2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees POLL

so r we gonna just keep up this discussion in two sep threads

Part of critic Ann Powers take in a public Facebook post. Eh, I have never been a Pat Benatar fan

It's a great year for artists who don't tower above -- the critically underrated and overlooked, the once-questionable, the genuinely loved hard workers who add depth to the music industry's vast middle ground. Pat Benatar, Carly Simon, Duran Duran, Eurythmics: that's a populist playlist if I've ever heard one. Which is why the failure of voters to induct Dionne Warwick, a true genius of the middle, makes no sense to me. Lionel Richie, her spiritual nephew, got in; her omission is the most egregious. As for Eminem, another inevitability but Tribe deserved that spot. I'm very happy with Harry Belafonte, Elizabeth Cotten, Jam & Lewis and Sylvia Robinson getting acknowledged, too.

There's always an artist or three we don't like.

And an artist or three left out

So we're back to basically advocating for the Velvet Underground again

I mean, VU got in! (maybe that’s your point…)

Right, but once you have done so it unleashes the deluge of all the other "influencers who were not particularly famous" and that way lies madness

Because you get to a reductio thing where basically every musician ever should either be inducted, or none should.

Burn

It

Down

Re: Carly Simon, did anyone argue whether James Taylor was rock when he was inducted? tbh I figured she was nominated partly because of that - if you induct James Taylor, you have to at least nominate Carly Simon. I think Taylor has more worthy songs, but I'm not sure I would have inducted either.

I gave Benatar another try and played Best Shots but it was really tough getting through the whole thing. So much of it felt overwrought.

The Velvets didn't make it in their first year of eligibility, and an argument could be made that part of what got them in was recognizing Reed & Cale's careers, particularly since at that time the former's solo work didn't seem a lock for induction.

xxp personally I kind of prefer that. On some level that got me into exploring music. Like there's a LOT more than what I've heard on the radio, going back to my grandfather (and even great-grandfather's) childhood, and that sense of discovery even applied to famous musicians - I knew Louis Armstrong, but as a harmless celebrity, not a revolutionary musical genius. Something like Lionel Richie's solo career is like, "oh that guy" and nothing more.

Also, no room for DJs in the hall? Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Jeff Mills, Sasha, Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Tiesto, Sven Väth, Talla 2xlc?

Flash is in there

xp there's always been a strong bias against anything rooted in dance or electronic music. There's Madonna and they're kinder towards disco-era stuff: Abba, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees and Nile Rodgers (not even Chic and not even as a performer), and they finally rammed Kraftwerk in with the "musical excellence" consolation, but there's nothing else past them, not even global superstars New Order. With that in mind, I think it's going to be a long while before you see more DJ's, not unless they're part of a hip-hop group.

Also, no room for DJs in the hall? Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Jeff Mills, Sasha, Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Tiesto, Sven Väth, Talla 2xlc?

― Siegbran, Friday, May 6, 2022

they're not real musicians, man

As an influencer, and a responder, drawing in elements of many genres, incl. of popular music, also many musos from same, for his work and their own subsequent projects: Arthur Russell, who confounded mimimalist peers by booking The Modern Lovers at the Kitchen (later he and Ernie Brooks recruited each other for a wild range of projects). As he testifies in Tim Lawrence's Arthur bio, Rhys Chatham was shocked--but then went on to massively loud works like "Guitar Trio" and in Theoretical Girls with Branca, but of course Arthur himself went into other poptastic visions. I nominate all of those people, also David Mancuso, Larry Levan, Tom Moulton, probably some more DJs and remixers.

I don't know what producers are in, sessioneers like the Funk Brothers and Wrecking Crew should be. Arrangers---?

and they finally rammed Kraftwerk in with the "musical excellence” consolation

Kraftwerk was inducted as a “Early Influence.” Which makes sense: Alan Lomax traveled to Düsseldorf in the ‘30s and made field recordings of Blind Lemon Kraftwerk (later shortened to just Kraftwerk) for the Library of Congress which were hugely influential.

LMAO, forgot about that. Kudos to Lomax for getting Florian pardoned on that murder rap.

The “Musical Excellence” category was originally designed for session musicians (Funk Brothers, Wrecking Crew, Muscle Shoals, others who weren’t necessarily part of those scenes like James Burton and King Curtis), songwriters, producers, and engineers. But there’s also the Ahmet Ertegun Award which has gone to producers, promoters, managers, and songwriters (Holland-Dozier-Holland, Frank Barsalona, Gamble & Huff, Brian Epstein). So maybe “Musical Excellence” is really now just a consolation/2nd-place “award.” More to the point, the categories are no longer adequately defined (if they ever were) so they just toss shit up in the air to see where it lands.

lol xp

See That My Computer Is Kept Clean

Yeah, the Musical Excellence awards and the Early Influence awards are now silver medal ghettos for black music and queer music

Real dumb and shitty

They should retroactively induct everyone dropped in that pile:

As it stands: Chic, Gil-Scott Heron, LL Cool J, Kraftwerk and Judas Priest

Just quietly move them into the regular class and keep it moving

silver medal ghettos for black music and queer music... They should retroactively induct everyone dropped in that pile

there is indeed a ghetto feel to those awards, but for what it's worth they all *have* been inducted. if i'm not mistaken, their plaques on the hall of fame walls look exactly like everyone else's plaque on the hall of fame walls. the plaques don't say "musical excellence" or "early influence" or "actually voted in" or anything like that, and the hall itself doesn't make any such distinctions anywhere inside the actual museum.

Big Black doesn't belong in the Hall, but Steve Albini definitely does.

I might delete the "definitely," but I was thinking this too, that he'd make more sense on his own.

I'm going to start working up a Ken Keltner test for prospective inductees. That was something baseball writer Bill James came up with for prospective Baseball HOF candidates: 15 questions that could be used as general guidelines for induction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keltner_list

Sample question: "Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?"

That's a pretty high bar for pop music--if you were ever regarded as the most important artist around, even for five minutes, you're probably an obvious yes--so you'd need different questions.

(No, I'm not really going to work on this.)

if you were ever regarded as the most important artist around, even for five minutes, you're probably an obvious yes

This raises the Terence Trent D'Arby conundrum.

Re: Leonard Cohen: of course there's a lot of sexist discrimination against female acts, but he probably gets in for being dark and edgy, like a mellower Jim Morrison. Can you imagine Kurt Cobain namechecking Carly Simon in song? And even at his most becalmed or slick, he was never really "soft rock" like her or James Taylor.

I was ruminating that in the first years of the Hall, it must have seemed so simple to the nominating committee. Everyone knew what "Rock and Roll" was, everyone knew who had been great at it, and nobody was advocating for Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Nino Rota, Ravi Shankar or Glenn Gould.

Mick Jagger is on "You're So Vain"! Idk what point we're arguing, though, since Simon was inducted. I am willing to make an argument against Leonard Cohen if the demand is there for it.

TTD is an interesting counter...I was pretty attentive to everything that was going on back then, so I remember his "moment" pretty well. He definitely got a lot of attention, but I'm not sure if he was ever given the full Dylan/Rolling Stones/Clash treatment. My recollection is that, when his LP came out, Prince was pretty solidly viewed as the Most Important Artist Around, with maybe some support for the Talking Heads (not from me!), and Public Enemy coming up quickly.

Sign 'o' the Times came out March '87, and was not as universally adored then as it is now - Rolling Stone's review basically called it a grab-bag. TTD's debut came out in July, and he went to #1 with "Wishing Well" when Prince could only get to #2 with "U Got the Look"; he was definitely the "new kid in town" for five minutes at least.

I was ruminating that in the first years of the Hall, it must have seemed so simple to the nominating committee.

I like to imagine Jann Wenner in 1986 with a dreamy look in his eyes, thinking to himself "one day Lionel Richie and Pat Benatar will be in here".

I don’t know a ton about Leonard Cohen, but I don’t really get why there would be any controversy about his eligibility (is it because he doesn’t shred on guitar?) Or is the idea that some folks were objecting to Carly Simon, and so – “why don’t they object to Cohen too”?

Posting on the run there...Having thought about it, I think "Most Important Artist" was a somewhat crowded field in the summer of '87. Besides the people I mentioned--Prince (Christgau gave Sign 'o' the Times an A+--"Merely the most gifted pop musician of his generation"--and it dominated Pazz & Jop, which carried at least as much weight as RS's often shortsighted reviews), Talking Heads, and Public Enemy (first album only--I maybe jumped the gun by a few months there)--there was also Springsteen (still), Michael Jackson (still), Madonna, U2 (the tree album), R.E.M., Run D.M.C. and/or the Beastie Boys, Husker Du, and maybe others. I just don't remember TTD being accorded the same treatment on the basis of one LP. "New Kid in Town," yes, but to me, not the same thing.

I'm not objecting to Cohen being in there, just the idea that he (or James Taylor, or Tom Waits) are any more "rock and roll" than Carly Simon (or Madonna, or the Supremes).

From a quick Google, I can find evidence of one Twitter rando mocking Simon's inclusion and a bunch of classic rock sites with articles listing five or ten reasons why she should have been included.

(is it because he doesn’t shred on guitar?)

A good reason btw; shitty Casio keyboards and tuneless mumbling also disqualifying factors

Maybe the perception of her is a lot different than I think it is, I don't know. Could also be some confirmation bias in that--people who've been advocating for her are much more likely to post something than someone who doesn't think she should be in. (Who's going to post a "10 Reasons Why Carly Simon Shouldn't be in the HOF" piece?)

Anyway, I like this comment from one of those advocacy pieces: "I bet she thinks the Hall of Fame is about her."

Maybe Classic Rock Sites like her, but I really don't ever remember hearing anything by her on Q-107 during its heyday.

I was ruminating that in the first years of the Hall, it must have seemed so simple to the nominating committee. Everyone knew what "Rock and Roll" was, everyone knew who had been great at it, and nobody was advocating for Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Nino Rota, Ravi Shankar or Glenn Gould.

― Halfway there but for you, Saturday, May 7, 2022 9:57 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think more to the point, no one was saying, "Hey, come on, Pat Boone sold a ton of records and had a tv show! And Neil Sedaka wrote some huge hits!" I mean, yeah, while nominations may have seemed simple in the '80s and early '90s, Charley Patton didn't get in until last year, and Link Wray still isn't in.

(And Louis Armstrong was inducted in 1990.)

One thing that gets at what I'm talking about is the lead paragraph of Jon Pareles' piece on Madonna's induction:

Leave it to Madonna to make the right gesture. For her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she didn’t worry about whether her career as a pop hitmaker, image maker, sex symbol and provocateuse qualified her as a important figure in any narrowly defined genre of rock ’n’ roll.

Now, that was written in 2008. Maybe general perceptions have changed drastically since then, to the point that Carly Simon is now unquestionably viewed as a rock and roll artist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/arts/music/11fame.html#:~:text=Leave%20it%20to%20Madonna%20to,of%20rock%20%27n%27%20roll.

Fwiw, from a similar Google search, here are some quotes from a few Leonard Cohen fans at https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1524 from five years before Cohen's induction, about the suggestion that he should be in:

When I think of Rock 'n' Roll, I don't think of Leonard. When I think of Leonard, I don't think of Rock 'n' Roll.

I agree, 'Rock 'n' Roll' just ain't it. True originals cannot be categorized, pidgeon-holed or labeled. Look at Johnny Cash; he crossed Country, Rock, and finally "Alternative". Maybe 'Alternative' is as close as you can get to a 'class' for LC. The 'classiest' of all.

As far as Leonard being inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame is concerned. I don’t think he is the kind of artiste who would ever be bothered by it, not even an iota. It may be something that would mean more to some of his *fans*.

Personally I doubt it if Leonard will ever be inducted into the hall of fame. For the simple reason that Americans by and large want sunny songs, celebrating the joy of life, happy stuff ... There is little place, if any, in American culture for the plaintive no matter how it is expressed. For this reason Leonard has never been mainstream in America. In fact for this reason “Various Positions” was never even released in the U.S. Contrarily, Leonard has always been popular in Europe because they embrace the reality of emotions, no matter what colour it comes in. Anyhow, my take on Leonard being inducted into the hall of fame is that it would be like putting the sun on display in MOMA, or Whitney or a suchlike place.

My sense is that it matters little even if Leonard was inducted into the RnRHofF, if his music and poetic vision are not understood and truly appreciated.

Cohen himself described his induction as "an unlikely occasion" and said "It is not a distinction that I coveted or even dared dream about."

The Guardian recalled Jon Landau's 1970 comment "I have seen the future of rock'n'roll, and he is not Leonard Cohen" when reporting his induction

Anything from after he was inducted? Personally, I've never come across anyone questioning him or Tom Waits in the way they questioned Madonna.

Haha I went looking for what controversy there was about Madonna and found this doozy:

“Why am I not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame? That has a lot to do with the fact that you can’t always explain why people are rotten. Why do some people violate other people and commit vicious crimes and lie?” Nugent told KNAC.

“Why isn’t a band like Triumph in there, but Grandmaster Flash is?! That’s just dishonest,” he said. “Why are Patti Smith, ABBA and Madonna in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, but not STYX?! Are you kidding me?! You can only explain that is that the people who made those decisions are just plain rotten people. The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame should genuflect to Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, the Motown Funk Brothers. Are you kidding me?! How dare you put Grandmaster Flash, ABBA and Madonna in that?!”

I feel like I have to circle back to my original point: that the is/isn't rock and roll distinction (which is pretty arbitrary to begin with) has fallen disproportionately on females, and that it serves as a good explanation for why Dionne Warwick has not been inducted. Unless it's her commercials for the Psychic Friends Network keeping her out, I'm having a hard time coming up with anything else. (I know--race. I think with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at least with regards to earlier artists--'70 and before? pre-disco?--race is less of a factor. I'm not saying it's absent, it never is, but 6 of the original 11 inductees were African-American. As they should have been.)

Whenever I want to point the finger at lunkheadedness, I should always begin by googling Ted Nugent.

Styx? Jesus, if you have to ask...

I didn't realize there was so much debate as to whether to consider any of these people as rock n' roll. It's probably because my gateway into rock history was through books that didn't make the distinctions I'm hearing some people making now. Like hip-hop, Madonna, Carly Simon, Cohen and I'll even add a lot of country artists were all in the same books devoted to rock, and in retrospect lumped in as being different parts of the same "rock" culture.

I would have thought the controversy would be about the quality of their work. I thought Cohen had skeptics since the beginning, but they seemed to warm to him when he made that magnificent return in the late '00s. I always thought he was a great songwriter and loved his voice from all stages of his career, it was just his records that seemed hit-or-miss. The common knock was that they were overproduced, but to me he just seemed like a very erratic recording artist - his strengths didn't extend to arranging or recording, he was mostly about writing and performing.

I think it was very much a point of contention when Madonna went in. (Why she enlisted Iggy Pop to perform her song; benefitted both of them.) As some of the stuff Sund4r has dug up on Carly Simon, maybe that's changing.

xp I also thought about Tom Waits along the same lines (i.e., “if you’re gonna question Cohen”…)

Some of those observations doubting why Cohen would be inducted are very arguable; and of course he was inducted anyway

Like hip-hop, Madonna, Carly Simon, Cohen and I'll even add a lot of country artists were all in the same books devoted to rock, and in retrospect lumped in as being different parts of the same "rock" culture.

Yeah, it just seems so natural that a wide variety of “rock era” stuff has always been considered part of the broader rock ‘n’ roll diaspora – covered by Rolling Stone, history books, etc. I never would’ve thought to question any of it either

Anything from after he was inducted? Personally, I've never come across anyone questioning him or Tom Waits in the way they questioned Madonna.

I did, a few posts up! Don't tell my wife.

Dude bangs a few trashcan lids together and puts on an “I’m so interesting” fedora, that’s rock ‘n’ roll? ;)

I was ruminating that in the first years of the Hall, it must have seemed so simple to the nominating committee. Everyone knew what "Rock and Roll" was, everyone knew who had been great at it, and nobody was advocating for Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Nino Rota, Ravi Shankar or Glenn Gould.

except that louis armstrong did get in in the first years! along with jimmie rodgers, jimmy yancey, hank williams, louis jordan, lead belly, woody guthrie, les paul, bessie smith, the ink spots and charlie christian. is that a list that "anyone who knew what rock and roll was" would agree was, in fact, rock and roll?

(also, i find myself ruminating right now on the fact that ricky nelson was inducted in year two, along with aretha franklin, bo diddley, marvin gaye, smokey robinson and roy orbison. was there a time when ricky nelson was really considered in that league? is he considered in that league now?)

Marcus included Legendary Masters in his Stranded discography, but I agree, he does stick out. Bill Haley does too, and I'd even extend that to Eddie Cochran.