"Mariah Carey takes the next step from Whitney Houston... the way-over-the-top vocals that almost exist outside of a song."

"Influence wise, I certainly get it. My problem is I don’t care for much of her music. From the start, she was an industry darling.... There’s only a handful of singles I really like and I find each of her albums are a bit of a slog to get through. She’s not getting my vote...."

And: "I’m excited to see her name. The Rock Hall has been trying to put these 'pop singers' more on the ballot these last few years, which freaks out some of its constituency. I think those types of artists belong. Mariah’s not going to get my vote.... But, my God. The talent and reach. Look at how long she sustained her career and what she means to people. If Whitney Houston is in, Mariah Carey is in.... She’s worthy. I always love it when women pop singers are on the ballot in a way that pisses people off. It’s not rock! It’s always fun when you get some people to yell that."

Say 2 unnamed Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters, quoted in "'It’s a Brand, Not a Band': Two Rock Hall Voters Reveal Their 2024 Ballots" (NY Magazine).

Have we stopped calling it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? It's just the Rock Hall now? The whole thing is one mistake after another — just swapping in new mistakes.

I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 2005 and blogged 7 things about it. The 7th is the best:

"When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame started in 1983, you would have thought they might want to begin with Sister Rosetta..."

"... with those first chords that chimed the songbook we were now all singing from. The initial inductees were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley; not a woman in sight. Sister Rosetta didn’t get in until the Rock Hall was publicly shamed into adding her in 2018. (She was on a US postal stamp two decades before the Rock Hall embraced her.) Big Mama Thornton, whose recording of Ball’n’Chain also shaped this new form of music? Still not in. Today, just 8.48% of the inductees are women... If the Rock Hall is not willing to look at the ways it is replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honour what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionised and contributed to popular music – well, then let it go to hell in a handbag."

 
Writes Courtney Love, in "Why are women so marginalised by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?" (The Guardian).

Why hasn't Love written off the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? However much contempt she has for the place, she says it's "a bulwark against erasure... game recognising game, history made and marked... a king-making force in the global music industry." It makes "the difference between touring secondary-market casinos opening for a second-rate comedian, or headlining respected festivals."

AND: I see she quoted Breitbart yesterday:

"Is it perverse to find magnificence in the most parodied element of Elvis’s style evolution? That is, his famous jumpsuits..."

"... the costume default of impersonators and trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Typically treated as sartorial jokes, these jumpsuits emblematize the star at his apogee, that moment before his fame and his life collapsed on him and he crumpled to earth. Those glittering garments with their embroideries and nailhead patterns or paste gem barnacles were precursors to the stage-wear worn by every pop star — Prince, David Bowie, Harry Styles — who ever invited his fans to feast their eyes on him erotically."

Writes Guy Trebay, in "Elvis Broke Fashion Boundaries, Too/He was many things, as a new biopic illustrates, but one of the least appreciated was his role as a gender pioneer" (NYT).

This makes me want to retell my Elvis's jumpsuit story. Back in 2005, I blogged a 7-point list of notes from my visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This was the 7th item:

Dolly Parton does not want to be considered for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until she's put out a rock and roll album.

❤️ pic.twitter.com/Z6LKfWtlxg

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 14, 2022

She's not saying that out of nowhere. They actually put her as a nominee on the ballot this year. For so many reasons, she was wise to withdraw the way she did. To lose the vote isn't good, and to win would draw intense criticism. I'm sure there was criticism just for the nomination. It's better to take that criticism and make it her own. It's not criticism at all anymore, but a recognition that country music is not rock music. 

And this way, she really could put out an album designated rock and get lots of new attention for that.

The Hall is voracious. It needs new inductees every year, and sometimes it looks rather desperate. By reaching into other music categories — designated the "roots" of rock — it can get some giant icons. It's nice to see a firm rejection of that grasping.

ADDED: She specified album. But as Andrew noted in the comments, there's this:

"I’ve always been a wriggler. I mean, I am my own fantasy. I am the ‘Cosmic Dancer’ who dances his way out of the womb and into the tomb on Electric Warrior."

"I’m not frightened to get up there and groove in front of 6 million people on TV because it doesn’t look cool. That’s the way I would do it at home. It’s not serious. I’m serious about the music, but I’m not serious about the fantasy."

Said Marc Bolan in 1971, quoted in "The Timeless Glam Perfection of T. Rex: Why Marc Bolan Still Casts a Spell/The new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees have been a guiding spirit for cosmic dancers from Prince to Harry Styles" (Rolling Stone).

Born in 1947, the son of a Hackney lorry driver, Marc Feld grew up as a mod on the London scene. As a broke young poseur, trying to hustle into showbiz, he got hired one day to paint his manager’s office with another kid. Marc introduced himself as “King Mod,” and declared, “Your shoes are crap.” The other kid was David Bowie. These two rivals would torment each other for years to come. In February 1969, after Bolan blew up on the U.K. charts, he invited Bowie on tour — as a mime. “Marc was quite cruel about David’s as-yet-unproven musical career,” producer Tony Visconti recalled later. “I think it was with great sadistic delight that Marc hired David to open for Tyrannosaurus Rex, not as a musical act, but as a mime.” (What could make it even sweeter for Bolan? Bowie got booed.)

I went looking for a Marc Bolan/Hall of Fame article after Bolan came up in the first post of the day, the one about "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo." That post quoted Marc eating potatoes with Ringo and saying "Ooh you, boogaloo." In the comments over there, I said:

He goes into the the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... it was just announced a few weeks ago. I should do a post on that. I am a big Marc Bolan fan from back when his band was called Tyrannosaurus Rex.

As a college kid in 1969, I would make anyone I could get to put up with it listen to the album "Unicorn."

Anyone else here a fan of "Unicorn"?

Here's the whole album. Just imagine yourself captive in 18-year-old Althouse's dorm room!...

The toad road licked my wheels like a sabre
Winds of the marsh lightly blew
Stone jars stacked with stars on her shoulders
Hunters of pity she slew...

Are you listening?!!!

A couple years later, Marc was much more accessible, and everyone loved...



... didn't they?

Radiohead, Janet Jackson, Stevie Nicks, Def Leppard, The Cure, Roxy Music and the Zombies...

... are the new inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

It's just annual nonsense, but I've got to say I love The Zombies. I've loved them since their first single played on the radio long ago, and we saw them here in Madison in 2017. Here are my "Notes from the Zombies concert at the Barrymore."

Why weren't they already in?! From the first link above (Rolling Stone):

For Colin Blunstone of the Zombies – who have been eligible since 1989 and have appeared on three previous ballots – this was the result of incredible patience and persistence. “You do start to doubt that it could happen,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I’ve tried to be fairly philosophical about it and tell myself that if we don’t get inducted, it’s just a bit of fun. Don’t take it too seriously. But of course when you’re actually inducted, everything changes. You think, ‘This is a career-defining [and] life-defining moment.'”

His longtime bandmate Rod Argent echoed Blunstone’s sentiment. “I know it’s fashionable in some circles to say, ‘I don’t mind whether I get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or not,'” he tells Rolling Stone. “But that is not how I’ve ever felt. When we were first nominated, that felt like a huge honor in its own right. And this time to turn the corner and get inducted, feels fantastic … I’m just so delighted.”

"All 214 Artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ranked From Best to Worst."

By the rock critic (not the musician) Bill Wyman.

It's an amusing read if you're not the sort of person who gets steamed because your opinions are not shared. I mean, he puts Queen second to last, beating only Bon Jovi, but he states his reasons.

Journey, Electric Light Orchestra, Steppenwolf and Joan Baez.

All were just nominated — for the first time — to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Seems like if you've been around that long and haven't got in yet, it's better not to be talked about in this connection at all.

By the way, I've seen 2 of those 4 acts in concert. 

"No, we’re not going to wrap this up — I’m going to wrap you up. You go sit down over there and learn something."

Said Steve Miller at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last night.

"This is how close this whole show came to not happening because of the way the artists are being treated...."

What was his problem?

“The whole process is unpleasant.... They need to respect the artists they say they’re honoring, which they don’t.”

It seems to be about money. He didn't like the licensing agreements for the TV show of the ceremony, and he didn't like the way the tickets were distributed:

“When they told me I was inducted they said, ‘You have two tickets — one for your wife and one for yourself. Want another one? It’s $10,000. Sorry, that’s the way it goes.... What about my band? What about their wives?”

Who benefits from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? When an artist gets in, is he mostly giving or mostly getting?  I guess it depends on the artist. Steve Miller was lucky to get in at all, wasn't he? Maybe they told him that — or suggested as much — when they drove the bargain. They have to put on a show every year, and I wonder if some people — like Miller — are brought in to fill out the concert and maybe they realize that they're second tier and treated as such. I mean, what is the process for getting in?

Janet Morrissey of The New York Times wrote, "With fame and money at stake, it's no surprise that a lot of backstage lobbying goes on. Why any particular act is chosen in any particular year is a mystery to performers as well as outsiders – and committee members say they want to keep it that way." Jon Landau, the chairman of the nominating committee, says they prefer it that way. "We've done a good job of keeping the proceedings nontransparent. It all dies in the room."...

Here's some opinion on the Hall of Fame by Mike Nesmith (in the context of responding to the controversy over whether The Monkees, who are not in, should be):

I can see the HOF is a private enterprise. It seems to operate as a business, and the inductees are there by some action of the owners of the Enterprise. The inductees appear to be chosen at the owner’s pleasure.

This seems proper to me.

It is their business in any case. It does not seem to me that the HOF carries a public mandate, nor should it be compelled to conform to one.

And that may be the rub.

The main argument afoot is that popularity and the history and the work should somehow provide the HOF not only a mandate but also validation that should compel and convince them/it, and also be enforceable.

That doesn’t seem like a good argument, but as I say – I don’t know. I rode out the hurricane in the mobile home that is all that is left standing while all about it are vacant concrete pads and stubbs of power lines.

Yes, I know. He misspelled "stubs." He misspelled "stubs" and his mother invented Liquid Paper. If you look up Mike Nesmith in the modern "Dictionary of Received Ideas," you'll read one thing: His mother invented Liquid Paper. Liquid Paper, not Wite-Out. "Wite" isn't the right way to spell "white," you know. All the errors can be corrected later, so maybe you shouldn't worry about errors anymore. Mike Nesmith moved on after the metaphorical hurricane. He was living in a metaphorical mobile home, not the metaphorical record player designed by I.M. Pei — which is not a misspelling of I Am Pay — which was bankrolled — in part — by the needy people of Cleveland.

"The nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2015 are in, and the list includes Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, N.W.A, the Smiths, Lou Reed and Sting."

"The rest of this year's hopefuls are the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Kraftwerk, Chic, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, the Marvelettes, the Spinners, Stevie Ray Vaughan, War and Bill Withers."

Reading all that, the first thought that came into my head was Beechwood 4-5789, you can call me up and have a date any old time...

ADDED: Of this list — Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, N.W.A, the Smiths, Lou Reed, Sting, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Kraftwerk, Chic, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, the Marvelettes, the Spinners, Stevie Ray Vaughan, War, Bill Withers — your humble blogger has seen only 3 in concert. One twice. Can you guess which?

Bill Maher to Rush Limbaugh: "You know what, Rush, when you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people all the time like I do..."

I've already blogged about what Bill Maher said on his show last night about Rush Limbaugh, so forgive me if you've already had enough of the Maher-Limbaugh topic, but this really is something else and I have something different to say. Maher said:

The word that they're upset about. I never said on this show.

What is he referring to? He did call Sarah Palin a "dumb twat" on the show. (See?)

It was in my standup act, which I consider the last bastion of free speech. 

The word, apparently, is "cunt," and he used it in his standup show. He tones it down a notch for HBO.

There's a reason people compare me to George Carlin — 'cause we're standup comedians. 

By the way, "twat" wasn't even on  Carlin's original list of "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." "Cunt" was. Later, Carlin expanded the list, and "twat" got on along with "fart" and "turd." It's like a late year in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones got in long ago, like 2002 and they're getting around to Gene Pitney and Brenda Lee. It's an analogy! I don't owe Brenda an apology. If people are too dumb to handle analogies, why do we even have democracy? Let's just make Obama king, stop talking about politics, and spend our lives dancing and singing.

Did you watch that Carlin clip? Astounding! Maher cites "people" who compare him to George Carlin. He doesn't dare claim the comparison sprang out of his own semi-bald dome. But I'll compare him to Carlin: Bill Maher is not at all as funny or perceptive as George Carlin. Now that's a comparison. What did those other people who compared Maher to Carlin say? I'd like to know, because I'd like to do a comparison comparison. I think mine is better.

Back to this quote from last night that I'm trying to analyze:

Rush Limbaugh likes to say he's a comedian. 

No, he doesn't! Rush's critics like to call him a comedian. When it suits their purposes. Other times they like to say he's the spokesman for the Republican Party. And that's what Rush likes to say. I listen to the show all the time, so I know what he likes to say. Unlike a lot of people who love to hate Rush and simply react to out-of-context quotes they've been fed.

But Rush uses humor. He likes to "use absurdity to illustrate the absurd."

Mayer continues:

You know what, Rush, when you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people all the time like I do and make them spill their fuckin' guts out and laugh their asses off for 90 minutes, you're a comedian. 

Rush doesn't do theater shows — which tend to be scripted with crafted jokes told one after the other — and let's grant Maher that Rush would be bad at that. But Rush does sit down at a microphone 3 hours a day, 5 days a week and hold the attention of not 3,000 people but many millions. For 20 years. Maher could not do that. These are different activities. Both deploy humor as they talk about politics, but they do it in a different way. Maher's bragging that he's doing much more than Rush... it's as off as the implication that he's as good as Carlin.

But you're not a comedian. And when you do that, I say, my rule: You get a little extra leeway. 

Each humorist can decide for himself how much leeway he's going to take. And people will decide whether to give it to him. He can't dictate a rule, except as a joke. You don't get the leeway because you do standup comedy (or a radio show using absurdity to illustrate absurdity). You get what people feel like giving you. And what we feel is a response to what you do. It's a mystery why we feel the way we do. We're not following any rules. It's a personal relationship, like love.

But if I offended women, I'm sorry. I don't have a problem saying I'm sorry. 

Oh, but you do, Bill. Because that is not an apology. It's easy to say "I'm sorry" in the sorry-if-you-are-offended form, i.e., a nonapology.

I don't know why women would want to align themselves with Sarah Palin. I don't know why an insult to her is an insult to all women, but if it is, I'm sorry.

If... and obviously, you don't think it is. The joke — not a terribly good one, not anything that's going to make us spill our "fuckin' guts" out over— is that women shouldn't see Sarah Palin as one of the women who count. If we can isolate her over there with the bad people, we can call her a name that is specific to women: a "cunt." Is the use of a woman-specific insult something that switches the subject to all women? That is, is "cunt" like a racist epithet? If one black person is called the n-word, the topic ceases to be whether that one black person is a bad guy. Or is "cunt" like "dick"? If one guy is called a "dick," we stay on topic: the way that one guy is a "dick." I wrote "cunt," "dick," and "n-word," so you can see what my answer is. I'm for sexual equality... and abandoning the famously hurtful racial epithet.

So let humorists of all kinds select the language they want to use. Let them be gentle or cutting. There are all sorts of things you can do with words. There are no rules. There are no 7 dirty words for TV or extra leeway for extracting puke from 3,000 theater-ticket buyers. There is a mystery to using words to reach other human beings, and you're all on your own.

"Nominees for the 2012 class of inductees into the Rock and Roll Non-Country Popular Music of the 1950s and Beyond Hall of Fame."

"First-time nominees include Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, The Cure, The Spinners, Eric B. & Rakim, Guns N' Roses, the Small Faces/Faces, Rufus with Chaka Khan, and Freddie King. The Beasties and Chilis return to the ballot, as do Donna Summer, Donovan, Laura Nyro, and War. First-time eligibles this year but not nominated include Crowded House, Guided by Voices, the Jayhawks, Lyle Lovett, Salt N Pepa, Soundgarden, They Might Be Giants, and Yo La Tengo."

Says Adam at Throwing Things, pointing to a link to throw in your opinion.

My opinion is just that I love Donovan and Laura Nyro (and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a bit ridiculous, but I always pay attention and I've visited the place more than once).

ADDED: Saffron!

Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Dr. John, Darlene Love, Tom Waits.

New inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Passed over this year: Bon Jovi, LL Cool J, the J. Geils Band, the Beastie Boys, Donna Summer.

But as "Rock Hall says no; White House says yes":

The humble band from Sayreville will not be among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees... In brighter news, President Barack Obama on Tuesday named Jon Bon Jovi, a staunch Democratic supporter, to the White House Council for Community Solutions....

Bon Jovi, who performed during Obama's inaugural concert, heads the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, a nonprofit group working to alleviate poverty and homelessness across the U.S. The White House cited the rocker's work with that foundation as a reason for the appointment.

I'd vote for Donovan and Laura Nyro.

The new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.

ABBA, Genesis, Jimmy Cliff, Stooges, Hollies.

The new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

We visited the Hall a couple weeks ago. Never got around to blogging about it! You can't take pictures inside, and I've blogged about it on a previous visit, so I didn't have too much to say. From the outside, it looked like this:

ABBA, the Chantels, Jimmy Cliff, Genesis, the Hollies, KISS, LL Cool J, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Stooges and Donna Summer.

Such are the nominees this year for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Patrick Goldstein moans:

It's pretty pathetic when you consider that you can vote for the Chantels and Darlene Love, but not for Linda Ronstadt, Steve Miller, Chicago, Rush, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Journey, Dire Straits or Stevie Ray Vaughan, just to name a few of the ineligible worthies... Those of us who are actual voters are asked to choose a maximum of five nominees, using numbers (1-2-3-4-5) to signify our preferences. You can do the same. Here's how I'd make my choices as of now, but I'm open to being swayed by any especially passionate or persuasive arguments:

1) The Stooges....

2) The Red Hot Chili Peppers....

3) Laura Nyro. (Nearly forgotten today, she was a seminal influence on Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash and untold other singer-songwriters.)

4) LL Cool J....

5) KISS....

Laura Nyro, nearly forgotten?! Crazy! Can you surry? Can you picnic? Perhaps you think no one even asks questions like that anymore, but we do.

"Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Rush, Kiss, Ted Nugent, Iron Maiden, Motorhead."

Metallica's James Hetfield, celebrating his band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, names the artists he thinks belong their too.

Also: Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page played "Immigrant Song." Ron Wood, presenting Bobby Womack, told about the time "he and Womack hid as some Hells Angels gang members were roughing up Wilson Pickett." And Rosanne Cash said that Wanda Jackson "could really rock and still kept her femininity intact."

5 of these 9 will go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I got the list at the WaPo, where they are asking readers which nominee is most deserving, but I'm going to repeat that question, to get a special Althouse blog result. So answer here before you go there and see what the WaPo readers are coming up with. It's not easy!

Who's most deserving of a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
	The Stooges
	Jeff Beck
	Bobby Womack
	Chic
	War
	Metallica
	Run-D.M.C.
	Little Anthony and the Imperials
	Wanda Jackson
pollcode.com free polls

Here's the post to talk about "American Idol."

There are only 4 left, and by "American Idol" tradition — dating back to the Season 1 ouster of Tamyra Gray — this is the week for a shocking early departure. Could it be that a David will leave this week? It's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame night tonight, so David Cook ought to be safe. Could he possibly screw up? Could fans screw up thinking he's safe? Or could David Archuleta fall this week? I'm sure there is plenty of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame crap that is suitable for young Archuleta. Anyway, I'll be watching much later tonight, so carry on without me.

"Thank you so much for reminding me that I wrote a couple of good lines."

Said Leonard Cohen to Lou Reed. It was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last night.

A bigger deal, of course, was made of Madonna, who gave a long speech that included a lot of thanking, and she's done so well she can thank anyone who did anything in any relationship to her, like the "ones that said I was talentless, that I was chubby, that I couldn’t sing, that I was a one-hit wonder. They pushed me to be better, and I am grateful for their resistance." Thank you for providing the contrast that makes my greatness all the more apparent.