Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

I grew up a several hours away from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. I have been there as a kid and in turn I have brought my children there. It is really a wonderful museum and if you are a fan of the game it is a must-see-vacation stop for you and your family.

I have also been to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio a couple of times as well. I really enjoyed my visits there I as love football almost as much as I love baseball. There is something to be said about both places. When you are in the actual Halls where the athletes and other inductees are honored you feel like you are there with them in person. All of their accomplishments and gargantuan feats are listed and it is there as plain as plain can be for the visitor to drink in.

The numbers are concrete and the standards were set by the early figures in each sport, only to be broken and reset by those who have come after them. While there are certain players, currently playing, in each sport who I would love to see in their respective Halls of Fame (HoF) their induction doesn't come down to some sentimental nod to them but it comes down to their numbers. Do they have the numbers to get in? It is that cut and dried, as well it should be. That is why those HoF (and I am sure that it is the same with the HoF for Pro Basketball and Pro Hockey though I have never been to either) are places of honor and respect for those few people who have a plague or a bust in there.

I remember back in the mid 1980s when I heard that there would be a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I thought to myself, "How the heck can you have that, and why would you want to have that and what Rocker would agree to be admitted to such a place?" The reason that I thought this was that HoF are Establishment. They represent rules and procedures and everything that Rock and Roll is against. HoF represent the Man and Rock used to be about stickin' it to the man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was from the movie The School of Rock but it is nonetheless true and that movie was spot on about what Rock used to be, what it should be, and what it is no more.

I am amazed to see the Rock and Roll (RAR) HoF inductees speak about how they feel honored to be a part of such a place. It makes me gag to see so many Rockers sellout and put on a tuxedo and go and pay homage to the Man. It is a joke and a sham created to sell memorabilia, to make money and many Rockers have sold out to that idea. They have become fat, drunk, and lazy on their own spoils that they have forgotten about the music! THE MUSIC! It reminds me of the closing scene from George Orwell's Animal Farm where the pigs and the humans are all sitting around the table sharing a meal and the other animals stood outside looking in at the scene and they went from face to face looking at the pigs and humans and they could not tell who was pig and who was human. The pigs had become exactly what they were against at the beginning, they had become exactly what they told the other animals were their enemies. They had sold out! Far too many Rockers have become Establishment. Swine. Pigs.

I do tip my hat to the Sex Pistols who in 2006 refused to attend their induction ceremony calling the HOF," a piss stain" and saying in a hand written note that, "We're not coming. We're not your monkeys, so what?" I respect that kind of integrity.

Another thing that irks me is that there is a difference with the numbers of athletes compared to the influence of musicians. By that I mean how does one factor in who is worthy or not to be in the RAR HOF? Is it based on record sales? That would be said and mean that money is the bottom line to induction. Is it popularity? Is it how well the musicians played their instruments, sang their songs, drank the booze, or destroyed a hotel? What is the criteria?

You see music is subjective while athletic statistics are objective. Who can honestly say that Led Zeppelin is better than The Who? Both bands are great and when I was younger I would have said it was The Who, but as I have aged I have come to respect The Zep as one of the finest Rock and Roll bands that has ever existed. Yet, all of that is just my opinion and while there are many others who might agree with me it is still just opinion and not fact. Whether we like it or not, and whether he cheated through the use of steroids the fact is that Barry Bonds has hit more home runs than any other player in Major League Baseball history. Fact is that, in the NFL, no one has thrown more touchdown passes in a career than Brett Favre or in a season than Tom Brady. Those are facts and not subject to debate. Music can never be objective as well it shouldn't be.

So looking at the RAR HoF is looking at some perversion of the music itself. It is a fabricated institute invented to make money and nothing else. I know that I will never go to it, nor will I ever truly respect the rocker who willingly is inducted to it. Their music will have a taint on it, and that saddens me greatly because if you look at the list of inductees there are some great Rockers on it, and some people who are pop/rap/funk icons who have no business being in anything that claims to be Rock and Roll but their presence proves my point that the RAR HoF was never about ROCK AND ROLL. Seriously, Madonna, The Bee Gees, Parliament-Funkadelic, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five? Rockers? Hardly!

So, go if you want. You will never see me there. And that's the name of that tune!

MAC