Remember last year when the class of 2019 had some notable folks?
That was last year. This year the Jann Wanner Favorite Bands Hall Of Fame announced their picks and the popular vote didn't count at all. Dave Matthews and Pat Benetar who finished one two are on the outside looking in. And for the first time ever, the non musicians were the most rocking that got in. Jon Landau who produced MC5 Back In The USA and (of course) Bruce Springsteen's albums and Irving Azloff, who for a time tried his hand as President of MCA Records and Giant Records and is superstar manager to The Eagles, Steely Dan and kept Dan Fogelburg's memory alive is the other.
The fan vote didn't count since Wanner overlooked Dave Matthew Bands or just avoided them. Per usual, Wanner got slammed. Richie Faulkner of Judas Priest called the HOF "a joke", and he's right. But it is a cold day in Hades when we see the likes of Whitney Houston and Notorious BIG get in before Jethro Tull, Mott The Hoople and Pat Benetar, who finished second in the voting. But we have been resigned to the fact that this is no longer rock and roll that gets in but rather dollar signs and bullshit rap. Per usual. we try to make sense out of this all and put together the ratings of importance to each inductee. But to be honest, this is the most wimpy of all inductees and the most meaningless.
The inductees:
Jon Landau-We have to have a Bruce Springsteen supporter in there (Gary US Bonds, who had two albums produced by the boss is still on the outside looking in) but Landau was a damn good critic and he did produced The MC5, Back In The USA album (tho the tinny sound sucked). He also managed Bruce Springsteen too. The more you read into these things the more you wonder if this was a pat on the back for himself and Jann too. Must be nice to have friends in high places. Produced Jackson Browne's The Pretender album in 1976.
Irving Azoff-The most powerful man in the industry, he is part of the Azoff/MSG Entertainment. Started out managing REO Speedwagon and Dan Fogelburg, then became part of the Eagles management team. Later was MCA Records President from 1983 to 1989, then started up Giant Records via Warner Brothers. Also formed Full Moon Records.
The Doobie Brothers-To me, the best of the bunch. The Doobies started out as a guitar driven, double drumming band with Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons leading the way, then Micheal McDonald took over when Johnston had health issues and changed the sound to yacht rock. The band called it a day in 1982 and then in 1989 reformed with Johnston, fully healthy again and Simmons leading the way once again. The Capitol albums had moments and then one offs for Pyramid and a country collection on Arista.
T Rex-Guitar hero of the glam movement, Marc Bolan was overdue for inclusion. But I found his albums somewhat spotty, including Electric Wizard which gave us the hit Get It On (Bang A Gong) Warners put out a best of in 1986, to which I did get, but I don't think I ever played it. His other top 40 hit was Hot Love a five minute song that repeats itself most of the way. Later moved over to Casablanca Records before his life ended in a 1977 car crash.
Depeche Mode-UK Electronic Dance Band that I never got into tho Some Great Reward and Construction Time Again are two classic albums. The Best of Depeche Mode pretty much has everything I need to hear from these guys. Vince Clarke would leave DM early and form Yazoo with Alison Moyet and later Erasure. DM would hit big with Personal Jesus.
9 Inch Nails-US industrial noise band led by Trent Reznor. Pretty Hate Music and The Downward Spiral are the high water mark, tho I must admit I thought Ministry did a better job with industrial noise than Pretty Hate Music. Which is their classic moment.
Whitney Houston-The ultimate oversinger of our time.
Notorious BIG-Joins Tupac in the music hall.
With that, I cannot comment on the last two, since they were not part of my music journey. I did listen to Whitney's second album Whitney and it had some moments, it wasn't enough to garner my attention. Rolling Stone called BIG the best rapper of all time, at that time and I suppose if you want proof, try Ready To Die. That said, that pretty much wraps up the wimpiest crop of music inductees in a HOF that is no longer rock and roll and continues to dilute the quality of the HOF. Next year. New Kids On The Block and Backstreet Boys.
Also, the NFL announced their crop of 2020 folks to the NFL HOF and it's more believable, tho the self congratulatory continues with Paul Tagiablue, another NFL commissioner that did more for the owners than players. Steve Sabol, who's NFL shows made ESPN worth watching is a worthy one. He made watching pro football a lot of fun (including the old 60s NFL that showed back then the NFL was smashmouth football and not the glitz it is today). Donnie Shell, Cliff Harris, Jim Covert, Harold Carmichel, Ed Sprinkle, Mac Speedie, Winston Hill, Giants GM, George Young, Bobby Dillon, Duke Slader, and finally the legendary Alex Karras who should have been in there a long time ago. However, while Cliff Harris got in, Drew Pearson was left on the outside looking in. A great injustice since Drew Pearson was Mr. Clutch and is forever hated by making the catch that won the game in 1975 against the Vikings to which a bottle whopped a referee upside the head after making a bogus PI call against the Vikings. I'm sure in the future, Drew Pearson will have his rightful spot in the HOF.
Just like Jethro Tull in the Rock HOF.
3 comments:
Landed here when I was looking for 80s/90s pics of Marion and greatly appreciate your excellent post on an ever-vanishing town as we know it. I grew up there a little after you. I miss the railroad tracks, but a trail in their place is good with me. I think Marion was in the middle of a track that reached from New York to California--I wonder how well it could be followed in either direction to its most extreme points. I remember being on the bridge over Indian creek when an occasional train would scream by and laying coins on the tracks to turn into guitar picks. We used to push the ties that lay nearby off of it into the water. Maybe, in the end, that's what cost the railway: kids dumping their means of passage into the creek. Hopefully it made some beavers happy. Anyway, I hadn't know about the HOF inductees till this post. I'll add my two cents. I like T-Rex and even some of Bolan's solo work and at the end of the day am grateful he paved the way for one of my favorite musicians, David Bowie. Nine Inch Nails, I'm fond of their output up through The Fragile and then skip straight to Reznor's work with Atticus Ross--to bring it back around I recommend listening to their cover of Bowie's Life on Mars? from the Watchmen volume 3 soundtrack. Their work is all vocal-less. I think my favorite track on Downward Spiral is A Warm Place, also vocal-less. All of the other artists I have no opinion about. The main sentiment I take away from your piece is that these award ceremonies serve no purpose other than to pat the highest bidder on the back. Or, just as arbitrarily, they're chosen by a bunch of people whose opinions are no better than ours. I've been using spotify for the last several years. My CD collection was stolen by a heroin addict and in some ways it was a relief, it was a lot of stuff. Most of it I have on an old ipod, but a streaming service that holds almost everything, way more than we could ever listen to in X amount of lifetimes, it's awesome. I had some bootlegs I'll never recover, but the sheer amount of music available to my thumb, hot damn. I'm not sure how you follow music and I'm not here to shill. Thank you for some cool posts, glad to run into a fellow Marionite in the wilderness of the world wide web.
Oh shit, sorry if I just sent that a bunch of times.
Thanks so much for your comments. I usually don't post much things unless it's RnR HOF or finding scratchy records. The HOF is such a mess, T Rex was due to be in there, so perhaps was Doobie Brothers.
The Marion I grew up in is long gone, but however it's great to have the walking trails that used to be the Milwaukee Road route. I remember the old rail yard in the Katz Salvage yard and sneaking through there at time sometimes. Nowadays what used to be that railyard is a roundabout. Today's youth would not remember that, nor the Apco Station. Marion has changed, but not sure for the best, I tend to think the old days weren't so bad. Days of Marion TV n Records, or Ole's Ham n Egger or the OK Lounge. There's still remiments of the past, there still some old electrical posts outside Marion Hard to believe that used to be one the railway mainlines in the state. I did managed to do a couple fond blogs about Marion. Something to preserve the memory.
I think Spotify works well if you're into streaming, by far you don't have to worry about CD clutter but nowadays CDs are fairly cheap at thrift stores. I still enjoy like to find the oddball stuff. Still, the internet has open the music vaults up to the point that just about everything recorded will find it's way on the net. Maybe too much. So much music, so little time.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and don't worry about the triple postings. It's been known that Blogger tends to not work well. Sometimes my blogs get double posted. Always great to meet people that used to live in Marion. The winters still suck (most of the time) but it was a fun place to grow up in the 70s.
Cheers!
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