If you are a person that follows rock music history even a little bit, you more than likely know The Stooges. The wild racket they made with their instruments and the aggressive stage presence of their lead man, Iggy Pop, was completely at odds with the flower power, hippie love of the late 1960s. They spit in the face of convention, along the way spawning the rock sub-genre known now as punk.
The Stooges were ground breakers, revolutionaries in a revolutionary time and with songs like “Raw Power”, “Search and Destroy” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, they birthed a million punk and metal bands. So, it’s a no brainer that they should be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right?…
Wrong.
Apparently, the powers that be (headed up by Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner) felt that The Stooges do not merit inclusion into this year’s class, a full forty-two years after the band’s debut album (rules state that a band must wait at least twenty-five years after their debut for consideration) and only days after original guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead at his Ann Arbor, Michigan home.
There are a few in the class of 2009 that do, in my mind, belong in The Hall. Heavy Metal gods Metallica, rockabilly princess Wanda Jackson and rap giants Run DMC do fit here. I will deduct one point from Run DMC’s credibility however for inadvertently giving the world rap-rock acts like Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit and Korn.
But honestly, do we really need to see Jeff Beck inducted a second time? (His first time was as a member of The Yardbirds). Or Bobby Womack and the doo wop of Little Anthony and The Imperials over The Stooges? I know these are opinion and judgment calls, but being asked to become a member of The Hall has gone from being a great honor to being about as important as winning a Day Time Emmy for Best Bra Stuffing.
Until the old bastards on the selection committee either die off or wake up and see the error of their ways, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be the most exclusive joke of all time. When it comes time to consider acts like Husker Du, Nirvana, The Minutemen, The Cure, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Nick Drake and
But hey, at least we’ve got ABBA, Barry Manilow, Supertramp, STYX, Dokken and Rick Springfield to look forward to, right?
Related:
January 16th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I was actually surprised to see that Abba weren’t already in. They deserve it if Madonna does (and she does).
Also, any important British act of the last 30 years better just forget about it – Joy Division . New Order, the Cure, Depeche Mode, the Smiths, etc etc, have a better chance of getting to Cleveland than the proverbial camel through the needle’s eye.
Not to mention Captain Beefheart or Kraftwek.
Nirvana will undoubtedly make it, along with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and maybe the Stone Temple Pilots, because they sold a shitpile of records. They let in the Ramones, the Clash, Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads, after all, and even tried to induct the Sex Pistols, but they at least had the good sense to burn the invitation.