Longshots and Critical Darlings

In linguistics, there are two main schools of thought. Prescriptivists would say that “alright” is unacceptable, since it should be “all right.” Descriptivists would say “alright” is… fine, because so many people have used it for so long, it has become acceptable. 

So the question is… what is the purpose of the Rock Hall? To tell people which rock acts are important, or to reflect which acts the people themselves already think are important?

Since its very inception, the Rock Hall has been about prescription, not description. It is run by experts, we are told, who really know which acts are really important for us to know about and listen to.

And that’s fine. After all, the acts that are on the radio and loudspeakers in public places and in superhero movie soundtracks… you already know about those. They are easy to find out about. You don’t have to attend a class or visit a museum— just sit down, turn on the closest music-playing tech, and there they are.

If museums serve a function at all, it’s to educate. And that means telling you things you don’t know, and can’t learn from the TV and radio.

If they serve another function, it’s to preserve history. In pop-culture, “history” is last week. Come on, name last year’s winner for Best Picture at the Oscars.

There is a story about a boy on an archaeological dig in the Middle East. He excitedly shows the dig’s leader a pottery shard he found, with some writing on it. “Nice,” says the leader. “That’s 200 years old.” The boy gets even more excited, until the leader says, “You can keep it. We’re looking for things that are 2,000 years old.”

But this not rock science, it’s rock music, which has been around less time than some people still living. Still, even music that’s 25 years old is… “old” in music terms.

Once, in the mid-’00s, my own wife referred to a 1980’s song as “old.” I took umbrage; I listen to that era’s music, but also jazz and blues from the 1930s, folk music that’s even older, and classical that’s older yet. “No,” I said, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic is an ‘old’ song. That song on the radio is younger than you, and I am not married to an ‘old’ woman.”

So it’s important to tell people about music they don’t know, whether it’s because it was always obscure, only popular among a certain group of people, or— gasp— made before they were born!

On the other hand, if the Rock Hall did not induct bands people know, they wouldn’t sell any tickets. It’s a balance.

There is a book I have called The Rock Snob’s Dictionary. I suppose I am to a degree a musical snob. But because I am, I can introduce my kids to music their friends can’t. I know what songs the songs on the radio sampled, or plagiarized, from. When my kid doesn’t recognize, say, a sitar in a song, I can tell him that’s what it is.

It’s the job of the experts in the Hall to tell us what, and who, we don’t know, not to just echo what’s popular. “Fame” runs both ways. It can be a “hall of the already-famous,” or a “the famous-because-they-are-in-the-Hall.”

A TV station once advertised the reruns they broadcast by saying, “If you haven’t seen an episode, it’s new to you!” even if it is, you know, old. And education is about what’s new to you, even of it is “already knew” to others.

So there should be at least one inductee every year that makes people go, “Who?” Because the next step after that can be, “Well, if they got in, they must be pretty good! I’m gonna go check ’em out.” Which is when the preservation and education happen.

And that’s pretty damn alright.

Update: Todd Rundgren got Inducted in 2021.