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.

Checklist Of Shame I to K

.....I've been diverging into a long overdue gripe/tutorial addressed to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame since September 28. I'd recommend starting with that post if you're coming here new. For anyone returning, I'll spare you the recap and pick up where I left off Monday.

1. JANIS IAN- Most people lost track of Janis between "SOCIETY'S CHILD" in the 1960's and "AT SEVENTEEN" in the 1970's, when she appeared on the first episode of "Saturday Night Live". It was October 11th, 1975 and if anyone watching that night remembered that first single from nine years earlier, which became the lead track on her first album, few of them would have been aware that the new song they were listening to was from her seventh album. With a new audience and on a new label (Columbia/CBS) she put out a further five albums. I lost track after RESTLESS EYES in 1981, but a quick check of Wikipedia, Amazon and Ian's own website shows that her next album was released in Australia just a few years later. After RESTLESS EYES Ian asked to break her contract with three to five albums still due. She recorded a new album with her own money and took it overseas, were the Columbia albums tended to sell better. She then spent a decade writing songs for others before reemerging middle-aged and more active than ever, recording, touring, writing fiction, writing non-fiction and dealing with Howard Stern. Come to think of it, considering how much more she's achieved without the albatross of the music industry around her neck, she'd probably run screaming from a nomination.
2. DAVID J./JAZZ BUTCHER- Considering that Bauhaus is still not in it's unlikely that any of it's members would get in ahead of it. None of them have had anywhere near the commercial success of the group with any consistency, although Love And Rockets had a few good years from 1985-1990. David J. is only on a few of the Jazz Butcher's records, back and forth from his early solo work before Love And Rockets came together, but he was the first of member of Bauhaus to step out for a moment for a side project, a single with then elderly René Halkett of the real Bauhaus, the School of Design.
3. THE JAM- They not only helped deliver the most memorable scene in the movie "Billy Elliot" but much of their catalog remains just as immediately accessible decades later despite being widely regarded as a nostalgic throwback to the mod 1960's when it was originally recorded from 1977 to 1982. They NEVER failed to put a single in the top 40. NEVER. Not one failure, not even once, in over five straight years.
4. TOMMY JAMES and the SHONDELLS- He probably started playing professionally when he was too young to deal with the accoutrements that always seem to infest life on the road. It was somewhere around 1969 he had a serious religious awakening and converted to Christianity, before that sort of thing became a fad. Unlike many cases (Barry McGuire comes to mind) it didn't have a deleterious effect on his songwriting. If anything, it might have helped (it resulted in "CRYSTAL BLUE PERSUASION" for one thing). By his own count James has 23 singles and nine albums certified gold or better. His website also estimates over 100 million in international sales which is harder to verify but undoubtedly true if it counts compilations licensing his singles. It's hard to imagine anyone in this country who has never heard his songs, but he's still not in the Hall Of Fame.
5. JETHRO TULL- They're probably not transferable, but if the Hall isn't going to just give Tull the place they deserve then I think Ian Anderson might have a slightly dusty Heavy Metal Grammy hanging around he might be willing to trade for it. What more could they possibly have to do to be inducted? Balance on one leg?
6. JODY FOSTER'S ARMY (aka JFA)- If you're under thirty I might have to explain the name to you. Shortly after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president in 1981 he was shot by a man who had earlier been kicked out of a neo-Nazi organization because even they thought he was too mentally unstable for their purposes. When interrogated about the shooting he revealed that he believed that he was certain that taking such dramatic actions would cause actress Jody Foster to fall in love with him. (She didn't. Imagine that.) Reagan had ties to organized crime in the southwest in the form of MCA and Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, so anybody who resented their stranglehold on local government and the entertainment industry was surely heartened by the prospect of their highest placed puppet nearly being killed by some random lunatic coming out of nowhere. It was too tempting to imagine thousands of nuts out there waiting to explode to not reflect that in a 'zine title or band name. thus, they became Jody Foster's Army. The band never had any real connection to Foster, who was forced to issue a cease and desist order before the band could be cited as a de facto legal precedent for anyone (such as the failed assassin) using her name and its implied endorsement without her permission. They were JFA ever since, the shining star of Arizona-based Placebo Records, whose national appeal sold enough records to enable their label to provide an outlet to other Sun Belt musicians locked out of the California cartels. If JFA was the only band who could get in the racks, then a mail order form inside the record jacket could enable fans of their music to order other bands they were otherwise only able to read about.
7. JOY DIVISION/NEW ORDER- Fans may argue that these are substantively different bands and I'm willing to agree. The minor change in personnel was famously forced on them but the eventual development of their sound was their choice. And as the years tick by without recognition from the Hall, New Order is now also eligible for nomination in its own right and has been for a few years. And Joy Division's contributions to rock and the larger culture? They were enough for U2 to want to use photographer Anton Corbijn, to make spotting "Unknown Pleasures" T-shirts on TV something of a minor drinking game during the 90's, to inspire cover bands, remix albums, soundtracks and television commercials ad infinitum and until you've heard the Swinging Erudites cover the Carpenters' song "LOVE WILL KEEP US TOGETHER" to the tune of Joy Division's "LOVE WILL TEAR US APART", you just haven't lived. Not in my world you haven't.
8. KING CRIMSON- They filled stadiums in Europe. With the advent of the internet and digital transfer of decades of live performances, they've amassed an enormous catalogue of albums that bypasses the chain-store model completely and sells directly to an international audience by mail. They reissued their canon of studio albums every five years from 1989 to 2009 and have now settled into a 40th Anniversary imprint of some kind. The cumulative resumés of the members must be thicker than a Manhattan phone book, including Greg Lake, Bill Bruford, Ian MacDonald, Tony Levin, Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp himself. And now X-Box is running a television advertisement featuring a rapper who samples "21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID MAN". Eligible for nomination since 1994.
9. KISS- The only band I know of to be licensed for more merchandise than Mickey Mouse. The hell with the Hall Of Fame, these guys have so much money from their non-musical residuals alone they could and should just open a museum devoted to themselves. I'd be surprised if they haven't already.
10. KRAFTWERK- They still play live. As I write this their website says they're playing Munich next week. They were commissioned to contribute a song to the 2000 Olympics, which I think was their only release (as a CD single) during a 17-year gap between albums. Most of those seventeen years were spent in a building that resembles a cinder block where they've housed their studios, perpetually remixing their recordings and comparing the marginally different variations. Here's the thing, and perhaps they're too polite to tell you, but like most machines, we need them more than they need us. They've been sampled by Afrika Bambaataa and named checked by David Bowie (Florian Schneider is the inspiration for his 1977 song "V2 SCHNEIDER"). The band that has been known to replace themselves with robot duplicates on stage, pre-programming them to play the band's synthesizers so that the real band members could dance with the audience, was #1 in the polls at the website "Not In Hall Of Fame" until they recently switched spots with then #2 Rush. And if they were to actually be inducted, it wouldn't surprise anyone if they preferred to spend the day bicycling, which is saying something because they've been releasing albums for forty years so that would mean that we're talking about guys in their sixties pedalling around European back roads being offered a glitzy dinner in Ohio and saying, "well, if it's raining, maybe...".

.....There were fewer smaller acts this time around on my old inventory: Iron City Houserockers, Colin James and Rickie Lee Jones. If think that they or any artist beginning with a 'I', 'J' or 'K' deserve Hall Of Fame recognition leave a comment to that effect below with some kind of reason or rationale. I do in fact read them.

Checklist Of Shame G to H

.....As I've been throwing together ad hoc lists of musicians unjustly neglected from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, I've found a website that's been maintaining a top 500 list. If you register with them you can vote for your favorites, and the relative ranks of the acts may be reordered accordingly. I have neither the techno-savvy nor intention of doing that here. As it is I make no claims to this list being comprehensive, since I'm pulling the names from a list of CD's I happened to own fifteen years ago. Maybe next year I'll list these (and more) chronologically by year of eligibility. For now I'm just tossing them out there alphabetically because there's so much to get through as it is.

.....The name of the website I mentioned is Not In Hall Of Fame, which deals primarily with sports, but they certainly have their act together when dealing with music. All fifteen of this year's nominations were already on their list with ten of them ranked in their top 100. I have to say that they're much more generous than I would be regarding jazz, country and other artists who are barely or not at all related to rock music. If you're curious, I'll be putting a link to their home page alphabetically under 'H' for 'Hall Of Fame' on the list of links on the right side of this blog.

.....A recurrent theme in the notes of "Not In..." is that it is nearly impossible to determine what if any genuine criteria are used to make final decisions on who gets in and who doesn't, especially with regards to band and solo careers. Notably three of the four Beatles were also inducted as solo performers. Curiously, the only one who wasn't, Ringo Starr, was the one who initially had the greatest commercial success after the band broke up. Up until about 1975 Ringo was the one getting TV specials and movie cameos. They all had high charting albums, but after getting two LP's of nostalgic covers out of his system Ringo went on a hit singles rampage. For about four years in the U.S. he never placed outside the top ten. The others each had tumultuous chart action that ranged from number ones to not charting at all. Equally bizarre, Smokey Robinson is inducted as a performer, not a songwriter. Yet the Miracles, the group he led for a decade and which yielded the recordings that made him famous and which have sold continuously for fifty years, is not. He's had plenty of solo hits, to be sure, but if he had been inducted as a songwriter then most people would have assumed that that was meant to cover both stages of his career. (Arguably, he could also be inducted as a producer.) Why would the Hall (a) snub the Miracles in the first place and (b) call attention to it by inducting Robinson only as a performer? For that matter, why is Bob Dylan in as a performer but not a song-writer, yet Carole King (with Gerry Goffin) is in as a songwriter but not as a performer? Granted, each one qualifies for either category. And yet... if we were really being honest with ourselves, wouldn't those be reversed?

.....Today's installment has a few more of those questions. For other grumblings about weirdly arbitrary inductions check out the last four days of posts. Now back to the folks they left out.

1. PETER GABRIEL- Already represented in Genesis, Gabriel should really get some recognition for his solo work. Although he had long been the prime lyricist in Genesis, the band's music was usually more collaborative. After he left he gradually emerged as an innovative world music advocate. Lyrically, he became less of a fantasist and more personal.
2. GANG OF FOUR- They started releasing records in 1978, only a year after Gabriel's first solo album and an explosion of UK punk bands. Yet Gang Of Four (and Magazine, now that I think about it) weren't merely a post-punk band, but the clearest indication that there would be a post-punk.
3. GENERATION X- One of the bands that made up that explosion in 1977. Now remembered as the origins of Billy Idol and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.
4. GERMS- If the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame can say with straight faces that they've included jazz musicians like Miles Davis because he has a "rock attitude", or that gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is an "early influence" then they should be hung by their nipples until they explain why the Germs aren't in there.
5. GARY GLITTER- We all know that the reason Gary isn't in there is the squeamishness regarding his arrest for child porn (he was selling it not making it, which is still indefensible because it creates an economic demand for others to create more). But this is only one more case of weirdly arbitrary priorities, since there are already inductees in the hall known to have had sex with underage groupies, committed rape and other acts of violence up to and including murder. They were inducted, we can only assume since the Hall never explains its reasoning, because those acts were not defining characteristics of their careers. Glitter's career, which actually began about 50 years ago and lasted about 30 years under a long string of pseudonyms, included a phase that defined the seventies: big drum sounds, gold lamé and hideously bad taste. The way I see it, inducting Gary Glitter will spare us having to induct REO Speedwagon to fill that void. And honestly, whose tribute episode of "Glee" would you rather endure being relentlessly advertised on TV? Because of Gary we have the original cast album of "Jesus Christ Superstar" (he appears as Paul Raven), football games (every marching band knows "ROCK AND ROLL PART 2") and a recurring e-mail segment introduction on Craig Ferguson's show.
6. GO-GO'S- If everyone who ever sung a Go-Go's song while driving were to go to i-Tunes right now and download that song, then you wouldn't be able to read this because the internet would have crashed. Check out my entry on "SURFING AND SPYING" in this blog.
7. GUESS WHO- I'm not being cheeky, that's the name of the band. A schism in the band gave us Bachman-Turner Overdrive, but even before that the Guess Who were a radio staple and somewhere between maple syrup and hockey as Canada's most beloved export.
8. HALF JAPANESE- I'm not holding out any hopes that the Hall will even admit that this band exists, since they've spent the last thirty years releasing records pretty regularly on a variety of labels without ever once being on a major (although I seem to remember them getting much, much better distribution when they opened for Nirvana, moreso than Pansy Division got when they opened for Green Day). This is going to be an increasingly difficult problem for the Hall when the bands that they will want to induct to appear relevant to younger audiences start saying "no". I have no idea what's going to happen the first time a multi-platinum band files an injunction against the Hall to prohibit the use of their name because the Hall has excluded three or more of the D.I.Y. outfits that gave the bands the confidence to make their own music in the first place.
9. HAWKWIND- I don't know what they'd play at the induction ceremony. It only lasts one night. But seriously, is British citizenship really some kind of problem for the committee? Or is it metal bands that they don't like? Maybe it's literary connections. R.E.M. didn't go in until Patti Smith went with them, and if I remember correctly, Stipe did her induction. Aside from her, only Leonard Cohen (!) in 2008 (Seriously, fifteen years after he became eligible? Why bother? You mean the year before they inducted Jeff Beck somebody bolted up in bed in the middle of the night and said, "Oh, my gosh, we forgot Leonard Cohen!"?) has serious literary credentials. Runners up include the Velvet Underground (named after a book), Steely Dan (named for a Burroughs reference) and the Doors (not only named for the Huxley book but Morrison shamelessly ripped off French symbolists, who Smith at least credited). Yet rockers with strong literary connections get short shrift. Jim Carroll was mentioned in an earlier post. Lou Reed was not only a student of Delmore Schwartz but frequently referred to his body of musical work as a novel in progress. Nick Cave and Richard Hell have also been critically noted authors (as opposed to Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" or Madonna's "Sex"). Hawkwind have frequently collaborated with fantasy writer Michael Moorcock. He's even performed on stage with them. Well, technically Douglas Adams once performed with Pink Floyd but that wasn't a long standing relationship.
10. RICHARD HELL- As I mentioned before, Hell had a parallel literary career. Eventually his frustration at trying to operate within a music industry rigged to squelch innovation led him to drop music as a livelihood and write full time, just as Captain Beefheart (and I think Joni Mitchell) 'retired' in order to focus on painting. As a younger man he was a founder of Neon Boys, Television and the Voidoids. Check out my post on "LOVE COMES IN SPURTS" and Hell's books, for that matter.
11. ROBYN HITCHCOCK/SOFT BOYS- The Soft Boys released records from 1978 to 1981 (and numerous 'posthumous' releases) and Hitchcock has released solo records ever since., occasionally with his old bandmates. Beloved by audiences in clubs but marginalized by the music industry weeklies, the Soft Boys split up just before the American youths who bought their albums as imports formed the bands that took over college radio in the 1980's. Those bands and their international brethren were collectively referred to as the paisley underground or the psychedelic revival for their use of 12-string guitars, farfisa organs and other musical resources gradually abandoned after the 1960's. Soft Boys guitarist Kimberley Rew went on to be the primary songwriter in Katrina and the Waves, bassist Matthew Seligman did prolific session work and backed David Bowie at Live Aid and Hitchcock has been the subject three concert films and a documentary on top of about two dozen albums. Just during the past decade he was also enlisted to comment and perform in documentaries on the Kinks and Syd Barrett.
12. HORSLIPS- If the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has any better examples of an Irish folk-metal band, I'd certainly like to hear it.
13. IAN HUNTER- I did a pretty wordy post for the song "ENGLAND ROCKS", but I'd like to say something here as well. The problem is Hunter's rock credentials are pretty unassailable. Anything I say here is just going to look pathetically inadequate. Especially if I don't point out that his former band Mott The Hoople and subsequent compatriot Mick Ronson are also missing from the Hall. And worse, if I do mention them I'll probably burn myself out with a full-bore, blood-vessel popping rant right before I have to point out that...
14. HÜSKER DÜ- ...is also missing from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. If you don't understand why that's so impossible to believe, let me point out to you something. In 1964, the Beatles famously appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. On that and a few subsequent appearances, teenage boys across America, still suffering anxiety over the future from the murder of the president mere months before, saw four guys playing instruments while hundreds of teenage girls filling the studio audience screamed hysterically. It was no secret they were selling records hand over fist. And they made it look easy. They made it look fun. Millions of boys all got the same idea at the same time: they were going to be rock stars! Well, they weren't, but they thought they were. Garage bands sprung up from coast to coast and while most went nowhere and many released a single or two on small regional labels, nearly every successful new artist to emerge over the next decade also came from that wave of new talent. That's a rare, textbook example of clear-cut rock influence and inspiration. So, can anyone out there me what it was that all those boys (and girls) were seeing so many years later when they started playing drums and guitars and singing at a bajillion miles an hour like Hüsker Dü did on the album LAND SPEED RECORD? Was it wealth? Sex appeal? Did it look really easy? No, no and no. But they did it. Hundreds of bands with thousands of members did exactly that. They did what millions of a previous generation did, but they did it with absolutely no discernible ulterior motive whatsoever other than that it needed to be done. They did it without the inspiration being delivered into their living rooms simultaneously by television. They merely stumbled across that album and picked up instruments and played them in a way that nobody on radio was doing at the time with no promise or hope of any reward tangible or otherwise because they were convinced that it needed to be done. And THAT is genuine inspiration and influence. Thus endeth the sermon.

.....I'm going to skip a day so I can catch up on Ken Burns' "Prohibition". Wynton Marsalis is composing original music for it as well as helping to select archival material. He's a gifted musician worth your time and attention and he damn well better not show up in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame before ANY of the people mentioned above. If you know of anyone beginning with 'G' or 'H' that I didn't mention, such as GRAND FUNK RAILROAD, whose CD's I didn't buy until the fantastic remastering program that was released after I made the old inventory list I'm using now, just add them in the comments section with a little something about why they deserve inclusion.