2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees POLL

Have Big Star ever been nominated?

Halfway there but for you at 2:10 13 Feb 21

I thought those offending lyrics were meant as parody of the macho rock scene, as is the whole song, but I'll defer to anyone who doesn't approve

ah the Zappa defense

or just edgelords in general

"Is It My Name" is really explicitly a parody, though.

Idk, is the song regarded as offensive among the gay community? I agree with Halfway there that I'll totally defer to members of that community if so.

assuming that "my voice goes so high you would think I was gay/But I play my guitar in such a man-cock way" is what brimstead was referring to?

Sorry sund4r, we're "edgelords" for explaining a dumb joke in a 48 year-old cock-rock parody.

I would say that "You Don't Have to Camp Around" on the same album is a lot more dubious.

Have Big Star ever been nominated?

I just checked - apparently never. They should be in, and they should at least be inducted while Stephens is around.

I thought Rundgren always had a reputation for being an ass - he even admitted his regrets for the way he treated or talked to people in his younger days. But he's produced or engineered a lot of great work, even for artists I don't particularly care for (namely Grand Funk). "Dancing Barefoot," The New York Dolls, Stage Fright, and for my money XTC's greatest album (and I love a lot of their earlier stuff) - that alone is an impressive body of work.

On his own or with Nazz or Utopia, I think he made only one truly great album, Something/Anything?, but it's a double LP where he played nearly all of the instruments. He was so ridiculously prolific that even after you clear out all the dross, there's still a boatload of gems leftover. I'm sure there's a lot of dreck that I've forgotten about, but I don't waste my time with any of it - I just listen to the stuff I like, and his work seems all the more impressive when I just focus on that.

Something/Anything has brilliant highs, but I think The Ballad of Todd Rundgren is better song for song.

Up the Irons.

yeah that was the lyric i was thinking of, sund4r.. there's also "you don't have to camp around" on the same album :-/

Rundgren not being aware of any musician who’s ever cited the influence of Fela Kuti, one of the 3 or 5 most influential musicians of the last 50 years, is honestly 100% believable

Something/Anything has brilliant highs, but I think The Ballad of Todd Rundgren is better song for song.

Yeah, I remember Tal Rosenberg made the case for that one in The Chicago Reader - what he wrote five years ago:

"While his career hasn't been nearly as consistent or as rich as Eno's, Rundgren nonetheless made a significant mark on pop music, particularly with his first few solo albums in the early 1970s. This is especially true of the boundary-dissolving trifecta of futuristic FM radio that are 1971's Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, 1972's Something/Anything, and 1973's A Wizard, a True Star. All three of these albums are gooey, rainbow-colored mishmashes of mid-to-late-60s Beach Boys, Tin Pan Alley, glam, soft rock, and proto-power pop. On these albums Rundgren plays most of the instruments, and at times mixes sounds and effects at different levels to explicitly showcase the studio at work (check out "Intro/Breathless" on Something/Anything, in which Rundgren points out various studio sounds before launching into a layered, dew-speckled electronic-pop instrumental)."

Those other two are fine albums, and I prefer Runt for its consistency over Wizard, but they never grew on me to the same degree as Something/Anything?. I'll give Runt another try - I do like "Wailing Wall," "Be Nice to Me" and "Parole," they're excellent tracks.

All the 70s Rundgren albums are good imo but tbh Very Best of is what I come back to most.

That two-CD set Rhino put out would be perfect if they had included some Utopia cuts (like Very Best Of). But I don't think you're wrong - outside of Something/Anything?, I think The Very Best of is the most listenable Rundgren album you can get.

Got into some back-and-forth about the Foo Fighters with a friend the other night, and while I still wouldn't put them in myself, I've got to say, I had no idea they were as popular as they are (as measured by chart success).

It's gotta be Fela Kuti.

Clemenza, The Edge 102.1 has probably played them twice so far today.

OK, I just checked - they've played them three times since midnight: https://edge.ca/music/

They're definitely a famous rock band but "Everlong" is their only essential song afaic.

I stopped paying attention to the charts in the late '90s, so I remember them as a niche "modern rock" (a really wonderful term that I hope has long been retired) band and not much beyond that. Starting in 2002, they had an album run that went 3/2/3/1/2/1 on Billboard's main album chart. I missed Foomania.

They're definitely a famous rock band but "Everlong" is their only essential song afaic.

Agreed.

guess the latter could stretch toward the zings of Nigerian authoritah, that got him in so much trouble---so: Lenny Bruce as major band leader-?

Lenny Bruce was arrested and blacklisted; the Nigerian army murdered Fela's mother, burned down his studio, and nearly beat him to death. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

“big me” is my foo opo, the rest can go in the dumpster

Yes, I did say after that, Later for all Western comparisons, along the lines that some of us used to make a little bit (and the James Brown comparison was fairly prevalent for a while, early on), just jump into the music, and let the associations ride on, til others take their place, as happens in music---not that many bands over here seemed "influenced" per se, but he was and is certainly a source of refreshment and inspiration.

To me, Rundgren is most interesting for his inspiration and influence on other artists. Over on The Band. thread, We've been discussing his experience in producing Stage Fright, and I said:
"Rick and Levon liked him enough to play on one of the songs on Runt, though. Didn't know this! So they were in on TR's window of opp for those, like Chilton, who glimpsed the proto-jangle-power-psych-pop etc. possibilities ( indeed, as I mentioned on the main Big Star thread: "a note to self on Twitter:
In radio interview on @BigStarBand's Live at Lafayette's Music Room, AC worries that forthcoming #1 Record is too much like Rundgren...")...
― dow, Sunday, February 14, 2021 1:29 PM"

More here: The Band.

Also, his "Open My Eyes" still kills, as finale ov The Bangles' fine Sweetheart of the Sun (2011).

I'll have to check out the Foo Fighters' greatest hits set. I wish I liked the music more, but it always seemed lacking - maybe just hearing the singles back-to-back will go over better.

Didn't realize they had a fan vote...Feli Kuti's way ahead, +30,000 votes over Tina Turner in second.

You can vote once a day, so who knows what that means. The Dolls are second last! I'd vote, but it says to login first, and I can't be bothered going through any kind of sign-up.

If the Shoes or Wussy ever get on the ballot, I'm signing up and buying 10 computers.

i'm reasonably sure i've never heard the foo fighters song they used in the announcement video in the original post. strange choice for a dionnne warwick song too.

but also that's a really good ballot as rock and roll hall of fame ballots go, foo fighters notwithstanding.

Didn't realize they had a fan vote...Feli Kuti's way ahead, +30,000 votes over Tina Turner in second.

You can vote once a day, so who knows what that means. The Dolls are second last! I'd vote, but it says to login first, and I can't be bothered going through any kind of sign-up.

Jesus, that's astonishing, but if anyone's that far ahead, I'm glad it's Fela. Last year, when Dave Matthews and Pat Benatar pulled way, way ahead of everyone else except Whitney Houston, I pretty much gave up on signing up for any future polls. Strangely, neither got inducted, so who knows how much weight the poll actually has.

wait are ppl itt actually casting votes on the rock and roll hall of fame

who knows how much weight the poll actually has

the fan vote results count as a single ballot. there are around ballots overall.

oops missed a word! around 1,000 ballots overall.

That part I knew, but I thought the main idea behind the fan poll was to sway other voters as well? At least one HOF voter said he passed on Kiss for years because they sucked, but then seeing the fan support made him think (IIRC) "who am I to judge? Vox populi, they get my vote."

There's an opening here for so many rigged-election/Curt Schilling jokes, I don't know where to start.

I had just sort of assumed that Bon Jovi got in bc of the fan poll but if it's one in 1000 idk.

Well, the new guy replaced Jann Wenner is John Sykes, the president of entertainment enterprises for iHeartMedia (fka Clear Channel), and he made it clear he wanted to push for more populist choices - basically the biggest sellers.

Kot and DeRogatis talked about this when Kot was a regular voting member (and may still be). This was before the Stooges finally got in, and Kot said he always voted for them, but DeRogatis didn't believe his vote would matter based on his experience at Rolling Stone. As DeRogatis would re-enact it, "Hey Jann, looks like the Stooges got a lot of votes." "What? No, no, BILLY JOEL should be in! We're inducting him!"

DeRogatis's former co-host and Chicago Reader critic Bill Wyman actually looked into it and incorporated it into his NYMag/Vulture ranking of all of the Hall of Fame inductees. Ranking something like this is obviously ludicrous, but it gets a LOT of readers, and Wyman actually uses these features as an excuse to do some reporting, weaving what he finds into the entries. So even if you disagree with his tastes, it's worth scrolling through just to see how the HOF works. (For example, I never knew how slimey Ahmet Ertegun's Atlantic Records could be.)

https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-artists-ranked-from-best-to-worst.html

*replacing Jann Wenner

*clicks*

3. Bob Dylan (1988)

*regrets*

Queen fans may want to avoid the end, not unless you enjoy rage.

how do you rank the sex pistols over the rolling stones? (i love the sex pistols)

like, body of work has to count for something

How do you rank 27 artists above Stevie Wonder?

haha yeah as i went down the list i was getting more and more pissed

Who knew U2 were from one of the “most fucked-up cities in the Western world?”

Oddly, the hate assessments don't annoyed me - what did were the quick and barely detailed dismissals of great artists he clearly didn't listen to. Not when he admits to it though - particularly doo wop groups which he calls a blind spot.