a moment of silence as we bury the rock hall
I just watched Ohio State play like they belong in the Mid-American Conference, and that’s not even what I’m mad about. For anybody that cares, which I hope is fewer and fewer, the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class was released today (well, technically yesterday), and a few pretty good artists, deserving artists, got in. Patti Smith, the Ronettes, Grandmaster Flash and R.E.M. were all chosen to enter the hall. The fifth inductee…drum roll please… VAN HALEN!!!! I can hear the arena crowd cheering. Eddie Van Halen has got his guitar with the tiny strings out… he’s overplaying the worst “thank you” solo ever created to a crowd including Todd Rundgren, the Stooges and everybody else who deserves it more than him. We all own “1984″ and like “Hot For Teacher” but c’mon… it’s VAN HALEN.
I have no idea why I am so mad about this. There are plenty of dumb groups in the hall of fame that shouldn’t have made it off AM radio. If you walk through the hall museum in Cleveland, you can tell it’s only meant to showcase the superficial — gaudy teen pop costumes, Michael Jackson bobble heads, Jim Morrison’s dental floss and whatever else they can get their hands on — to cop a few bucks from people who happened upon Cleveland by luck or bad calculation. When it comes to music, the rock hall doesn’t need a museum, just a listening library. As far as I know, they don’t have one of those open to the public. But that doesn’t matter, because most of the people interested in something as arbitrary as the Rock Hall aren’t as interested in music. They do like Van Halen, though.
new stuff
If you look underneath the heading “Listening right now” in the sidebar of this site, you’ll see a list of the songs I’ve been hearing lately…pretty nifty.
