Earlier in this blog I did an entry on Hunter's solo recording "ENGLAND ROCKS" in which I mentioned the impact Mott had on Queen. They more famously made an impact on David Bowie, who had been signed to RCA less than a year when Mott announced plans to break up and leave Island Records. Part of Bowie's contract was that he sign new artists. He contacted Mott and offered them their choice of (if I'm remembering this right) "SUFFRAGETTE CITY" or "ALL THE YOUNG DUDES". RCA passed and so CBS (the UK counterpart to the American Columbia Records label) got both Mott and The Stooges albums produced by Bowie and neither has been out of print since.
• MUSIC MACHINE- Sean Bonniwell and company have not only been widely covered by the post-"Nuggets" generation but they were dressing all in black and wearing sunglasses indoors even before the Velvet Underground. And while Bonniwell's single leather glove was likely not the inspiration for Michael Jackson's bedazzled one it was a striking visual for the nascent television age and his clear prescience that rock music was going to be at the heart of the younger generation that would be steering it, not on the outside waiting for permission from Ed Sullivan to come in.

.....That's it for today. As always, leave your suggestions in the comments.