This year’s nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced, drumroll please. U2, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, The Pretenders, Randy Newman and The O’Jays are among the acts nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five are the first rap act to be nominated for the Rock Hall, according to LiveDaily. Other new contenders for the class of 2005 include the J. Geils Band, Buddy Guy, Conway Twitty, Percy Sledge and Wanda Jackson. Previous nominees also up for the nod and who are inexplicably still left out are The Sex Pistols, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Patti Smith and The Stooges. Who are these people that vote? Skynyrd not in? I would put Rossington-Collins in if I could vote.
Some other notables not even making the ballot are Black Sabbath, overlooked for the 10th year since becoming eligible and Van Halen, which became eligible in 2003. Hasn’t Eddie Van Halen single-handedly sent about 10 million kids into guitar lessons so they could shred “Eruption” over the past 25 years? Where’s the love?
Final word on the ballots comes in December when the Rock Hall will announce which of the new nominees will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in its’ January gala held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in NYC. Earlier this year, Prince, the late George Harrison, Bob Seger, ZZ Top, Jackson Browne, Traffic and The Dells were inducted.
