2009 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Inductees Announced

-FUPPETS- has a love/hate relationship with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio. While it serves as a place to commemorate and bask in the glory of Rock N Roll, and the ephemera that surrounds it, it is also the bloated, rotting corpse of a music form which many deem irrelevant, or past it's prime. While the contents of the Museum itself boast some of the coolest, most interesting pieces of memorabilia one can find outside of a Hard Rock Cafe, it also contains so much bullshit, so much stupid pop star costuming, so much needless add-on crap by non-rockers like Cher, Britney Spears, and the like, that is makes for a difficulty in wholly loving the damn thing. -FUPPETS- knows that the Museum itself is a tourist trap, and therefore must include extraneous crap for the kids, and for the women who do not like rock, but get dragged there by their rock loving husbands, but it still sucks to see it mar what could be a great mecca of rock history.
The HoF released the list of final inductees for 2010. They include genres as diverse as garage rock, disco pop, three-part harmony crap, prog-rock, and reggae. They must be running out of rockers, or they just want to pad the HoF. Of the final nominees, several groups were not voted in this year, including Kiss, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, LL Cool J (LL Cool J? COME ON!), and more. Among those not even making the list of finalists, and a sore point for those who love their progressive rock, are Canada's Rush. -FUPPETS- would like to know how Genesis could get in but a band like Rush could not even make it to the final list of nominees. Insane!

The Inductees for 2010 are:

The STOOGES
Here is the word from Stooges front-man Iggy Pop,

"We've been rejected seven times, and we would have set a record, I think, if it happened again," Iggy Pop told Rolling Stone of the band's election. "It started to feel like Charlie Brown and the football. I had about two hours of a strong emotional reaction after hearing the news. It felt like vindication. Then I kind of scratched my head and thought, 'Am I still cool? Or is that over now?' "

Hilarious. The Stooges crawled out of the muck of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1967. They sang about what really affected them, which was the nihilistic boredom and displeasure with their lives and the world around them.
"It's 1969, OK? War across the USA. Another year for me and you. Another year with nothin' to do." - The Stooges "1969"
They were not very popular, and did not make any real money, but they were doing it for all the right reasons and because of this, new fans have constantly found their music to be a bracing and refreshingly raw alternative to the pre-fab pop crap that forever rules the airwaves. Their influence on the hard rock and punk that followed their demise in 1974 is immense. They had been passed up 7 times for induction, but, since they already let in the Sex Pistols, it seems only fair that they let in the American bastards too! Here, for your pleasure, is what may be the definitive scum-rock song ever, I Wanna Be Your Dog.

The STOOGES - I Wanna Be Your Dog

ABBA
Yes. You read that right. ABBA. No band of the 70's could be LESS associated with rock n roll than shit-ass ABBA. Music for housewives to do chores to. Insanely catchy pop fluff for disco dancing and massive cocaine ingestion. What horrible shit. To think a ROCK and ROLL institution would induct these Swedish assholes before KISS is inexcusable, but only points to the pandering of the Hall of Fame, and the growing lack of worthy/mass-appeal rock acts to induct.
You know their songs. They are constantly played on shit rom-com movie soundtracks. Who will the Hall Of Fame induct next? Celine Dion?

ABBA - Lay All Your Love On Me

GENESIS
Genesis. For many rockers, the mention of this band harks only to the period in the 70's when they were an ultra-artsy progressive rock band led by Peter Gabriel. Sadly, for many more people, the mention of Genesis brings forth images of the Phil Collins-led generic adult-contemporary pop bullshit that still clogs "office-friendly" radio stations around the country. The band began in 1967, was ditched by a forward-thinking Peter Gabriel in 1975, and continues on to this day in various incarnations. -FUPPETS- thinks that, similar to the rap/hip hop floodgates opened up by inducting Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, the induction of Genesis will allow for year after year of prog-rock bands to be inducted. Rush, Yes, King Crimson, and the like cannot be far off. No word yet on whether Peter Gabriel will join Genesis for the Induction performance.

GENESIS - The Musical Box

JIMMY CLIFF
Jimmy Cliff is a ska/reggae singer and songwriter whose lilting voice and lovers-reggae -FUPPETS- finds extremely grating and terrible. The voters at the HoF must love him though. He began his career in the mid-60's and is still performing around the world. Most people know him from the movie The Harder They Come, the title track of which was a big hit for Jimmy Cliff. The movie showed a very realistic and un-glamorized view of Jamaica in the early 70's, and the patois is so thick subtitles were deemed necessary.

JIMMY CLIFF - The Harder They Come

The HOLLIES
Coming out of Manchester, England in the early 60's, the Hollies specialized in a three-part harmony vocal technique which was copied by many. They are yet another in the canon of "safe," wussed-out bullshit music that the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame seems to adore. Their song "The Air That I Breathe" has been an AM Gold and classic rock staple forever. Maybe as soon as all these suck-ass brit bands are inducted the Hall will move on to some of the more relevant acts that are eligible for induction from the UK, such as The Cure, and The Smiths. -FUPPETS- suggests you do not hold your breath.

THE HOLLIES - He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother

Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony

On Saturday, the oxymoronic Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame will induct it's latest members. -FUPPETS- has visited the Hall of Fame in Cleveland, as a side trip after visiting The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. It was equal parts great memorabilia from legendary rockers, and meaningless, superfluous, pointless blather about pop stars and people completely unrelated to rock n roll in any way. One whole section was devoted to stage costumes from people like Cristina Aguilera, Cher, and fucking N'Sync. It sucked shit, basically.
-FUPPETS- is not against honoring those who have made an impact on music, but in an attempt to create a "tourist destination" type museum, they had to include crap that non-rockers find cool, even though most rockers find it repulsive. Oh well.
This year's inductees are a wide-ranging lot. The only criteria for induction is for at least 25 years to have passed since the release of your first recording. They have already used up most of early rock's greats, and soon we will be forced to swallow an inundation of 70's arena-rock losers like Kansas and ELO. Ha!
There are three categories for people to be inducted. These categories are Performers, Early Influences, and Sidemen.

Performers

Jeff Beck. While -FUPPETS- could give a flying fuck about Jeff Beck, his guitar stylings seem to have a large following among the 600 aged and decrepit voters for the Hall of Fame. It seems that anyone who even rubbed dicks with the Yardbirds is gonna get inducted. Most of his output has been instrumental records. Here he is doing his thing on a slow blues track.

JEFF BECK - 'Cause We've Ended As Lovers

Little Anthony & The Imperials. A doo-wop group from New York, active from the 50's on, had a string of hits in the late 50's and early 60's. The Hall appears to blur the line between what is Rock and Roll and what isn't, and doo-wop is most definitely NOT rock and roll. Oh well. -FUPPETS- does not care. This is "mom's going shopping on a Saturday" music. Nice tunes, but no way in hell anyone's ROCKING to this.

LITTLE ANTHONY & THE IMPERIALS - Hurt So Bad

Bobby Womack. Another Soul act padding the rock and roll Hall. Bobby Womack had his own group, the Valentinos, with his brother, and was also Sam Cooke's guitarist for a while. he wrote songs for other artists and had a string of hits in soul, blues, gospel, and funk genres. Decent soulful tunes, but NOT Rock and Roll.

BOBBY WOMACK - If You Think You're Lonely Now

RUN DMC. The Elvis of rap/hip hop. The first act to take a new musical genre huge to the world. NOT rock and roll, but since they included Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, as well as dozens of soul, gospel, country, etc. artists, they have set precedent to include Hip Hop in the Hall Of Fame. Three teenagers from NYC took the world by storm. The younger brother of Russel Simmons, Run, and his classmates DMC and Jam Master Jay blew up the world. It is hard to believe sometimes how revolutionary and scary these guys were to mainstream America. They dressed like street hoodlums and SHOUTED into the mic. They released some of the most popular albums of the 80's. Jam Master Jay was murdered/assassinated in his Queens studio a few years ago, and to this day the NYC police have not found anything or anyone. Pathetic. At the time, RUN DMC made a statement that they would never perform together again, for without Jay there is no RUN DMC. They are sticking to their convictions and have announced they will not perform at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies this Saturday.

RUN DMC - King Of Rock

METALLICA. Quite possibly the most successful Heavy Metal band ever, and a true Metal band, who while expanding their sound, never did pander to the non-metal fans by watering down their style too much. In the early and mid-80's, if you wanted truly aggressive and heavy music, there were 4 bands that did it better than any others. Those were Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, and Metallica. Metallica's first 3 albums, Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, and ...And Justice For All were monsters that swallowed up everything in their path. They sold out stadiums, sold millions of records, and had a rabid fan-base with no radio play, and no MTV play, until they made a video for their song "One." Their subsequent releases saw them expanding their trademark riff-heavy sound to more bluesy-slow riffs, gaining them a new audience that let them blow up into the biggest Heavy Metal band ever. With the extremely over-due induction a few years back of the greatest Metal band ever, Black Sabbath, the hall Of Fame finally opened the doors to that most-unfairly-ridiculed of rock sub-genres, Heavy Metal. Metallica themselves performed the Sabbath songs in tribute. It was amazing.

METALLICA - Master of Puppets (live)

EARLY INFLUENCES

WANDA JACKSON. One of the earliest singers/guitarists to fuse early rock and country into the style known as rockabilly, she had success and then in the 60's drifted more towards straight country music. She is being inducted as an early influence on the developing world of rock and roll.

WANDA JACKSON - Hard-Headed Woman

SIDEMEN

BILL BLACK. William Patton "Bill" Black Jr. Bill Black was a kid from Memphis who was fortunate and talented enough to become Elvis Presley's long-time bassist. He played bass on all of Elvis' seminal hits as well as providing back up vocal duties.

BILL BLACK - That's Allright mama (w/ Elvis Presley)

DJ FONTANA. DJ Fontana was Elvis Presley's drummer for 14 years and played on over 460 Elvis tracks recorded for RCA records. Along with Scotty Moore on guitar and Bill Black on bass
DJ Fontana was one of the Blue Moon Boys, who backed Elvis for years.

DJ FONTANA - Heartbreak Hotel (w/ Elvis Presley)

SPOONER OLDHAM. Spooner Oldham is a legendary songwriter and session musician who played on, wrote or co-wrote dozens of huge hits, such as Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman," Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally," The Box Tops' "I'm Your Puppet," and "I Never Loved A Man" by Aretha Franklin. He has frequently played with Neil Young and continues to tour.

SPOONER OLDHAM - Mustang Sally (by Wilson Pickett live)