2007 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

Now it’s getting interesting. 2007 marks the first year that rap is recognized in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and your Dad is pissed off. Actually, a lot of people are pissed off; with all of the no-brainers already inducted, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is now to the point where they are including controversial acts and while still ignoring others.
To be honest, I was a little pissed myself that The Stooges were curiously left out (again) this year while The Ronettes, a "band" that I assumed to be nothing more than a Phil Spector project, were included.
After screaming "Fuck you, Jann Wenner!" a few times, I calmed down and realized that the oversight is nothing new and, ultimately, inevitable.
Could this be the first signs of the Rock Hall transistioning from the old guard to the new?
Before I open up that can of worms, here’s a quick rundown of the ’07 inductees.

• Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five-The fact is, without introducing rap music, the Rock Hall would run out of artists, or at least artists that would insure the profitability of the damn thing afloat. And if you’re going to open the door to rap music, you have to start with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. For real: most of the people I knew that had the single “The Message” had it right next to their rock records anyway. So what’s the difference? Flash looked visibly moved that he was inducted at the end of the set, and for me, that made the entire “controversy” irrelevant. And fuckin’ a: they had the tightest performance of the entire evening.


• The Ronettes-Another controversial inductee. Anyone as foxy as these chicks and anyone who married Phil Spector….And lived to tell about…Deserves a place in the Rock Hall.


• Patti Smith-Controversy again. This time it’s about lack of commercial success and the perception that the Rock Hall has developed into an elitist board that’s supposed to teach us dummies what we should be listening to. The reality is that Patti Smith had an enormous impact on rock music, regardless of her carpet bagging, hippy idealism. Her performance of “Rock & Roll Nigger” was probably one of the most notorious moments in the history of Rock Hall performances. Keith Richard, one of Smith’s primary influences, dyed his hair for the occasion and looked relatively good.


• Van Halen-Jesus H. Christ, what a clusterfuck. Yet another controversial inductee (see: rock elitism) but the fact remains that they deserve to be in there. Just not in the manner in which they were represented. Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony were the ones on hand to accept, and if the presence of Sammy wasn’t enough to turn your stomach, how about Velvet Revolver covering a few V.H. tunes? Slash completely fucked up the introduction to “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” before Scott Weiland managed to turn the entire performance into a joke. Weiland donned some strange type of vocal styling that was nowhere near David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, or even himself. It was the most awfully perfect way to introduce one of the most insanely frustrating bands. For all the drama that V.H. has put fans through lately, the Velvet Revolver performance was karma at its best. Telling, Hagar waxed at how he was honored how one of the “best rock bands around today” literally raped the material they presented. The Red Rocker wasn’t much better either as he sounded completely flat during a walk through of “Why Can’t This Be Love.” Truly, one of the worst performances in Rock Hall ceremony history.


• R.E.M.-About the only inductee that was mutually agreed upon, and rightfully so. Eddie Vedder managed to both passionately speak about the band and virtually guarantee Pearl Jam’s induction into the Hall in 2016. I think Michael Stipe came out of the closet during the acceptance speech! And Holy Shit, I miss Bill Berry behind the kit. I was nearly brought to tears when they did “Gardening At Night.” It quickly subsided when they had Vedder come out for “Man On The Moon,” which was almost as annoying as Stipe yelling “Cool!” during the chorus.

Stipe brought out Patti Smith for a cool version of The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” which I also took as a swipe against the Rock Hall voters for not getting Iggy and the boys in this year.
Then, everybody and their dog came out for “People Have The Power.” Sammy Hagar joined Ronnie Spector in the “I don’t have a fucking clue what this song is” department while Keef managed some tasty soloing before he figured out that he was carrying everybody else’s ass. Steven Stills also threw down some nice solos on a few measures while managing to look more and more like Van Morrison (with muttonchops) each passing year.
It was a very tepid and uneventful way to end one of the most debated years in the history of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Personally, I think the Rock Hall shot their wad fairly quickly during the first few years when it seemed they tried to induct all of the obligatory pioneers. Rather than hurting someone’s feelings, the Rock Hall ran ramshot over the first wave (10 artist were inducted in 1986 while only 5 managed to get in this year) and they’re now faced with an increased debate on who is worthy and who isn’t.
To that point, and to quote a great rock album, it’s too late to stop now. When the Hall started to allow bands in on sales instead of cultural significance, it changed the make up of the inductees forever.
The first evidence of this came in the Hall’s strange choice to induct Bobby Darin back in 1990. If you’re wondering, outside of “Splish Splash,” what rock & roll records Bobby Darin actually contributed to the genre, well, you’re absolutely correct in your confusion.
Ever since then, there has been at least one “what the fuck are they thinking” moment when perusing the inductee list each year.
But now there’s more and more of them for the baby-boomers; the entire Grandmaster Flash fiasco merely reaffirms their tired argument of how rap isn’t really music. They’re also going to have to come to terms with progressive rock and (gasp) metal as those influential bands start to become glaringly absent to the rest of the rock community.
In letting go, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there is going to be a lot of bands that I would automatically disqualify as being contenders to the Rock Hall. I don’t feel that a band like Kiss deserves to be in, and there’s a whole slue of progressive rock (a genre that I feel, in some ways, did more to harm rock than help it) bands that I would roll my eyes at if they made the induction list.
Like Wings said, let ‘em in. The Rock Hall is not about me, nor is it a history lesson of underappreciated performers deserving of additional recognition. Right or wrong, the entire induction process is just as polarizing as it should be, given how polarizing the genre was when it started.
Just in case Jann Wenner is reading this, however, let me use Glam-Racket as a soapbox to lobby for the following whose time is well overdue:

• Kiss-Look, I can’t begrudge the literally thousands of motherfucking bands that were influenced by these assclowns. So let ‘em in and give Gene and Paul a reason to suck some more cash out of their moronic “army” in the guise of another farewell tour.


• Alice Cooper-And don’t forget to bring the surviving members of the original band, you right-wing motherfucker.


• The Stooges-Duh.


• Rush-The Hall could placate both the progressive rock contingency and the metalheads in one fell swoop with this one.


• Joy Division-Goth began here and there hasn’t been a band more black since.

Feel free to add your own via the comments.