Does Anybody Really Belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

 ODD!

Doesn't it seem a little odd to have a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?  I mean isn't Rock and Roll partly about rebellion?  It hardly seems rebellious to have a big museum charging 35 dollars a pop  devoted to Rock and Roll.  The other thing odd  is most big Rock Stars already have plenty of fame. TOO MUCH FAME, and TOO MUCH MONEY!. Too much sex and too many drugs. Does Mick Jagger need more fame? Does Bono need more money? Does Gene Simmons need more sex? Ah-no, no and NO!

No that's not true of everybody, not every rock artist is rich and famous. A  lot of the Rock and Roll pioneers, people like Ruth Brown or Solomon Burke, or blues  greats like Buddy Guy are not rich and they haven't been on the cover of People, so heck put them in the  Hall of  Great Ignored, Ripped Off music artists.  In fact, that was the original idea of the founders of the Hall, people like Ahmet Ertegun wanted to recognize all those great rock and roll and soul  artists of the 1950's  that record company owners  like him had ripped off.

So meanwhile, there is still much wringing of hands about whether certain  artists belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  People bitch about who is in, people bitch about who is not in. Some folks  love to bitch about all the non-rock artists who are in the Hall of Fame. Dance music stars like  Madonna or Donna Summer.  These ladies  are  not rock are they? Does  Madonna belong in the Hall? Isn't most  of her stuff is crap? Isn't  she is a  evil, evil person?  True, true.. but just remind yourself  the Material Girl  does have  more hits then the mafia, and  she somehow managed to stay on the radio for 30 years. That must be worth something....

So who does belong?   Should anybody really care? No. But, if we did, in fact, care, we would have to go over it . ANAL-yze IT.  Go over it (yeah we said that).   Who belongs-who doesn't. Sift the wheat from the chaff.

WHO !!!!!!!

There is a lot controversy about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's selection process.  The acts chosen seem to be fairly random, and many of them have somewhat small bodies of work. It seems to me that  you should have more than one albums worth of  quality stuff to be in the rock and roll of fame, but what are you going to do-Bill Haley has  got be in there even if can we only think of two songs that he actually  did.

Many of the acts in the hall of fame are  not even  rock acts. I am actually OK with that since it appears to be the point of of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to celebrate all the music of the Rock Era. But lots of people get all worked up that Hall of Fame leaves out a lot of rock acts in favor of acts from other genres. Why ABBA and not Kiss? Why Laura Nyro and not Motley Crue? Maybe it's because Motley Crue sucks.  Just saying!

I can think of a few acts that I  personally really don't think belong in the hall-Alice Cooper, Grand Master Flash,  Miles Davis,   and Percy Sledge . I thought Miles Davis was Jazz. Oh sure he's done   some fusion shit-but he's JAZZ!!!!!!!!

There are so  many  acts in the hall  that just seem to be  borderline choices  and there  many other borderline acts that are not in the Hall of Fame that could just as well be in there like  The Moody Blues or Chicago.  (Update-these two were finally let in decades after they became eligible).

The problem is the Hall of Fame lets in far too many acts, so many, that many  of the choices seem questionable. What if they did it like the Baseball Hall of Fame, where there were only 2-4 inductees  a year (instead of the 5 to 7 in the rock hall ) , plus a veteran's committee to pick from candidates  snubbed in the   the original voting process.  I mean Roger Maris is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame is he?  NO, NO he is not. One or two great years does not get you into to the baseball Hall of Fame. It's fairly easy to figure out who to put in the Baseball Hall of Fame because you can just compare stats. But if you just go by the stats for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the place would be filled with the likes of Britney Spears, Justin Bieber (if they were   eligible) and Kiss. Oh wait, Kiss is in the Hall of Fame, now. 

If the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had  a lot fewer acts,  people wouldn't wonder why  Blondie is in there and not Kate Bush, because none of the non-consensus acts would be in there.


SNUB!

At least,  now it has gotten a little better. In the past few years , a lot of the long snubbed   acts have been inducted. These are commercially successful (but sometimes not highly esteemed )  acts who have eligible for a long time but who had been snubbed: Kiss, ABBA,  Heart, Hall and Oates, Neil Diamond (maybe they should have just  inducted  the 1960's Neil Diamond) , Linda Ronstadt, and Cat Stevens (remember Fatwa's are OK now) .  In recent years, somebody let fans into the voting process, and that seems to have helped cut down on the bull shit of picking people like the Stooges when nobody can remember anything the Stooges ever did. Now we get the bull shit of picking acts just because they were popular.  

The snubbing process is  sometimes personal. The biggest female rock star of the 1970's -Linda Ronstadt was kept out because Hall of Fame Board member, Jann Wanner didn't like her. It seems she finally got in now-because she has Parkinson's Disease. Wanner is also blamed for personally messing with the voting process and installing Grand Master Flash over the Dave Clark Five, because he said he thought the hall needed at least one hip hop act. Rock Critic Dave Marsh, personally kept Kiss out of the Hall of Fame.  But eventually both of these acts got in

Even now,  the snub list is still long. It's a roll of honor. A badge of honor.  You know a  lot of acts on the snub list have never  even been  nominated. 

The most notable snubs now are the Monkees, ELO, Deep Purple, , Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Journey, Joy Division, Fairport Convention, The Spinners, Kraftwerk, Motley Crue,  Nick Drake Procul Harum, Ozzy Osborne (solo),  , Kate Bush, The Doobie Brothers, Duran Duran, Dire Straits, Bad Company, Depeche Mode, Def Leppard, Jethro Tull, and , but there so many other plausible acts left out as well.

A few acts such as  Mariah Carey , and Whitney Houston, have only been eligible for a few years, and it's to early to say it is a " snub"  that they have been left out. 


WHO ARE THE OBVIOUS CHOICES? 

What if the Rock and Roll Fame only had rock acts? What if you only  included the fairly obvious choices? Well the  first list below  this is a fairly good guess as to  who would  be in there if only the clear, very  obvious choices were in there.    Indeed, All of  these acts listed  really are already in the Hall of Fame!

I  did include  in a few  R&B soul acts who are borderline rock and roll, such as the Supremes. The number of R&B acts in the real  hall of fame is fairly large, since Rock is based on this genre, it's sometimes hard to make the distinction on these acts.  

 Bob Marley, Michael Jackson , Madonna, Simon and Garfunkel, the Bee Gees, Prince, Carole King  and ABBA belong in the hall  but the diehards will tell you they are  not rock acts.   I have excluded some clearly important choices who have only  small amounts of important works (Bill Haley, The Sex Pistols, Buffalo Springfield, Gene Vincent) or who are more soul than rock (Al Green).  This lists below do not include pioneers, sidemen,  non musical performers etc.

THE WHEAT: ACTS THAT ARE FAIRLY OBVIOUS CHOICES FOR THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME.

----These  are the more consensus might be the acts that would likely  still be in if far  fewer acts were allowed in...
Most  of the acts were chosen within their first three years of eligibility,

Pretty small list it is....

1986 *Chuck Berry James Brown *Ray Charles *Sam Cooke *Fats Domino *The Everly Brothers *Buddy Holly *Jerry Lee Lewis *Elvis Presley *Little Richard	1987 Aretha Franklin Carl Perkins   Roy Orbison	1988 *The Beach Boys *The Beatles *Bob Dylan *The Supremes
1989 *The Rolling Stones The Temptations *Stevie Wonder	1990 The Four Seasons *The Kinks *The Who	1991
1992 *The Jimi Hendrix Experience Johnny Cash	1993 David Bowie *Creedence Clearwater Revival *The Doors *Van Morrison	1994 The Band *The Grateful Dead *Elton John *John Lennon
1995 *Janis Joplin *Led Zeppelin Neil Young	1996 *Pink Floyd	1997 *Crosby, Stills and Nash
1998 *The Eagles *Fleetwood Mac	1999 *Billy Joel *Paul McCartney *Bruce Springsteen	2000 *Eric Clapton
2001 Steely Dan *Queen Paul Simon Aerosmith	2002	AC/DC 2003 *The Clash Police

2005 *U2

2006 *Lynyrd Skynyrd

2007-*R.E.M, and Van Halen 2009 Metallica 2010 Genesis

2014 Linda Ronstadt

THE CHAFF
ACTS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT OF THE HALL OF FAME, if fewer acts were chosen  each year, or if non-rock artists were excluded. And I'm not saying all these people do not belong-I am just saying that there are other  folks who have been left out who are just as good.

1986	1987 Ricky Nelson The Coasters Eddie Cochran Bo Diddley *Marvin Gaye Bill Haley B. B. King Clyde McPhatter *Ricky Nelson *Smokey Robinson Big Joe Turner Muddy Waters Jackie Wilson	1988 *The Drifters
1989 Dion Otis Redding *The Temptations	1990 Hank Ballard Bobby Darin *The Four Tops   The Platters	1991 LaVern Baker *The Byrds John Lee Hooker The Impressions Wilson Pickett Jimmy Reed Ike and Tina Turner
1992 Bobby "Blue" Bland Booker T. and the M.G.'s *The Isley Brothers Sam and Dave The Yardbirds	1993 Ruth Brown Cream Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers Etta James Sly and the Family Stone	1994 The Animals Duane Eddy *Bob Marley Rod Stewart
1995 *The Allman Brothers Band Al Green Martha and the Vandellas Frank Zappa	1996 Gladys Knight and the Pips Jefferson Airplane Little Willie John *Pink Floyd The Shirelles The Velvet Underground	1997 The (Young) Rascals *The Bee Gees Buffalo Springfield The Jackson Five *Joni Mitchell Parliament-Funkadelic
1998 The Mamas and the Papas Lloyd Price Santana Gene Vincent	1999 Curtis Mayfield Del Shannon *Dusty Springfield The Staple Singers	2000 *Earth, Wind & Fire Lovin' Spoonful The Moonglows Bonnie Raitt *James Taylor
2001 Solomon Burke The Flamingos *Michael Jackson Ritchie Valens	2002 Isaac Hayes Brenda Lee Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Gene Pitney Ramones Talking Heads	2003 AC/DC Elvis Costello & the Attractions Righteous Brothers

2004 Jackson Browne The Dells George Harrison Traffic ZZtop Bob Seger	2005 The Pretenders Percy Sledge Buddy Guy The O'Jays	2006 Blondie, Miles Davis The Sex Pistols Black Sabbath

2007Grand Master Flash, Patty Smith, The Ronettes,

2008- Madonna,  Leonard Cohen, the Ventures and the Dave Clark Five.

2009-2014...

2009 Jeff Beck Little Anthony and the Imperials Metallica Run DMC Bobby Womack 2010 ABBA Genesis Hollies Jimmy Cliff Stooges Gun and Roses  2013 Rush Donna Summer Heart Randy Newman Public Enemy Albert King

Alice Cooper Neil Diamond Dr. John Darlene Love Tom Waits 2012 Beastie Boys Blue Caps Comets Crickets Donovan Famous Flames Midnighters The Miracles Laura Nyro Red Hot Chilli Peppers The Small Faces 2014 Cat Stevens Linda Ronstadt Kiss The E street Band Hall and Oates Nirvana

Which Seth is Which!!!

O.K... people have been calling me, writing  me, imploring me to resolve their "Seth confusion".
The same people who long ago had problems with Bill Cosby, Bing Crosby and David Crosby or with Van Morrison, Jim Morrison and Van Halen are today having problems figuring out which Seth is which. For nearly 100 years electronic entertainment media was Sethless but now, yes NOW...there are just too many Seth's.

Yes the entertainment world is now seething with famous Seth's.  All of them white males, all of them actors, comedians and producers.   So let me  clear this up for you.

There is Seth McFarlane,...

Seth Woodbury MacFarlane born 1973  is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, director, and unlike the other Seth's he is also a  singer. He is the creator of the TV show Family Guy and co-creator of the shows American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, and a new version of Cosmos. He is an actor, producer, director, stand up comedian.  His current project is new version Orville .   To confuse matters Seth MacFarlane has appeared on Seth Green's Robot Chicken as a voice actor.

There is Seth Green 

 Seth Benjamin Green born 1974  is an American actor, comedian, producer, writer, and director. Green is the creator and executive producer and most-frequent voice on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, where he is also a writer and director. To confuse matters Seth Green has appeared on Family Guy as a voice actor.  

There is Seth Meyers 

 Seth Adam Meyers  also born 1973 is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, producer, television host and comedian. He is a former head writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live and hosted its news parody segment Weekend Update. In 2014 he became the new host of the LATER  talk show.

And finally there is Seth Rogen

Seth Aaron Rogen born 1981  is a Canadian stand-up comedian, actor, producer, director, screenwriter, and voice actor. Rogen began his career performing stand-up comedy during his teenage years, winning the Vancouver Amateur Comedy Contest in 1998. He has also appeared as a voice actor on Family 

Guy.

Chicago - (I've been) Searchin So Long

  A 1993 version of  a  1974 hit. The song was originally on the Chicago VII album. This song  was written by Trombonist James Pankow,  The great thing about the early 1970's Chicago was that all the members wrote material and they had three lead vocalists.  By the 1980's the band become dominated by Peter Cetera, who eventually left in 1985, when his own solo career took off.  The post-Cetera  edition of the group actually had a few hits with newer vocalists Bill Champlin, and Jason Scheff.  But,  by the 1990's the group is already well on there way to becoming  there  own tribute band.   By 1993, only four of the original seven members of the band were left. Vocalist/Keyboardist Bobby Lamm and the three horn players.   Jason Scheff is performing the lead vocals on the song originally performed by Peter Cetera. This is  one of  Jason's best performances, and the band is in good form, it really heats up at about 2.50. Just a great video.  The video had to be replaced with another copy which is not as quite as good visually.

Web surf # 1…from Grant-Lee Phillips to Back to the Future

Web surf # 1…from Grant-Lee Phillips to Back to the Future   

Courthouse Square

I was listening in the car to FM Radio on the low end of the dial where all the public radio stations are-and came upon a folk-rock song with vocals that sounded a little like Bono.  The DJ didn’t say what the song was –and so when I went home, I tried to figure it out.  I had trouble googling the lyrics because I hadn’t been able to  make out the words to well.  All I could remember was “She is a lily” or “She is like lily”.  So I tried figuring which radio station I had been listening to –it turned out to be WUMB and then I looked on their website to see if they had a playlist-they did. 

The song was called  “Lily-a-passion” by Grant- Lee Phillips.  It’s an original song  available on a solo album of his called Virginia Creeper.  So what’s a “Lily–a-passion”? I don’t know, maybe Grant is referring to the flower called the Passion Lily.  Yes indeed so here's the video for that song -assuming it' working at the time you read this 

I had vaguely remembered an act called  Grant Lee Buffalo-and that it  had some sort of connection with Husker Du. The connection turned out that Grant Hart , one the  members of Husker Du also had the first name Grant, and that another Husker-Du-er , Bob Mould , had helped release one of Grant Lee Buffalo's  recordings . I eventually figured out that Grant Lee Buffalo had disbanded and that Phillips  now went by the Grant-Lee Phillips moniker and that   he was a recurring character on the Gilmore Girls TV show-where he played  a troubadour who sang songs in the town square on the show.  There is a  video that compiled Grant's appearances on the Gilmore Girls on YouTube (see below).

The town square on the video looked familiar-and I thought to myself that it was the same town square that was used for  the Back to the Future movies. Well I was correct , the location was a back lot called Courthouse Square which is movie set for Universal Studios. Somehow from there I looked up the Back to the Future movies and learned that Eric Stoltz (of Mask fame) was the original Marty McFly.  Five  weeks into the shooting of the film, director,  Robert Zemekis recast McFly because Eric Stoltz wasn’t funny enough.  Michael J. Fox took over the role and the rest is history and future history.  I was also reminded that the second and third Back to the Future movies were shot  back to back-one of the earliest set of  big budget films  to be filmed in tandem, so as to save production costs.

Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly. Eric with dark hair-that's wrong right there!

Web Surf # 2-Reparata and The Delrons to Coco Rocha to Eero Saarinan

Reparata and the Delrons-Mid  1960's lineup Lorraine, Reparata, and Nanette.

I discovered the obscure New York girl group, Reparata and the Delrons whilst looking up  backing musicians. The group's lead singer, Reparata (her  real name was Mary Aiese) took her stage name from a nun who was one of her teachers. Mary Aiese left the group in 1970 to be a teacher herself. The tall girl, Lorraine Mazolla , later sang with Barry Manilow's backing group, Lady Flash. I don't know anything about Nanette the third  girl. Some  other chicks sang with the group as well.

This vocal trio never had an American Top 40 hit, yet somehow continued to make records between 1964 and 1972.  They only made two studio albums.  One of the group's claim to fame is that  they were among they were among the backing singers on the 1969 Rolling Stones hit, "Honky Tonk Women". They also were one of the opening acts on the Stones 1965 Tour of North America.

 Reparata  and the Delrons did have a Top 20 hit in the UK with a song called "Captain of Your Ship". The video  of "Captain of Your Ship"  above is from a German TV-show. It is the only archival television footage of them.

  

  The girls performing" I'm Nobody's Baby Now" -a great song written by Jeff Barry.

TWA Terminal, JFK Airport, 1962

Reparata and The Delrons -Look In My Diary

The song below (Look in My Diary) was actually not released till the 1997. Hard to believe, since it sounds like a hit to me. It's my favorite song right now. It was recorded around 1966 but  never used on any of their original singles or albums.




The video above  is actually a unofficial  mash-up video  compiled by Mr. Trubec. The first bit is from a Longchamp commercial featuring super model Coco Rocha. She is a Canadian born model of Irish-Welsh and Russian descent. I don't now where the other bits  with the oriental girls and the redheads are taken from.

The original  2013 Longchamp commercial (above)  featured the Bee Gees song-"You Should Be Dancing". The other model featured  is another Canadian  Liisa Winkler. Yes that's two"i"s.

 The airport terminal where the video was filmed  is unmistakably  the  former TWA terminal building at JFK International in NYC. Surprisingly,  Eero Saarinan's   classic space age  terminal is now a hotel.

onge

TWA Flight Center at Wikipeida
To learn more TWA's terminal five

originally posted December 2013

The 2013 Red Sox had the best record in baseball.

 The 2013 Red Sox had the best record in baseball.

Boston Strong is the motto of the 2013 Boston Red Sox

I was surprised to see that this year’s edition of the Red Sox tied for the best record in baseball with a won-loss record of 97-65. The Red Sox have had the best record in baseball in only one other year (2007) since 1946.  So that is something to be celebrated. 

 Yet, I must admit I am bored by the Red Sox, I used to be big fan, but over the past few years I would just say I am fan.  The team just doesn’t hold my interest.  I became a Red Sox fan during the 1970's  when the Red Sox had great teams and a lot of bad luck.  Prior to 2004, the Red Sox had a number of legendary teams that found a way  to lose big at the last minute (1946, 1948, 1972, 1974, 1978, 1986, and 2003 just  to name a few). The Red Sox broke the string of  bad luck  in a spectacular fashion in 2004 by coming back from a three games to none deficit in a league championship series against the Yankees, and then went on to win the World Series for the first time since 1918.They won the world series again in 2007.

Luck is no longer a factor, now that the curse is over, but that makes the team less interesting.  The team doesn't have really have too many stars with personality-though admittedly baseball stars in general  have less personality then they did in 1970's.  It is considerably more expensive  to see a baseball game .Baseball players make such huge salaries that  it costs a lot more to see a game than it did in the 1970’s and as a result I have been to only one Red Sox game since I moved to New England. I saw the team a lot more when I lived in Maryland.

 Over the past three seasons, The Red Sox have been a Jekyll and Hyde team.  In 2011 they had the 2^nd best record in baseball up till a late season collapse, the worst ever in baseball history. They lost 18 of their last 24 games, and fell out of playoff contention on the last day of the season. That  season  was hardly the Greek tragedy of previous Red Sox collapses, because by the end of the season people  were glad that the 2011 Red Sox  were not  playing in the post-season since they had become that embarrassingly bad and unlikable.

The team continued their late seasons woes of 2011, throughout the entire 2012 season, and they ended up in last place in their division with a 69-93 record.  It was their worst season in 46 years.

Surprisingly, the top notch early 2011 team returned to the  playing field  in 2013, and thus they had 28 more wins in 2013 than in 2012. This actually was more of a turnaround than the 20 game win increase  of from 1966 to 1967 when people were amazed by the1967  Impossible Dream team.

I think this Red Sox team lacks the pizzaz of the great Red Sox teams of the past.  They have no pitcher with more than 15 wins, their best pitcher, Clay Buckholz  had only 12 wins.  Clay’s career year was marred by a injury in the middle of the season, but the rest of year he won 12 out of 16 starts (with only one loss) and had an amazing 1.74 Earned Run Average.
Only one of the team's  batters  had good slugger numbers-that was David Ortiz with his 30 home runs and 102 RBI's.  Indeed, other than David Ortiz and Clay Buchholz, none of their regulars  had outstanding years. The Red Sox succeeded this year  because they have a well coached deep team with a lot of talent, solidarity,  and experience.    The post season will tell us whether or not this is a great Red Sox team or simply an overachieving one.

UPDATE:October 30, 2013 The Red Sox defeated the St.Louis Cardinals  in six games to win the 2013 world championship.


2nd UPDATE:October 5, 2014 The Red Sox went back to their losing ways and were last in their division with a 71-91 record in 2014. They became the first team to go from worst to first to worst. 

Also in Felpin's Pond-  A tribute to Nomar Garciaperra http://felpinspond.blogspot.com/2010/03/nomar.html