In the Fringes… Not in the Hall

A page in a sociology textbook shows two photos— one of businesspeople in suits and ties, and one of hippies in fringed vests and bellbottom jeans. The caption for both?

“Conformity.”

Even nonconformists tend to conform… to each other. They rebel in the same way, forming their own norms. As my college roommate, who showed me the textbook, put it, “What if I totally believed everything the hippies did, but felt most comfortable in a rugby shirt and khakis? Wouldn’t that be truly rebellious?”

How many acts in the Rock Hall are truly like no other, in the Hall or outside it? Yes, many acts are unique, but they still fall within certain parameters.

Their songs have verses and choruses. And a 2/4 or 4/4 beat. And they use guitars, basses, drums, and keys.

Truly “out there” acts, where the music— not just the fashions— stretch the boundaries of what “music” even is? Not so much.

I can think of only a couple of acts in the Hall like this, whose music is abstract, unpredictable, left-field… just plain weird.

Then again, maybe such acts don’t belong in a hall of fame. Maybe the simple fact of their incomprehensible unapproachability keeps them being niche acts with relatively few, if ardent, fans.

Still, it would be nice to have a few more of the most influential ones in there. Putting some more in the Hall would certainly raise the profile of those artists…

And what is rock music, if not a series of sounds that raise an eyebrow or two?

Update: In 2023 eyebrow-raiser Missy Elliott was Inducted as a performer. 

Piano Rolls (and Rocks)

Let’s face it— the primary instrument of rock music is, and has been for a while now, the electric guitar. 

It’s not the only music you can play on that instrument, and other instruments can play rock… but few things are as associated with each other as rock is with the electric guitar. If you were cataloging recordings by genre, using universally recognized icons and symbols, you’d use an electric guitar-shaped label for the rock albums.

But yes, pianos have been used to make rock music— and make music rock— from the get-go. Plenty of rockstars, including Rock Hall inductees, use it as their primary instrument. And plenty of others, whose main instrument is the electric guitar, will “bring it down a bit” in concert by plinking out a plaintive ballad on the ol’ ivories.

I’m not saying that the Rock Hall needs to induct more piano players, or start prioritizing them. Well, I am implying that. And I do think it would be nice to acknowledge just how much rock music has been made on these instruments.

It just might induce the Hall to take another look at synth-led bands… in my dreams…

Perhaps, the next time the Hall looks for a “special exhibit” topic, it can spotlight the piano and all of the Inductees-- and Early Influences-- who have rocked the house with, well, the instrument that uses as much lumber as the house.

Seriously, wouldn’t you like to see, and hear, a history of rock ’n’ roll piano? I’d watch that documentary and buy its box set.

https://digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_keyboard.html

Update: Billy Preston was inducted with an Award for Musical Excellence in 2021, and also that year keyboard-based band Kraftwerk was inducted as an Early Influence (in a later genre: electronic music).

Then in 2022, Duran Duran was Inducted, as was Lionel Richie, who plays piano when he plays something, and composes on piano regardless.

In 2023, keyboardist Al Kooper was inducted for Musical Excellence, which is good because he belongs in, and that's how he belongs in. 

Can Rock be… Smart?

Rock ’n’ is party music, and the Rock Hall is totally fine with that. And as long as the party keeps going, it kind of doesn’t matter what the lyrics are. They can even address a political issue, make a point, or “send a message.”

And, as long as— and the kid in American Bandstand says— “it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it,” it’s all well and good.

But then there are the acts that prize brain over beat. And for those acts, the Rock Hall, well, takes a beat.

No doubt, there is tremendous literature-type brainpower among the Hall’s inductees as they stand. Some have been compared to, and even are, published poets. One has won the Nobel Prize for Literature!

But there are an equal number of such acts who have not gotten in… yet.

Again, nothing against straightforward lyrics. Sometimes a simple lyric is very powerful, and surprisingly hard to craft.

Also, nothing against nonsense lyrics. I have a dream to collect all the nonsense lyrics in one book; it could even spin off into a game in which players had to guess which na-na-na-na or sh-boom or shang-a-lang came from which song.

But it seems that only one, or maybe zero, poetic— OK, fine: “nerdy”— lyricist gets in a year. Meanwhile, many more wait to get picked. As nerds are used to doing.

Out of the 100 greatest songwriters in rock history, many (while eligible) are not yet in the Rock Hall:
https://www.rollingstone.com/interactive/lists-100-greatest-songwriters/

Update: Thinky performers Kraftwerk and Gil Scott-Heron were inducted as Early Influences in 2021. 

Singer-but-not-songwriter

 Insane as it may seem, there is a book titled How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll. Also, the song “American Pie” insists that “the music” died when Buddy Holly did. In 1959.

In the book, the author explains that rock was written by pros and sung by teenagers who could sing but not write songs. That has been the template for pretty much forever, with one group of people composing and another group performing. True for pop, jazz, gospel, and much of classical. Even much of folk music was performances of traditional, older material. Some people did perform their own work, of course, but the real idea was to hand that part of the job to the experts-- the same why an architect did not build the house, nor did the carpenters ink the blueprints. Two separate jobs.

Then along came The Beatles and ruined everything by knowing how to sing and write their own songs! Now, neither those non-singing composers nor those non-composing singers could get work!

Well, the Rock Hall kinda wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, they honor those Brill Building songwriters who, pre-Beatles, wrote and composed the rock music of the 1950s, as Ertegun (previously “Non-Performer”) winners.

On the other, they almost entirely induct Performers who write their own material. Only maybe 20 or so— of 200+ acts inducted as Performers— predominantly performed what was handed to them.

So… where are the rest of those? All those non-singing songwriters wrote all those songs for someone to sing. If it was OK to write but not sing... why is not OK to sing but not write?

And it’s not true that all of such acts are pre-Beatles. Some of them are Motown acts. Even some major rock acts were more vocal interpreters than writers.

Which is fine. It’s just strange that not being able to write songs doesn’t disqualify you from being inducted…

…until it does.

Update: Tina Turner, who to my knowledge did not pen her hits, was Inducted in 2021.  

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. 

Don’t Know Where I’m Goin’…

A “long, strange trip” down a “long and winding road” may be great to sing about. But if your music resembles that, don’t expect to be inducted into the Rock Hall. 

The Hall tends to favor music that is melodic, structured, and direct. There are very few inductees that indulge in meandering musical exploration— prog rock, jazz-rock, jam bands, and the like.

Guitar solos seem fine, as long as they are short. And a jam or two in the course of a concert is also acceptable.

But don’t commit those to record, or expect them to be played on the radio, or make them a regular part of your identity… and then expect to be inducted.

A long song or two in your catalog might be OK, but again, the song should be highly structured and melodically predictable. No noodling and doodling for them.

"TL;DR" is Internet-speak for “Too Long; Didn’t Read.” Except for the Hall, for whom it stands for “Too Long; Don’t Regard.”

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/jazz/jazz-musicians-look-to-rock-n-roll-hall-of-fame-for-inspiration/

Did We Run Out of Early Influences Already?

As with the Non-Performers/Ertegun Award, the Hall seems to have lost steam in giving out the Early Influences Award.

It was given every year, from the inaugural year— 1986— to 2000.

Then, not for nine years, until 2009. It can be understood if, during that time, people just assumed that anyone worth receiving it already had.

But then, they started giving it again… every three years, for some reason: 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018…

In fairness, it is potentially possible to run out of people who one can say both lived before rock music was a “thing” and also contributed to its development. Reasonably speaking, they would have had to be active between 1920 (the early days of blues and jazz) and 1950, probably in the US… and have not just performed, but likely recorded and been broadcast somewhat widely.

Still, it’s hard to fathom that-- even with those narrow parameters-- only 33 people qualify.

Rock pulls from so many other genres, and in so many ways. Rock is not just about the music— it’s about stage presence, dance moves, costuming, vocal inflections, and that rock attitude and energy that electrify.

Certainly, we can look across a three-decade span in one of the most musically fertile places in world history and come up with someone every year to who contributed to rock music.

I have an idea. The Hall began inductions in 1986, and as of this post's first posting, it has inducted the class of 2020. That’s 34 years of inductions. And, as of 2020, there are 33 Early Influencers.

So let’s call that “close enough for jazz” and just say that the Hall has inducted, at least on average, one Early Influence per year.

How’s about, then, going forward, they induct one more Early Influence every year, to keep the average going… until they really run out.

https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/11/53debedacc4690/rock-roll-hall-of-fame-20-earl.html

Update: in 2022, they Inducted music preservationist Elizabeth Cotten, who like Pete Seeger kept the old songs alive by always singing them. 

In 2023, Link Wray, an early rocker, was inducted as an Earl Influence after multiple nominations.

“Later” Influences

It is one of the impressive things about the Rock Hall, that it recognizes that the music it honors did not come from nowhere. Its “Early Influences” category honors just that— the roots of rock.

Thus far, these influences have been shown to be blues, country, folk, gospel, jazz, doo-wop… everything from New Orleans stride to Western swing. One notable exception is classical; not a few inductees incorporated classical themes, modes, and even specific pieces into their music, sometimes their entire oeuvres (how’s that for classical?).

Wouldn’t it be something to see Bach or Beethoven inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

In any case, other genres didn’t stop influencing rock, once it got going. Artists emerged in the late 1960s and since who, while not rock, were borrowed from by rock. 

Since they weren't "early" influences, they can't go in that category. They were "later" influences...

Now, the Hall recognizes this, and inducts such artists as… Performers. But some of them are so far away from rock that— unlike rap or country— they don’t even fall under the overall banner of “popular music.” I mean, jazz, classical, movie scores, and modern and experimental music (like what Philip Glass does).

There are already enough categories, but I wonder if these artists don’t belong in the catch-all “Musical Excellence” category, instead of taking some of the precious few slots available each year for Inductees who play, y'know, rock 'n' roll.

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/pop-songs-sample-based-on-classical-music/

Update: The Hall seems to have really embraced this idea. In 2021, they Inducted two-- Gil Scott-Heron, who was an Early Influence on rap... and Kraftwerk, an Early Influence on electronic music. 

Then in 2022, they Inducted Harry Belafonte, an Early Influence in world music (well, its influence on rock, anyway-- world music had existed for a while). 

In 2023, the Hall inducted DJ Kool Herc, another rap pioneer, into this category, alongside Link Wray, an early rocker.