The nominees for next year's Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame induction were recently announced. Here they are:
Black Sabbath (now on their eighth bid)
Lynyrd Skynyrd (seventh bid)
the Sex Pistols and the Stooges (five bids apiece).
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five
J. Geils Band
John Mellencamp
Patti Smith Group
Chic
Joe Tex
Miles Davis, Cat Stevens, Blondie, the Paul Butterfield Band, the Dave Clark Five and the Sir Douglas Quintet.
OK, I said last year this thing was a joke when they voted in a one-hit wonder (Percy Sledge), now they have Miles Davis, who is only peripherally R'n'R (he was a pioneer of fusion, so I can go along with that one. Not to mention he was one of the most gifted humans to ever grace the planet, even if he was a jerk)
Chic? please! How about the Commodores? Ohio Players? Chic? please....
Grandmaster Flash? yeah, I guess he was influentual, for a one-hit wonder, but the name of the hall is Rock'n'Roll, not rap or hip-hop
It's a crime that Sabbath and Skynyrd are not already in, they were HUGELY influential, there's still bands today copping Sabbath riffs
While Cat Stevens, Blondie, the Paul Butterfield Band, the Dave Clark Five and the Sir Douglas Quintet, J. Geils Band, John Mellencamp, Patti Smith Group are all worthy of consideration, how can you vote them in when Rush, Van Halen, Deep Purple, Yes, Genesis, ELP, and Alice Cooper are not in there? I guess it's the usual prog-rock bashing, I think Pink Floyd are the only prog band in there. Hell, the Moody Blues are not there? They were the biggest selling group in the world at one point. Lame, lame, lame.
So, OK, I can understand the progressive-rock bashing, I'm used to it as an unabashed progger, but what do people usually point to when they claim prog is lame? That's right, punk. At least the morons have got this partially right, in that the Clash and the Ramones are in there, as they should be. But the very first punk band to be inducted should have been the originators of the genre, the Stooges. I have Fun House and Raw Power, everytime I listen to them I am blown away by how far ahead of their time these guys were. Hell, their first album came out in '69, a full 7 years before the punk explosion of 76.
These guys making these nominations are idiots, where are Wayne and Garth when you need them?
And I didn't even mention the Pistols, who put punk on the map with the general public.
