2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees

I think there are people influenced by Joan Jett, and no one influenced by Pat Benatar. Maybe Patty Smyth?

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 15, 2020 12:29 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lolwut

You don't think that, just off the cuff, Amy Lee was a Pat Benatar fan?

I would be pretty surprised if that tipped the scales for anyone on the fence about whether or not to go see the Doobies in 2020.

Veronica Moser suggested induction meant something tangible to the Doobie Brothers--I'm just trying to figure out what that is. VM also mentioned "bottom line," so I assume that means a financial advantage of some kind.

i dig Joan Jett a ton but i don't find her *more* distinctive than Pat Benatar, nor a better singer.

i do not understand why benetar doesn't belong in the rock hall given that i don't even fucking understand why a lot of people are/are not in the rock hall in the first place

like do y’all care about this long-incoherent institution so much

I mean, influence and relevance is tough...like I would totally put MC5 in

I can also hardly think of a rock band that seems less relevant to music today

I mean if that dickhole Bongiovi got in...

Xpost otm

Let's all agree that DMB not getting in rules and we should troll their fans

I've got to say again that I come at this from the perspective of a baseball fan. The Baseball HOF inductions are cause for much sniping every year, both for who goes in and who doesn't. As objectively as possible, I've got to say that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame bar is much, much lower. (The first few years, when it was Chuck Berry and the Beatles and such going in, the two were on about even footing.) When Harold Baines went into Cooperstown last year, there was (warranted) apoplexy--it was a a terrible choice, the worst in years. But the musical equivalent of Harold Baines, whoever it is, would be a far more legitimate Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee than the Doobie Brothers and Pat Benatars and Nine Inch Nails of the world. I'm sure of this.

it would and will be Foo Fighters, so less legitimate imo

ok, music isn't sports xp

Is Bongiovi a dickhole? I thought he was supposed to be an ok guy (anyway, his band is in, but not him personally).

jon bong jovi

Now, John Mellencamp is (notoriously) a major dickhole -- and when he didn't get into the HoF in his first year of eligibility, he smashed up his patio with a sledgehammer in a fit of anger!

haha Mellencamp is such a greaser

Very unchill, Johnny Cougar.

DMB will get in soon enough.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/2020-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-nominees-ranked.html

a decent worst music writing candidate from awhile back, if it wasn't already submitted

oooh classic bill wyman trash

I hate to compare female nominees with other female nominees; that is itself a sexist construct. But for the record,

The case for hall inclusion is that Depeche Mode was a fairly popular synth-rock band in the ’80s and ’90s, a plain cut above the Thompson Twins and the like; the case against is that Gahan has a tedious, stentorian voice and Gore was nothing other than a serviceable songwriter. New Order’s work was dark and complex during this period; Gore’s, by contrast, felt a bit sophomoric, in the literal sense — like the work of a talented college sophomore who liked New Order. Beyond that, New Order has close to half a dozen timeless top-tier dance-rock classics. Depeche Mode doesn’t have one. The nomination feels like the product of an organization that doesn’t quite understand the music it thinks it’s honoring.

this guy is a fucking moron!

Lol at the bullshit he wrote about Biggie

it's amazing how full of shit he is, every time, no matter what he's writing about

Let's all agree that DMB not getting in rules and we should troll their fans

I would like to reiterate this excellent point

He is unquestionably a heralded rapper from a certain time, but this has to be seen in the context of that time — which is that the music became highly commercialized and ever more crudely articulated psychotic tropes about sex and violence, and Smalls bought into it big-time. All sorts of arguments can be made in support of such material, although it should be noted that they change; they’re a joke one minute, real-life missives from the streets the next (and yes, I know Johnny Cash once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die). Of course, gangsta rap is a valid form and, again of course, Smalls is a master, but he’s still a guy who wrote an awful lot of songs about getting blow jobs from “bitches.”

... no one tell him what "Afternoon Delight" is about or what The Loving Spoonful are named after

"how dare you talk crudely about sex, this is rock and roll" *puts on Little Richard* "ah yes, that's the stuff"

This is the left-field choice for this year. Much beloved by fans of tough ’70s rock, the band is known in the U.S. for a couple of semi-novelty hits from the middle part of that decade: “Jailbreak” and “The Boys Are Back in Town,” the latter a pop-rock confection for the ages. Leader Phil Lynott, who played bass, also wrote a goofy thing called “The Cowboy Song,” which on a good night makes you think it might be the greatest rock song ever written. He produced some interesting stuff as a solo act after disbanding Thin Lizzy but died a few years later after becoming debilitated from heroin addiction. Like most critics, I like Lynott’s stuff and carefully collected his more obscure work back in the day, but now it feels like another pet act whose nomination was brokered by someone in the nomination room, like the Zombies’ last year, rather than part of an effort to capture the history of the music fairly. I don’t really think Thin Lizzy is Hall of Fame material.

this guy has never heard a Thin Lizzy song in his life has he

Eh, Thin Lizzy does nothing for me. I don't viscerally hate them the way I hate T. Rex, I just think they're massively overpraised.

the album cuts and not the singles is where the greatness lies imo but i don't doubt you've dug deep.

Wait, viscerally hate T. Rex!?

Xpost Whereas Bill Wyman... hasn't.

I love Lizzy

Depeche Mode doesn’t have one

They have a song that became so popular it has a fucking line dance you choad.

The irony of a metal guru hating T Rex!

Veronica Moser suggested induction meant something tangible to the Doobie Brothers--I'm just trying to figure out what that is. VM also mentioned "bottom line," so I assume that means a financial advantage of some kind.

― clemenza, Wednesday, January 15, 2020 12:38 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, I suppose it's possible. I know that whenever I hear ads for shows by bands like Chicago or Journey, the fact that they're in the HoF is always mentioned.

The hall seems to have given up on Rage Against the Machine following two nominations immediately after its eligibility, which was nuts. Tom Morello is a talented guitarist, but the band’s corner of the music world wasn’t all that interesting and felt like more of a niche than an innovation.

ok interesting train of thought

ftr I love Pat Benatar inordinately. Her songs still fucking move me in totally unironic ways. If, by some cosmic misunderstanding, I ran an institution that sought to honor kickass musical performers she would be in it. Near the top.

But I am a little o_O about why "had years of opera training" or "formal training" or "classically trained" should be among the ways we praise rock acts.

All the mousefuckers in Mannheim Steamroller are "classically trained" and their music still blows dead bears.

Maxims that I hope are uncontroversial:

1. You can be extremely well-trained and not rock.
2. You can be completely untutored and rock quite a bit.

Isn't this kinda central to "rock" as a cultural construct? The Pistols quite famously could not play their instrumentzzzzz blah blah blah I am already boring myself adskasljkqhgq3;oh

Just found out that, while Carole King is in the HoF as a writer (a joint award with Gerry Goffin), she's not in as a performer.

xpost who was using it to praise her music? the discussion was around the quality of her singing, not the music itself.

I used to praise Chester Bennington's singing too and I hated Linkin Park and had he had a relevant background that was germane to the topic of his singing....i'd bring it up!

After a few albums of insane folk rock under the name Tyrannosaurus Rex (one of the least appropriate rock names ever, given the music), he finally went electric, changed his band’s name to T. Rex, and ascended with a deranged rant called “Bang a Gong.”

not the worst offender in this piece, but christ this is some seriously bad writing. "insane"! "deranged"! in what universe does t. rex (who i love) sound like that?

Somehow very Trent to just casually mention this:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trent-reznor-rock-roll-hall-fame-937871/

It’ll be interesting to see who inducts you. Any idea who you want to see do that?

No. Like I said, this is still fresh information. And I just had a new baby over the weekend.

Whitney Houston in before her cousin, Dionne Warwick.

Someone much smarter than me can probably write a mathematical formula determining with some degree of accuracy at what point literally every act will be in the Rock Hall. Like, if x=y+ time divided by r, then Nickelback will be in by 2051 or something.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 15, 2020 9:59 AM

I may have mentioned this on another HOF thread--I do tend to repeat myself--but there's a few of them, and I'm too lazy to check.

I had an idea few years ago for a book, based on Bill James's Baseball HOF book, that would try to do exactly that--quantify who gets into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That's what James's book tried to do; figure out how it was that the players who were in there got in, as opposed to arguing that x should be in but y shouldn't. He came up with an elaborate point system that very accurately set a benchmark for who was in and who wasn't: under 70 points was no, over 100 was yes, 70-100 was the gray area. (Not nearly so accurate for the PED era, which came later.)

The problem--partly why I abandoned the idea--is that you can only objectively quantify so much when it comes to music. Chart positions, record sales, and awards, yes. But when you try to do that with influence, fame, aesthetic worth, you can only be so objective. It's easy to say Chuck Berry and the Velvet Underground get 10 for influence, that Elvis gets 10 for fame, and that the Shoes get 10 for aesthetic worth...okay, change the Shoes to Bob Dylan. And that Europe get zeros for influence and aesthetic worth. (Fame, I don't know--I still remember them.) The gray area between, often very difficult.

Europe gets 10 points for aerobics.

I know you could make make an alternate Hall of Fame out of snubs that would rival the existing one BUT

The notion that neither Jane's Addiction or the Pixies aren't in while the likes of lameass contemporaries Pearl Jam, NIN, RHCP and Green Day (!) all are—is truly laughable

I'ma go ahead and take Pearl Jam and NiN right back out of that pile, thank you.

I get that Pearl Jam has to be in because "industry" but there are a bunch of industrial acts that predate and better NIN...but I know, hall of FAME

even NiN doesn't identify as "industrial", unless you think Downward Spiral was the only album they released