Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Nominees 2024

They do have other blind spots. Husker Du and the Replacements should 1000% be in there. Reconciling the absence of those two bands with what I'm guessing is the perception of the typical voter is not easy.

(I should have checked before posting that. I know Husker Du isn't--that'll look pretty stupid if the Replacements are in there...I don't think so.)

Also Pixies and Smashing Pumpkins, but they would all have to be nominated first.

Mats aren't believe me this state would have shut down for a week

I would love husker du to get in and I hope the window doesn't close for them because younger folks seem less aware of them (I think they could definitely attract new fans if folks got a little less squeamish talking about how very queer their music is instead of just downplaying it as music by people who happen to be queer)

replacements sure they're important or whatever I don't get it maybe you had to be there but throw em on the pile

Mats aren't believe me this state would have shut down for a week

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, April 25, 2024 3:02 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Jim Walsh immolated himself in front of the HOF in protest of the snub

I doubt the breeders will beat pixies in there but I would love that

has the gen x takeover happened yet or is it still in progress? there is a surprising lack of alt grunge indie stuff aside from the big basic boomer approved highlights and there is such deep bench to pull from even if you want to stick to rockist principles

Gen X will get skipped cuz the boomers won't die off, just like everything else

I guess the RS-approved rap classics is the gen x coming through but it's such a slog and millennials will be ancient by the time we make our voices heard by finally inducting britney or taylor or whoever

Dionne Warwick's in now, and for the time being, I'm giving up on Husker Du/Replacements/Shangri-Las/(and, quirkier, Tommy James). My new #1 HOF project: the Pet Shop Boys.

(What I mean by "project," by the way, is that I'll be travelling the continent and visiting voters one-by-one with a slide show presentation on why the PSB should be elected.)

"In my many, many years as a writer and editor, nobody — nobody — has ever mentioned Osbourne’s solo work to me. No one’s wanted to review an album or cover a show. No one’s ever said, “Hey, you should hear this track on the new Ozzy album.” I don’t even remember ever reading a review of one of his albums or hearing one of his solo songs played on the radio, and of course none of his albums has ever turned up in the Pazz & Jop poll."

So here in the annual update to his Vulture ranking of the most to least worthy RRHoF inductees, Chicago's very own Bill Wyman is eager to let you know that he's savvy, he's been around the block, and so forth. But it would appear that he's not so savvy, or indeed at all self-aware, that he can't stand back and notice that the above passage, which appears in the 254th spot, only besting his placing for Stevie Nicks at 255, echoes Pauline Kael's infamously blinkered "Nixon couldn't have won, no one I know voted for him" remark. Surely the unassailably urbane Mr. Wyman knows of the chink in Kael's cognitive armor! Is it so challenging to update this list that he doesn't have time to examine his own assumptions? Or is he kinda dim, as Steve Albini suggested 30 years ago?

Wyman also doesn't like music that strays very far from rockist verities. Going through his ranking, he sneers dismissively w/r/t hard rock, metal, pop metal, post Clash english popular music nominally associated with rock, music chiefly made with synthesizers, pop soul, dance music, and only gives credit to hip-hop because he knows its a bad look to dislike the great step forward in popular music initiated and still controlled in 2024 by black people. So he seems to be on the younger end of the Dave Marsh wing of rock critics, who saw Springsteen, Petty, Coug and 80s roots rock as the course correction back to the stones, dylan, Motown/Stax values that had been compromised in the 1970s, and almost literally saw any deviation as such as a corrupt fraud.

But I will give him credit, quite a lot, for his suggestion in his now updated intro, that the nominating committee should dispense with the backdoor "award for musical excellence" boondoggle. If they don't get the desired results because the electorate is too dumb (and the RRHoF electorate is really really dumb, a bunch of bizzers and proud members of the Dave Marsh wing of rockcrit mentioned above) to recognize Kraftwerk and MC5 as such, then they should say "we are the nominating committee, these two or three artists are going in alongside the very popular nominees voted in by the shitheads, Why? because we say so, suck my dick if you don't like it. we're not breaking any laws, this is not a matter of grave global import, this is fucking show business."

I guess Wyman probably knows a higher percentage of Rock Hall voters than Kael knew voters in the presidential election, so his surprise (as an “industry guy”) doesn’t seem totally blinkered to me…

like who really knows Ozzy Ozbourne, other than that Gravy Train song which only saw life due to its use in dog food commercials, he was always known as the guy who replaced Dio in Black Sabbath and recorded Load.

I guess Wyman probably knows a higher percentage of Rock Hall voters than Kael knew voters in the presidential election, so his surprise (as an “industry guy”) doesn’t seem totally blinkered to me…

Nah, this is complete idiocy on Wyman's part. The industry loves the Osbournes. Even beyond the sheer numbers Ozzy's put on the board for five decades-plus, Sharon is royalty: her father was Don Arden, a high-powered London music biz guy.

Ozzy is practically his own economy in the metal scene

Where does he rank Dave Matthews Band? (I found the article but there's a paywall...)

yeah, what would he say?

"In my many, many years as a writer and editor, nobody — nobody — has ever mentioned Osbourne’s solo work to me. No one’s wanted to review an album or cover a show. No one’s ever said, “Hey, you should hear this track on the new Ozzy album.” I don’t even remember ever reading a review of one of his albums or hearing one of his solo songs played on the radio, and of course none of his albums has ever turned up in the Pazz & Jop poll."

imagine being an alleged radio listener and never hearing any Ozzy solo

was Ozzy the guy that used to put on those DIY Ozzfest house shows?

tbh the whole project of being a "rock critic" just seems embarrassing and pointless

as does the idea of the RnR HOF. idk

imagine being an alleged radio listener and never hearing any Ozzy solo

Ozzy is the only guy that was there when the Rock Radio chart started in 1980-81 who's still charting there today.

be easy on the guy, his mental wounds are still screaming and its driving him insane

xps That was a really weird take on Ozzy. Long before I knew anything about Black Sabbath (including who they were), I knew who Ozzy Osbourne was, and this was even before reality TV happened. He was that ubiquitous in the culture and no one in my household listened to metal or hard rock.

also lol at:

nwa at #239:

I know that Dre is one of music’s most important producers; he’s also a guy who beats up women.

chuck berry at #1:

As a person, he was less than ideal. But still: One of the most consequential American cultural figures of the 20th century.

Long before I knew anything about Black Sabbath (including who they were), I knew who Ozzy Osbourne was, and this was even before reality TV happened.

same, I know "of" Black Sabbath but they were Ozzy's old band to me, I didn't hear them until much later

I didn't even know Ozzy was in Black Sabbath until I was a teen, as I was a late bloomer to all forms of heavy rock.

embarrassed to say I found out when I borrowed one of dad's old Sabbath records (who, btw, he didn't even like, so I never gave them back), and saw his name on it and said...what, the "Perry Mason" singer guy?

weird that was the first song I thought of, but it was in fact the first one of his I heard knowingly.

every time people talked about "Crazy Train" I couldn't figure out what song they were talking about, and kept mistakenly thinking it was "Have a Cigar" because the way Roger Waters sings 'gravy train' sounded like 'crazy train' to my terrible ears.

nobody would have believed 13-year old me and 43-year old me are related

This might've been my first real exposure to Ozzy - like I didn't know his music or what he even sounded like when he just talked until they did this post-9/11 bit on Conan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9QoZgW-Qa0

the making breakfast scene on Decline of Western Civilization was definitely the origin of his transformation into America's loveably addled rock dad

I think the first time I heard Crazy Train was when erstwhile ilxor hstencil performed it karaoke in like 2002.

I was a kid at the time, but I remember when No More Tears came out and it was about as big on Rock Radio as contemporary releases like the Use Your Illusions, The Black Album, Nevermind, and Ten.

"Crazy Train," "No More Tears," and that Lita Ford duet were the only Ozzy songs I knew for a long time.

yeah, "No More Tears" earned massive MTV airplay during the Year of Nirvana.

pretty legendary performance of No More Tears on the Live and Loud video too that I think got play on MTV

It's funny to hear people a little younger than me talk about Ozzy or Sabbath. I became aware of Sabbath not long before "Neon Knights" came out, definitely knew of Ozzy and mistakenly assumed it was him singing on that. Vividly remember when Randy Rhoads died because it happened in Florida where I lived and iirc Ozzy's next show was supposed to be in Miami.

Yep!

"Close My Eyes Forever" is Ozzy's only AT40 hit in America btw

"Close My Eyes Forever" is Ozzy's only AT40 hit in America btw

Not true! "Mama, I'm Coming Home" hit #28. (Lemmy was probably exaggerating, but he said he made more money from writing the lyrics to that song than he did from anything Motörhead-related.)

Oh, missed it.

9-year-old me obsessively listening to pop radio was a huge “Mama, I’m Coming Home” fan and never heard “No More Tears” that I can recall until listening to it right now. Doesn’t sound familiar though it certainly would fit right in with Use Your Illusion’s songs

was very hard to divest that song from Johnson and Johnson products

No More Tears was definitely everywhere for a really long time after it was released, it was one of the inner circle staples of hard rock radio. And unlike a lot of tracks which received considerable airplay in that genre at the time, it's still does really sound good.

I did scan through Wyman's list, and the guy is a pretty lousy writer based on that. Even when I agree with the most superficial points he's making, he offers nothing of interest to back any of it up.

"In my many, many years as a writer and editor, nobody — nobody — has ever mentioned Osbourne’s solo work to me.

because you are a herb and people do not wanna hang with you and know they'd be wasting their breath

no use for this guy

There's no getting around the dubious concept of a rank listicle, but to Wyman's credit, he does make something out of it - forget the inductee assessments, the meat of that thing is really the ridiculous history behind the Hall of Fame that's detailed in piecemeal. Just an excerpt drawn from a handful of entries:

Joe Hagan says the hall of fame was first conceived by a cable entrepreneur, Bruce Brandwen, who outlined the basic structure of the hall, proposed an annual TV show, and enlisted Ahmet Ertegun...Ertegun and Jann Wenner conspired together to wait out the five-year contract Brandwen had, and then took the organization over. Wenner later dismissed Brandwen as part of “a bunch of hucksters.” The inevitable lawsuit was settled out of court. Bruce Conforth, the hall’s first curator, told me that an early benefit concert featuring the Who and billed as a benefit for the hall actually raised money to pay off that settlement...

From the start, Conforth says, said, his work was hampered by a division between the Cleveland folks, who’d put up the money and had the best interests of Cleveland and the hall’s success in mind, and the New York people, most of whom didn’t want the hall in Cleveland in the first place. “The people from New York thought their shit didn’t stink,” Conforth says. “They were rich New York elite artsy-fartsy hip people who knew what was going on. They figured the Cleveland people were a bunch of rubes who couldn’t tell the time of day. The Cleveland people hated the New York people because they didn’t give the Cleveland people any respect and were always telling Cleveland people what to do, even though the Cleveland folks came up with all the money. The two boards really, really hated each other.”

I asked Conforth for an example of how the Cleveland–New York division manifested itself. He said that one day shortly after he started work he was abruptly summoned to meet with Wenner, so he dutifully boarded a plane to New York. “It was an official audience,” Conforth says drily. “It was at the new Rolling Stone’s offices [on Sixth Avenue]. Jann’s office was in the corner; it has glass windows on two sides; quite large, but sparsely decorated, with a huge desk in the corner. I was allowed to enter the inner sanctum. There’s Jann, barefoot. He sits down behind this huge desk, puts his bare feet upon the desk, looks at me, pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and says, ‘Now do you see where the real power lies?’”

Conforth, the curator, is a highly entertaining interview. He was a scholar who’d done his dissertation at Indiana on the San Francisco scene. He turned out not to be a good fit for the hall. One mistake he made, he allows, is requesting to work in Cleveland, which he thought made sense at the time but led to many of his decisions being overruled from New York. Even two decades later he remains amused at his tenure. It was plain from the start, he says, what the hall of fame’s mission was: “Here’s another way we get to masturbate in public and show the world how great we are.” The difficulties he had working for Wenner & Co. were such an open secret by the time he left that he received a call from the producers of the Oprah Winfrey Show. They wanted him to appear for a segment on “When Dream Jobs Become a Nightmare.”

only besting his placing for Stevie Nicks at 255, echoes Pauline Kael's infamously blinkered "Nixon couldn't have won, no one I know voted for him" remark.

Point of order: she never said that. Neither did Susan Sontag, whom that quote is also sometimes attributed to.