Checklist Of Shame R

.....The Red Hot Chili Peppers were nominated this year, but not yet inducted. Cross your fingers and wash your socks.

.....By volume, many of the CD's beginning with 'R' in my old inventory are near-complete catalogues of artists already inducted, such as Rolling Stones, R.E.M., Ramones, etc. But as always, someone's getting short shrift and once again some of the missing are of the jaw-dropping "what were they thinking" variety.

1. RARE EARTH- This band had been around in varying line-ups and under varying names until the late 1960's when they settled on the name Rare Earth after signing to MGM as the Sunliners. They spent the decade gradually shifting from high school dance band to a rock band playing clubs, so they seemed like a polished unit emerging out of nowhere and still looked relatively young. When Berry Gordy decided to stake out a piece of the newly emerging hard rock market at the end of 1968 he closed down the recently acquired Inferno label and poached Rare Earth to be the band to launch a new label. In the early 1960's Gordy had branched out to include gospel, country, jazz and spoken word labels and imprints in the Motown family in addition to the chart-topping R&B and soul they were known for. He hadn't strayed too far from the formula since JFK was assassinated, but 1968 had been a year characterized by death and violence and 1969 seemed to be the year Gordy wanted to see new life. In addition to the new hard rock label he also created US distribution for a new afro-pop and jazz label from Hugh Masekela called Chisa and two failed efforts, Blaze and Weed, that each had a single release. When Gordy asked members of Rare Earth to suggest a name for the new rock label, they asked him to name it after themselves and surprisingly Gordy agreed. Of course, his pop culture instincts worked more often than not and the label continued until 1976. [The whole company pared down to the longest running R&B imprints after 1978 and consolidated completely in 1982.] While up and running, the label carried the U.S. releases of a number of British acts such as Pretty Things, who went on to Swan Song, the Led Zeppelin label. The band became famous not for hit singles but for their horn-and-guitar integrated albums, such as ECOLOGY and MA. Incorporating brass into rock (instead of pasting on horn tracks recorded by session players in post production as a producer's मुर्दोच) was a relatively new approach at the time. After the Beatles' "PENNY LANE" in 1967, people eventually caught on to the difference and Blood, Sweat And Tears emerged, along with Chicago Transit Authority and others. As neither of those more commercially successful bands is in yet (and I don't seem to remember arguing either of their cases in the earlier posts) I don't expect we'll see these guys getting their due anytime soon.


2. LOU REED- It's been many, many years since a music critic attending a Lou Reed concert figured out why the New York audiences spent half their time booing him and half their time cheering him. Those weren't 'boo's, the crowd was shouting "Loooouuuuu!". When the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame was inaugurated, the double live LP TAKE NO PRISONERS was still selling at enormous prices for battered, soiled copies. Since then, its availability on CD and the advent of internet auctions put an end to that, but I'll bet mint copies still go for something. His band The Velvet Underground was inducted after a few years of eligibility and considerable pressure from the creative and critical communities. Yet Reed as a solo artist also continues to command respect from his contemporaries. Witness the all-star "PERFECT DAY" fund-raiser project (1997) to benefit Children In Need on that song's silver anniversary. Or the cast assembled for the dramatic readings on the expanded 2CD version of his album THE RAVEN (2003). And when director Wim Wenders shot "Faraway, So Close!" (1993), the post-reunification sequel to his brilliant "Wings Of Desire"(1987), he juxtaposed East and West with non-German avatars Mikhail Gorbachev and Lou Reed. All I'm saying is, if someone is betting the success of a multi-million dollar film on the likelihood that international audiences will recognize you as representative of 20th Century Western Civilization on the same scale that Gorbachev represents the Soviet Union when all you really do is play rock music, then you belong in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame or there shouldn't be a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.


3. THE RESIDENTS- These guys might get locked out on a technicality. Can you be in a Hall Of Fame if you're anonymous? For forty years The Residents have performed using disguises, the most famous recurring element being helmets shaped like eyeballs. It's commonly assumed that the personnel have changed over the years, but specifics such as which ones and at what points are known only to the members. The purpose is not just mystique, although there is that, but a long held principle that the art be the focus and not personalities. The anonymity has also helped them to continuously reinvent themselves as playing in a variety of styles for the purpose of deconstructing them from within. The difference between The Residents and a parodist like Spike Jones or Weird Al is that The Residents' concept of a musical style has less to do with keys or rhythms and more to do with sociological functions. Thus, they've reinvented nursery rhymes (DUCK STAB), gospel (WORMWOOD), folk (ESKIMO), rock (THIRD REICH AND ROLL) and musicals (THE MOLE TRILOGY). They've also turned their attention to specific musicians as in "THE BEATLES PLAY THE RESIDENTS AND THE RESIDENTS PLAY THE BEATLES" or THE KING AND EYE (songs associated with Elvis Presley) or STARS AND HANK FOREVER (side one: John Philip Sousa; side two: Hank Williams). They were pioneers of CD-Rom formats for home entertainment, not just for music but generally. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that Madonna mistakes their eye helmets for kabbalistic power channels and lobbies for them relentlessly and makes a royal freaking nuisance of herself. At that point I wouldn't even care if they got in, just knowing that ignoring them cost the nominating committee their last nerve.


4. JONATHAN RICHMAN- If you don't recognize the name, you might remember him as the balladeer in the movie "Something About Mary". First recording with the Modern Lovers (also not inducted) as lead singer-songwriter and guitarist forty years ago, Richman became discouraged when the band was passed around to no less than three producers without being able to complete an album. Every producer wanted to get the definitive take of each song, which meant multiple takes of the same material each time they got a new producer. It was a similar problem to what the Stooges had recording FUN HOUSE; it became impossible to muster spontaneity in the studio the way that the band could when playing the songs once a night to live audiences. But whereas the Stooges mutated the songs (and maybe themselves) as the sessions went on, the Modern Lovers became demoralized. Other members went on to the Cars and Talking Heads, Richman went solo and had something of a creative revelation, embracing low volume and minimal music with an almost evangelical fervor. A few years later he resurfaced on a small label with a new Modern Lovers line-up. The old recordings were picked through to compile a complete album and the two incarnations sat next to each other in the bins. This happened just as punk was being noticed in New York and just before it began in London. Richman and the punk groups often had a similar audience despite drastically different sounds, the common element being spare, straightforward arrangements. Unlike most Top 40 artists in the mid-70's, nothing they did was a studio trick; it could all be reproduced on stage. Unlike the punks, Richman was concerned that minimal arrangements more readily exposed mistakes and become increasingly technically proficient in his guitar playing, even as the songs he wrote seemed more simple and childlike. He spent the 1980's label hopping and making both funny and heart-breakingly beautiful songs which he continued to do when he settled in Rounder Records for a decade. I've seen him live several times, turning a room of college educated professionals and jaded hipsters into little kids singing along to campfire songs. With dozens of original albums and several compilations extant, Richman never sounds dated. That's mostly because he's never been derivative of whatever time he happens to be in. His music has always been personal and nonironic. A long overdue boxed set would be not only uncharacteristic of him but a licensing nightmare. But until there is one or some comparable focus for attention he will persist on word of mouth and constant touring, always creating and always in demand.


5. TERRY RILEY- He rarely works directly with rock musicians (it's worth looking for the album CHURCH OF ANTHRAX, recorded with John Cale), but he's already been enshrined in rock history as one of the inspirations (along with spiritual advisor Baba Meher) for the Who song "BABA O'RILEY". Riley, along with inventor Robert Moog, classical composer Philip Glass and jazz musician Raymond Scott, was one of a small handful of pioneers who realized that they had to teach themselves how to write music for the synthetic instruments being invented in the 1950's and 1960's. Others, notably Walter/Wendy Carlos, Tomita and Keith Emerson made an art of fitting the square peg of synthesizers into the round hole of the classical canon. The downside of that is that the instruments came to be defined by the degree to which they failed (or worse, succeeded) to be redundant to the instruments for which those pieces were written. Riley et al intuited that new works needed to be written that played to the new instruments' strengths. They all did, and in Riley's case the results included IN C, which has been rerecorded several times, RAINBOW IN CURVED AIR, from which the fusion band Curved Air (with the pre-Police Stewart Copeland) took its name, and a number of collaborations with Kronos Quartet. Rockers with a persistent experimental streak tend to have avant garde recordings at home and many of the same names appear over and over: Glass, John Cage, Edgar Varese, Meredith Monk and Terry Riley. Here's my vote for his induction as an influence.


6. TOM ROBINSON- Rupert Murdoch's "news" organizations have always had a bizarre fixation on homosexuals, particularly for vilifying them, unprovoked and out of the blue. Thus, when EMI cut loose the Sex Pistols in January 1977 they had no idea how the resultant publicity would snowball through a notoriously brief affiliation with A&M until Virgin Records parlayed the band's reputation into a number one single by June, despite being banned from the BBC as well as numerous major retail outlets. Around that time EMI signed the Tom Robinson Band in hopes that they could regain street credibility with a punk band, albeit one that wouldn't get into public fights that led to features in the Fleet Street tabloids. But after their debut single, the pub-and-soccer-match ready sing-a-long "2-4-6-8 MOTORWAY", Robinson began putting whatever weight he could muster from his burgeoning celebrity status behind decrying human rights abuses. His most memorable song in that effort was "GLAD TO BE GAY", which name checks the lurid and sexually sensationalistic Murdoch newspaper The Sun for its hypocritical and slanderous attacks on gay rights publications with no overt sexual content. He can be seen singing it in the first film of the Secret Policeman's Ball (1979), a benefit show for Amnesty International, a U.K.-based organization devoted to exposing human rights abuses around the world. Robinson, by then already a veteran of the Rock Against Racism concerts, apparently felt that should include the abuses in AI's own backyard. Today Robinson is a radio personality with the BBC, and while he did once have a reissue program of his EMI recordings done by Cooking Vinyl he has never had a comprehensive, career-spanning box. I'd like to see one that includes his acceptance speech.


7. MICK RONSON- After Ronson's death in the early 1990's (while completing his last album, BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HULL) I tried to compile a series of cassettes showing the full width and breadth of his session work. The project proved to be too ambitious. Not only was acquiring the source albums I didn't already have proving to be expensive, even when buying used vinyl, new material began surfacing all the time. I learned that between playing on David Bowie's MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD and HUNKY DORY, Elton John tried to hire Ronson while recording TUMBLEWEED CONNECTION. A finished outtake from then of Ronson playing "MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER" surfaced on the 1995 remaster of the album of the same name after first being released on RARE MASTERS (1992). Ronson became most famous as the guitarist for David Bowie's Spiders From Mars, but during the 1970's and 1980's he became incredibly prolific as a sideman, including playing and/or arranging parts for Lou Reed's TRANSFORMER, Mott The Hoople's ALL THE YOUNG DUDES, Pure Prairie League's BUSTIN' OUT, Lulu's MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD album, Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue resulting in the album HARD RAIN and one volume of Dylan's official 'Bootleg' series, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Cougar (and again years later as John Mellencamp), Ian Hunter (of course), David Cassidy, Van Morrison, Roger Daltrey, Corky Laing (of Mountain), The Rich Kids (with Glen Matlock and Midge Ure), Ellen Foley, David Johansen, Meat Loaf, T-Bone Burnett and Morrissey. He also produced a large number of lesser known acts. By all accounts, Mick Ronson is the musician for whom the sideman category was created. His guitar playing has sold countless millions of records, tapes and CD's and has been heard by billions, but chances are you've never heard of him. Change that.


8. DIANA ROSS- She was The Boss before Springsteen was, and although the Supremes are already in it wouldn't hurt to consider Diana Ross' solo career. I have no doubt she'd think so. "Mahogany", "The Wiz" and juggling Li'l Kim's li'l Kims ought to provide plenty of clips for promotion when induction time rolls around. But more importantly are the enormous crowds she draws (when she's not charging upwards of $300 per seat, and sometimes when she does) who would be the determining factor in any measure of 'fame'.


9. ROXY MUSIC- I mentioned "jaw-dropping" earlier. Yeah, this is kind of what I'm talking about. Every member (with the possible exception of the drummers) have released solo albums, three of them prolificly: Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry and Phil Manzanera. As for their influence, they've been covered by Grace Jones and Norah Jones, Def Leppard and Mudhoney, hit makers like Kylie Minogue and fringe groups like Fields Of The Nephilim, newcomers like Fatal Flowers and veterans like Tin Machine. Their bassist John Porter produced the earliest hits for The Smiths and others. And if you have an afternoon to kill, you can Google "roxy music remix love is the drug" and try to count how many remixes this one song was subjected to in the last decade alone. They've been eligible for nomination since 1997, and who got in from that bunch in 1998? The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac (with no mention of Bob Welch before, during or after the ceremony) and The Mamas And The Papas. All in all, not as impressive as the inducted influence (Jelly Roll Morton) or non-performer (Allen Toussaint) that year. The best inducted performers, Gene Vincent, Lloyd Price and Santana, were all overdue. Why would the committee limit themselves to eight inductees when such an obvious newly eligible choice has exhibited the rare combination of both commercial and critical success, pervasive influence among musicians of different styles and enough durability to chart with a twenty year old song? Here's a clue: after 1998 the number of inductees briefly expanded to ten or more per year (1999-2001), then Roxy announced a reunion in 2001 that led to a successful tour yielding a live DVD and companion CD but the inductee lists shrank to below ten per year for most of the decade (2002-2009). That caused the bottleneck of eligible performers only now being addressed (see the early posts in this series). And I don't believe this is entirely about the committee's transparent anti-UK bigotry I've discussed before. Yes, Fleetwood Mac only got in because they were California transplants since the early 1970's, but to admit Roxy Music would be to acknowledge the existence of glitter, hundreds of straight men in make-up and platform shoes playing actual rock music, of which Roxy was merely among the most artistically ambitious. When they debuted it was in the thick of it and the California buffooneratti worked mighty hard to keep it off American radio. Elton John circumvented the virtual ban by being practically a college radio act until a famous radio concert in 1971. After he got in, mostly as a country inflected singer-songwriter, out came the glasses. (Years later, out came Elton, but that's another story.) Then, down came the gates. The record setting chart successes of Slade, T.Rex, The Sweet, Mud, Gary Glitter and dozens of other lesser lights would not happen in the U.S., where we were treated to "DEAD SKUNK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD", "BILLY DON'T BE A HERO", "FEELINGS", "THE MORNING AFTER", "ONE TIN SOLDIER", etc., etc., etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. There was a reason punk started in the U.S. before England.


10. RUNAWAYS- Joan Jett is getting in, but curiously not the band that launched her. Lauded feature film and vindication, yes. Induction? No. Well, thank goodness they made room for notorious wife-beater James Taylor. Because, you know, whenever somebody says "Rock and roll", that's the first name we all think of, James Taylor.


11. TODD RUNDGREN- We gotta get you a nomination. Hell, just as a producer alone, he more than qualifies. As a performer he pioneered the concept of using cutting edge computer technology to encourage the public to remix his songs, putting individual component tracks of some of his recordings online and providing rudimentary tutorials encouraging people to play with the software are share the results. Forget awards, you should get down on your hands and knees and kiss his ass for saving your industry from irrelevancy in the age of interactive entertainment.


12. THE RUTLES- They have their own tribute album, that should tell you something. A parody of the Beatles, but moreso a parody of the then ubiquitous television documentaries on rock music perpetuated by Dick Clark, et al, in the 1970's. The band was created for a brief segment of the Rutland Weekend show starring ex-Python Eric Idle. George Harrison reportedly thought it was hilarious; he must have, since he supported the production of an hour-and-a-half long special and even made a cameo, as did Mick Jagger, Paul Simon and others. The special also added the original cast of "Saturday Night Live" and Gilda Radner delivers what might be the most scathing indictment of Baby Boomer fascism ever to make it onto television. Idle, doubling as the faux documentary's narrator, stops a random woman on the street (Radner) and demands wistful reminisces of the Rutles from her. She claims not to be familiar with them until escalating physical abuse drives her to rattle off a well-rehearsed testimonial of insincere calculated nostalgia, sounding exactly like the numerous boiler-plate clip shows of the time. The whole production was the obvious inspiration for "Spinal Tap" and like that movie manages to remain funny as well as hummable long after the decade it so accurately captured and skewered.

.....There's many more bands beginning with 'R' that certainly deserve acknowledgement and your attention, but maybe not enshrinement. I've enjoyed The Real Kids with John Felice, Redd Kross, Rezillos, Rich Kids, Rites of Spring and the Royal Guardsmen. If you can make a case for these or anyone else beginning with 'R' leave it in the comments area below. Unlike the Supreme Court, I hear hypothetical cases.