Music Appreciation
Related: About this forumThe Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Should Not Exist
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Should Not Exist
(Last year, the Rolling Stones went on a tour sponsored by AARP.)
https://www.culturefanaticse.com/2025/01/02/the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-should-not-exist/
On New Year’s Day, while looking for something to watch, I came across a channel with a loud, gray-haired British guy in a nice suit and a scarf bellowing about something or other. I assumed that I had turned to CNN and was watching its ebullient, occasionally shouty business and aviation correspondent, Richard Quest. I wasn’t even close: It was Roger Daltrey of the Who, and he was excitedly introducing the new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Peter Frampton in a condensed version of the October ceremony.
Frampton’s music was, for a moment in the 1970s, the soundtrack to my misspent teenage nights; on the broadcast, Keith Urban joined him to perform his megahit “Do You Feel Like We Do,” and I remembered every word. And Frampton seems like a man who is genuinely loved by his peers. It was a nice moment. But when 80-year-old Daltrey—who, at 21, famously sang, “Hope I die before I get old”—is introducing a man whose biggest hits were produced nearly 50 years ago, it’s a reminder that the entire Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concept is utterly wrongheaded.
As the saying goes, good writers borrow, and great writers steal. I was once a professor, however, and professors give attribution, so let me rely on John Strausbaugh, who wrote a wonderful 2001 jeremiad against Boomer music nostalgia, Rock ’Til You Drop, to explain why the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame shouldn’t exist: Because it’s “as true to the spirit of rock’n’roll as a Hard Rock Cafe—one in which there are way too many children and you can’t get a drink.”
-SNIP-
Strasbaugh winces especially hard at the Rock Hall tradition of “honoring” classic acts by “dragging their old butts out onto a stage” and then making them “go through the motions one more time” as they pretend to feel the music the same way they did when they were kids. Writing almost 25 years ago, he said that the Rolling Stones were way past their retirement clock, and that Cher in her late-1990s performances “was so stiff in her makeup and outfits, that she looked like a wax effigy of herself.”
-SNIP-
I am sometimes blistered on social media for my bad music takes, and I will confess that with some exceptions, I didn’t really develop much of a taste in music beyond the Beatles, Billy Joel, and Top 40 ear candy until I was in college. (My musical soul was saved, or at least improved, by the old WBCN in Boston and by my freshman-dorm neighbor at Boston University, who introduced me to Steely Dan.) But you don’t need a refined taste in music to cringe when a bunch of worthies from the music industry assemble each year to make often nonsensical choices about what constitutes “rock and roll” and who did it well enough to be lionized for the ages. Look, I sort of like some of those old Cher hits from the ’70s—“Train of Thought” is an underrated little pop gem, in my view—but Cher as an inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? If she, and Bobby Darin, and the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Woody Guthrie, and Willie Nelson are all “rock,” what isn’t?
-SNIP-
Last year, the Rolling Stones went on a tour sponsored by AARP.

Omnipresent
(6,785 posts)Who will be the last to be inducted…Tiny Tim?
Fiendish Thingy
(19,023 posts)marble falls
(64,294 posts)... is worth more than the band.
FakeNoose
(37,045 posts)The bands that are in the Hall of Fame belong there, or most of them do anyway. But these bands are getting old and there are no new Rock N Roll bands coming up to take their place. It seems that anybody under 40 who gets up on stage with a microphone is trying to do hip-hop or rap these days. That's mostly what I see on Saturday Night Live, is some version of hip-hop.
The Rock N Roll Hall of Fame needs to start up a "Rock University" to teach these kids how to make great music.
"Why aren't there any GOOD younger bands out there?"
because music in general died 20 years ago..... maybe even before that.
marble falls
(64,294 posts)thucythucy
(8,830 posts)I'm always looking for new music to appreciate.
Here's one of my newer faves:
Although I don't know if this is "rock and roll." Then again, many of the Hall of Famers would hardly seem to qualify either.
Best wishes.
marble falls
(64,294 posts)thucythucy
(8,830 posts)I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Best wishes.
Omnipresent
(6,785 posts)Like Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Hollie, Little Richard, Richie Valens.
Basso8vb
(801 posts)Only non-musicians would think this way.
marble falls
(64,294 posts)... coil cable, roll amps, drive the van. No music for me, either?
ProfessorGAC
(72,137 posts)Performed around 2,000 times. Multiple instruments.
I generally agree with the article.
I think excellent performances at the RR HOF induction are a distinct minority. Mostly they're pedestrian, which is anathema to a Hall Of Fame.
I don't believe they're serious about the music because the mix is almost always rotten. Not HOF worthy fir sure.
It's morphed in a pop music concept. Which is fine, but it isn't rock.
It's just a museum now.
Figarosmom
(4,999 posts)Shouldn't they have enough of a catalog of hits to rate?
And it is meant to be a tourist attraction so they induct the bands and singers they believe will bring the tourists. Ala Cher, she still sells out large venues and her book right now is #1 on the NYTs list without some right wing machine buying them up to bump its rating up.
I think the artists and the audience really enjoy it.
I do wonder why BOSTON still is not inducted though