Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2008

I was going to write a bit about this year's inductees, but, conveniently, I came across this great little audio & photo essay on Time.com that covers the bases pretty well. I suppose it's becoming easier to be cynical about the Hall of Fame and its mission--after you've inducted Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, what's left to do, right?--but I am, ultimately, pleased that an organization like this exists.

A nephew of mine is beginning to discover classic rock and has asked me and another of his uncles who enjoys music to burn some CDs for him. His parents are both devout Mormons and have pretty much prevented their kids from bringing anything resembling rock and/or roll into their home, which is a great tragedy and a sure way to ensure that your kids will either grow up hating you and defying your teachings or ending up in intensive therapy (or both). At one point, this kid's mother found some old Loverboy cassettes that her husband had carted around since his own teenage years. She let him keep the cassettes, but threw out the cover art from the cassette shells. Apparently, close-ups of asses in tights were too much for her fundamentalist sensibilities.

I remember as a kid taking great pleasure in songs like the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," which blatantly introduced lines like "Haven't seen a goddamn thing" to the otherwise sedate rock station I listened to (now a "classic" rock station, of course). It was only much later that I figured out that song was about a bunch of sex-crazed coke addicts, which did nothing to diminish my appreciation for the song. Listening to songs like that as a kid, though, made me feel subversive and edgy and cool, even if my dad listened to the same music. My father, for all his faults, had an excellent record collection and did much to encourage my enjoyment of music, and I still occasionally find myself buying a 1970s-era album he used to own: Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, etc.

So I am more than happy to provide my deprived nephew with as much classic rock as he can handle, or as much as he can hide under his mattress, as the case may be. If anything will get him out of that repressive household, it will be rock & roll. It's a trite and corny sentiment, perhaps, but I still believe that some music--even corporate over-commercialzed rock--can change hearts and minds and show otherwise miserable children (as I once was) that you should only put up with so much bullshit.

Here's a list of this year's bullshit detectors. Leonard Cohen and Madonna are the giants here; I like Mellencamp quite a bit, but he's always struck me as a kind of low-rent Springsteen. Despite the Time narrator's claim, I listen to AND enjoy surf music, so it's nice to see the Ventures get a nod. I have problems with the Dave Clark Five, though. Their main claim to fame, as far as I can tell, is in being the first band to ride the coattails of the infinitely superior Beatles, but there isn't anything particularly memorable about the DC5's music, certainly nothing that needs to be preserved by an entity that calls itself the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

But I can't deny that somewhere out in the sticks of middle America, there might have been some kid in the mid-1960s who thought the DC5 kicked the Beatles' asses, and liked them because they represented something that his parents hated or feared. More power to you, kid.