The Groove Music Life

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees’ list for 2011 officially came out yesterday, although it started to leak the night before (Handsome Dick Manitoba had caught wind of Darlene Love being one of the inductees and proudly announced it on his Facebook page).

No beef with any of the nominees here. Tom Waits? Interesting left field choice – most people probably know Tom from songs that he’s written that other people have covered (“Downtown Train” as done by Rod Stewart, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” via The Ramones, “Ol’ 55” on the Eagles’ first album) than for some of his eclectic (but never out of print) solo albums like Small Change and Swordfishtrombones. Neil Diamond? I’ve heard a few whines from people who can’t get the image of him in the remake of The Jazz Singer, his 70’s adult-contempoary-leaning material or his regular, Vegas/revue-like concert performances out of their mind, but he’s a stellar songwriter with an undeniable track record – and his Bang Records material definitely qualifies as rock, as it did when it was first released in the mid-60’s. Alice Cooper? Not just Al himself, but the entire original band? Influential to both metal and punk, a real no brainer.

As usual when the nominees and inductees are announced, of course, there’s going to be a serious amount of whiners over who got picked and who got passed over. And nobody is whining more than fans of Kiss and Rush.

Let’s get Rush out of the way first. Their time will come – but it can wait. King Crimson and Yes, both of whom blazed trails that Rush were barely starting to copy when they recorded their first record, haven’t been inducted yet, and both bands are long overdue to get in. Hell, King Crimson still blaze trails every time they put a fucking CD out! Rush shouldn’t get in until the two bands that INVENTED progressive rock get in first. Simple as that.

Kiss, on the other hand… a few years ago, I would have agreed with the complaints about their being left out of the Rock Hall. Now, I couldn’t care less.

Quite frankly, Kiss and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame do not deserve each other.

Yes, I first picked up a guitar (as did hundreds of thousands of other kids, many of whom have become guitar heroes themselves) because of Ace Frehley. I owe him that. His 1978 solo album and his most recent album Anomaly are both pure genius, and the man’s talent as a guitarist and songwriter is both underrated and impeccable. And Paul Stanley is a blueprint for rock frontmen and quite a good songwriter himself.

Beyond that… forget it.

Kiss started out as a band, but once their glory days stated to peak around 1977-78 with all manner of merchandising, that’s when things started to crumble. Gene Simmons started paying less attention to his songwriting and bass playing and more attention to the topic of what can he slap the band’s (or in recent years, his own) name on to make a buck?

Yesterday, when the RHOF inductees were announced, Gene Simmons made an announcement of his own: He announced the release of… a new Kiss Kasket. One with the “scab” members of the band, space deuce Tommy Thayer and kitten Eric Singer, plastered on it along with Paul and Gene.

A lot of Kiss fans were pissed off at that development… until they heard that Kiss didn’t make the cut for the RHOF again.

Admittedly, the first Kiss Kasket was a punchline that fans were more than ready to forgive Gene Simmons for. Shameless as it was (and still is), Gene’s tongue-in-cheek remarks about the product seemed to have lightened the levity of the situation… at least until Dimebag Darrell was assassinated on 12.8.04, which led Simmons, in a rare show of generosity, to donate a Kiss Kasket to the Abbott family for Dime to be buried in. (Of course, Gene had to get a bit revisionist a few years down the line and boast that the band’s faces were tattooed on Dime’s chest – even though it is public knowledge that only Ace’s face is there!)

I would sooner argue that Ace Frehley should be inducted – as a solo artist. He’s been eligible since 2003, 25 years after his first solo album came out. He was the most influential and most talented member of the band, and his solo albums have been cause for celebration amongst rock fans every time he puts a new album out.

The new Kiss Kasket is an insult, though – and now, so is any idea that Kiss should be in the Rock Hall. The Marketing Hall of Fame would be more fitting. Gene Simmons and the Kiss Army should take a Kiss Kasket and bury the idea of Kiss getting into the Rock Hall for good.

And speaking of those armchair quarterbacks who complain about who’s ever been inducted or nominated… “Rock and Roll” is a very broad musical term, but from the complaints of most of these self-appointed experts, you would think there had to be a minimum amount of distortion on the electric guitars before something could qualify as rock, or that using horns, keyboards, or a different style of lead vocal were disqualifications. None of this is true. Look at many of the early, almost obligatory inductees to the Rock Hall: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf… none of these artists were plugging solid-body electric guitars into Marshall stacks. Shit, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis played piano, not guitar, and they still rocked.

One should also be reminded that Rock and Roll, as wide of a genre is, is still part of a wider genre called pop music. Many writers of the day considered the likes of Elvis and the Beatles, and their contemporaries, to be pop artists (same thing with Frank Sinatra years before Elvis) – rock was still an almost verboten term to most people. Yet, who are the first three legendary artists your average rock icon will give props to? Right.

Rap music came out of rock and roll – so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Grandmaster Flash and Run-DMC have been inducted in recent years, or that the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J have been nominated. Yet some people will run to their computers and whine about their inclusion, Whether they admit it or not, it’s often for closeted racist reasons – I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these same idiots buy into the “birther” conspiracies that have been thrown at President Obama since day one.

“If I had a say in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…” the typical rant goes every time a nomination or inductee list is announced. And then said ranter proceeds to reveal why they should never have a say! That, my friends, says it all.