Edge of '19

I may be a little late in commenting on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees for 2019, but better late than never.  This may be the last time you hear from me about anything for awhile, because my area of the country is under a severe-weather threat (although nothing as severe as yesterday's weather in Texas is expected), so that usually means a power and/or cable outage, and I've been getting too many of those lately.

Right.  The class of 2019 was as musically diverse as always, I guess, but there's only one black artist among them - a woman, and it's no one like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, or Labelle's Nona Hendryx - who made some records that sound more like prog and heavy rock than the sort of dance music associated with performers of her race and her sex.  It's someone who does make the sort of dance music associated with performers of her race and her sex.  Proving once again that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame doesn't seem to know what "rock" really is, and being politically correct is more important than musically focused.  Oh well, here are my takes on each inductee:

The Cure.  Robert Smith is God.  So I've been led to understand.  The Cure are edgy, to be sure, and the fact that they've never been hitmakers in the Top 40 sense and the fact also that they rarely get any radio play show that they have that rock and roll attitude.  So, yeah, this is a no-brainer.

Def Leppard.  This is the most indefensible induction this year.  Def Leppard were a hack metal band that came up with songs misogynistic enough to embarrass Brian Johnson, played with more flash than with substance (think of them as a heavy-metal Duran Duran), and clownishly aped their name from Led Zeppelin (not to mention the medieval obsession), and Joe Elliott's imitation of Robert Plant was hardly a sincere form of flattery.  If  any band was indicative of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's penchant for awarding mediocrity over artistic integrity.

Janet Jackson.  You know what I'm gonna say about her, don't ya?  Okay, I'm not saying Janet Jackson isn't a good singer or anything, and I agree that she's a first-rate entertainer, but so is Barbra Streisand, and no one is urging that the Rock and Roll of Fame induct her.  Janet Jackson's music has a good beat and you can dance to it, but it still isn't rock.  Good grief, her brother Michael made more records worthy of being called rock, and he did it so effortlessly.  Now, I know that some Janet Jackson fans consider her the Queen, and they're not going to like anything I've said against her Rock Hall induction, but guess what? I don't care.  The fact that she's sampled America riffs doesn't impress me - in fact, it shows how clueless she is - I mean, she thinks America is rock?  And they shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame either (and aren't, last time I checked).

Stevie Nicks.  Another no-brainer.  Stevie Nicks proved herself as a solo rock artist with her monumental 1981 album Bella Donna, which featured the classic "Edge of Seventeen" and also cast male LA rockers Tom Petty and Don Henley in subservient roles in their duets with her.  She's the best white female American singer of her time, and she is in complete control of her career.  Like Janet Jackson, but more of a rocker. 

Radiohead.  No contest.  They belong in the Rock Hall for bringing back prog from the dead after so many awful art rock bands killed it with their pretentiousness.  Radiohead are the smartest and most innovative prog band since Pink Floyd,  and they honor the prog genre as much as Floyd did.

Roxy Music.  They definitely deserve to be in.  Roxy Music were art rock in much different way than Pink Floyd or Yes, adding a dash of chic production and cool sophistication to their smart playing, and Bryan Ferry is one of the most compelling vocalists in all of rock.  Never heard Roxy Music?  Imagine New Romantic flair with some jazz-rock sensibilities and a little bit of  soul, and you get the idea. 

The Zombies.  The only question as to why the Zombies were inducted in 2019 is why they weren't inducted sooner.  "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" are still infectious and enjoyable examples of sixties British Invasion rock, and they definitely had a sound all their own.

So, okay, not a bad class of inductees, but not a great one either.  I'm not going to complain about the usual snubs that persist annually, because all of my complaints are useless . . . except to say that, now that I have satellite radio, I couldn't help but notice how the broadcasts from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland almost never seem to include certain acts that get routinely snubbed by not even being nominated.  I think the Hall's directors have made themselves clear about those acts. 

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was originally established to honor rock and roll performers but has since gone on to include performers representing a variety of pop styles.  Whatever.

Foreign Music Affairs

In a music world dominated by so much American hip-hop and dance pop, I was certainly surprised to find out that The Suburbs, an ambitious album from the Montreal band Arcade Fire, had won the 2011 Album of the Year Grammy. Yes, I have heard Arcade Fire's music. Their work is very sharp an acerbic, with a lot of heart. That's why I can't believe they won the Album of the Year Grammy. Alternative rock bands from Canada aren't supposed to win such prestigious mainstream awards. Even though band founder Win Butler and his brother William are in fact Americans, just the fact that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences would nominate a band from across the border is news to me. I got to thinking that the only non-American pop act anyone cares about these days is Canada's Justin Bieber. It turns out, in fact, the the United States is one of many countries where The Suburbs hit number one on the charts.

The British haven't done so badly at the Grammys in recent years either. Although it was taken for granted that Robert Plant and American Alison Krauss would win the 2009 Album of the Year Grammy for Raising Sand, because the veteran Plant is popular with NARAS voters, I wonder how many people saw this coming at the 2009 ceremony - soul singer Adele winning the Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal awards on the basis of her single "Chasing Pavements," a song with a title that doesn't make sense in American English. (The word "pavement" is Britspeak for "sidewalk;" Adele was comparing the pursuit of a broken relationship to chasing an empty sidewalk.) It's also worth noting that two British bands that have been lucky to click with American audiences, Coldplay and Radiohead, have also been Grammy winners, with the record sales to back them up.

The past decade has been a mixed one for non-American pop acts, especially the Brits. The veteran rock critic Dave Marsh, noting the domination of American acts on the U.S. charts in the mid-eighties with the Brits were represented by poseurs such as Duran Duran or grizzled veterans such as Phil Collins, declared at the time, "British rock has never been so irrelevant." Wonder what he thought of the first decade of the new century? For awhile, unless he was Chris Martin or Thom Yorke, a British rocker couldn't get arrested in America. British bands like the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand were winning accolades in their homeland even as their names drew blanks here; in America, Arctic Monkeys may just as well have referred to missing links and Franz Ferdinand may very well have been the Austrian archduke whose assassination sparked World War I. (I'm kidding, of course; Americans know next to nothing about evolution or world history.) And were we really paying attention to Amy Winehouse for her music?

The Arctic Monkeys supposedly released one of the greatest albums of all time (so a U.K. music poll insisted) when they issued Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not in 2006. We Yanks responded with a collective "Yeah, right" by getting that album no higher than number 24 on the Billboard charts. And Franz Ferdinand's 2005 album You Could Have It So Much Better didn't have it much better than 378,000 copies sold in the States in its first three years on release. (Their 2004 debut album only got up to number 32 here.) But Coldplay and Radiohead have kept the flame alight (another British word there) for British pop in America, and Adele seems to be poised to succeed on a much bigger scale than Amy Winehouse could ever have dreamed, now that her second album is coming out. ("Chasing Pavements" only got up to number 21 on the Billboard singles charts, but that could only be because too many Americans didn't know what the heck she was talking about.)

I've complained about the sun setting on the British musical empire here before, and I'm under no allusion that U.K. performers are going to reclaim for rock and roll American audiences lost to rap and Lady Gaga. Nor do I even believe that even British dance popsters could succeed in America on a big scale. Or, for that matter, British rappers. Hip-hop by nature is vulgar, narcissistic, and ill-mannered, which is why we Americans are so much better at it. But the recent accomplishments of British performers, coupled with those of their Commonwealth brethren in Canada (I'm not talking about Justin Bieber here), proves that, despite the nationalistic way of thinking Americans have gone back to with regard to popular culture, there's still an audience here open to non-American popular music.

Even if we still insist foreigners have to sing in English to have a hit here.

Wonder how long it will take Adele to stop writing songs with titles like "Chasing Pavements?" :-O