List and You Shall Hear (III): Joni Mitchell and the Critical Consensus

Having delved into the conceptual issues with NPR's list, I move now to the more profane arena of music criticism. I now get to speak from the gut, engage in pure, unexpurgated subjectivity, and promote my personal tastes. The fun part, obviously, but also the most difficult. Listening to dozens of albums, old and new, continuously for a few months, you descend into what I would call the fog of music, where everything starts to blend into everything else and the faculty of judgment loses its grip.

Be that as it may, I am convinced that better judgments could have been made than what we see in this list, and plan to argue for some of them, while being well aware that such things are outside the realm of strict demonstration. In fact, I shall generally cast aside not only proof or logic but critical consensus, to say nothing of popularity. I don't really give a squawck if my opinions don't conform to what professional music critics think; but since they are rarely univocal in their ratings anyway I guess I stand to risk no more than siding with a small minority. But I have, at least, reasons for my critical opinions, which I will not be shy about offering.

Indeed, this post, which I sincerely hope will be the next to last in the series (I'm a bit exhausted, and have one or two other things to write about before I die) will be limited to confronting the critical consensus on the list's #1 artist, Joni Mitchell. I hasten to say that I have no intention of arguing that she should not be Number One. A Joni Mitchell fan since her second album, I own nearly every one from her first, Joni Mitchell (sometimes referred to as Song to a Seagull, words prominently seen on her artwork for the album cover) through Wild Things Run Fast - somehow For the Roses and Mingus have eluded me so far. No, if I had created the list a lot more of her albums would be on it, displacing the numerous questionable choices I will mention in my next post. My problem is with the particular albums that NPR chose to represent her. So here goes.

*****

1 (Blue), 121 (Hejira). NPR stuck with the standard consensus in selecting Blue and Hejira as Joni Mitchell's greatest achievements. I demur on both accounts. I would demur even if it were not the case that the list makes a de facto effort to represent an artist's most important work, even though it is a putative list of greatest work. Since I think the two albums selected are neither her greatest nor her most important work, this fine distinction does not change my point of view. I will therefore present my heartfelt case that the choices should be Clouds and The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

I am aware of the critical status of Blue – it is the pick of both of the other lists of albums by women I referred to in previous posts, and consistently gets mentioned as the album in which she really came into her own; see the album's Wikipedia page for a long list of the honors it has received in lists of various sorts. Even as I was writing this, along came the latest New York Review of Books with Mark Ford's review of David Yaffe's new biography of Joni Mitchell, where Ford states: "The two highest points in her career, it is generally agreed, are Blue (1971) and Hejira (1976)..." Now, to say it is "generally agreed" is not exactly to state a scientific truth; and even if it were somehow a critical majority opinion, there are other opinions to consider. Indeed, I think the "critical" praise for these two albums says more about the critics than about Joni Mitchell's work: it shows what they were looking for, more than what she was doing. In any case, there has never been any doubt about what the critics say, selecting Blue again and again for this type of praise, while her first three albums have not been similarly recognized even once, to my knowledge. So that is what the critics say, and now I get to say what I say, and happy to have the opportunity.

But before I pursue this argument, let me be clear: I hold Blue in as much reverence as any Joni Mitchell album, nearly all of which through Don Juan's Reckless Daughter occupy an emotional place for this singing-songwriting Parrot next to Dylan and hardly anyone else. (And Shine, her latest 2007 effort which I am only just familiarizing myself with, may be on track to join that group.) Blue found its way to my stereo during a particularly melancholy part of my sophomore year in college, and remains a sort of coronary tattoo, its cover a kind of visual memory of a time when for me, as for Joni, romance occupied an essential, and fairly disastrous, part of my existence. Be that as it may, it would not be my pick as the greatest of her early albums.

Turning to Ford's review again, he says that it was only with Blue "that Mitchell's voice, music and words meshed to create a record that people still find they want to listen to again and again". I don't know which people find that they don't want to listen again and again to Joni Mitchell, Clouds or Ladies of the Canyon. If there are such people then they have a very limited appreciation of the idiom in which she was working at that time. All four of the albums are permanent milestones and eminently listenable.

What distinguishes Blue from what came before? It is not the first time she performs some of her songs on the piano; that would be Ladies of the Canyon, which would be another fine choice for the list, having several of her most well-known songs and introducing her keyboard work. But the keyboard arrangements on Blue are more confident and somewhat more complex; they have a more contemporary sound (listen to the out-of-key fills in "My Old Man" for example), and hint at what Kate Bush and Tori Amos would be doing many years later. But while her keyboard work is creative and appealing, Laura Nyro had quite brilliantly sailed that ship already, so I wouldn't call it pathbreaking. Moreover, as a kind of side effect perhaps, the guitar arrangements on both Ladies of the Canyon and Blue do not have quite the poignance of those on the earlier albums, especially Clouds; the voicings and picking style sound more standard even if the tunings are not. Of course the dulcimer adds a nice new sonority, but this would not make the album stand out.

As for her vocals, they seemed to me quite mature even on Joni Mitchell - say, in "Night in the City" or "Marcie" - and neither lose nor gain much subsequently, though they do change. There is a bit more bottom to them on Blue, but the difference is not dramatic (listen closely to her a Capella vocals on "The Fiddle and the Drum" on Clouds, they do not lack sonority in the lower range) and in any case her earlier soprano was clear and strong enough for her style of music. By comparison, on Kate Bush's 1978 albums she sounds like a squeaky toy compared with her vocals on 1980's Never For Ever. I can hear no such qualitative change in Mitchell's voice. Pointing to her smoking cigarettes as a cause of improvement, as Ford does, seems to me a bit perverse, aside from lacking evidence – the cause was probably age and hormones, not tobacco. (On Shine, on the other hand, I suspect we are hearing the throaty effects of a life of cigarette-smoking, rather than, as in Dylan's case, the results of poor vocal training.) 

There is one very significant musical difference on Blue, something I would characterize as a new sense of freedom in how she matches the melodic lines to the lyrics. I suspect that this is part of what garners the critical attention, though if so it is rarely stated. (In fact, music critic Stephen Holden seems to interpret it as a defect of her later work, as we shall see below.) This is an important feature that will only fully flower by 1975, on The Hissing of Summer Lawns; but the roots are in songs like "California", "River" and especially "The Last Time I Saw Richard" on Blue. I think this was an important and positive development, and one of the strongest arguments for the virtues of Blue; but it characterizes only a few of the later songs on the album.

Next, there is the so-called "confessional" aspect of the songwriting, which Mitchell herself has questioned, though she does not question the transparency of the emotions it captures. Oddly, this same emotional transparency is sometimes considered a key virtue of much later, and different, albums by women, such as Erykah Badu's Baduism and Beyoncé's Lemonade. I'm not sure if this sort of praise is a male-sponsored demand for women to shed everything, skin included, or a female-sponsored cry of "Yeah, she really told them where it's at". But whatever the basis for this alleged virtue, I am not convinced that it is in any way better than plain, honest, poetic songwriting, as found on practically all of Mitchell's work. So, whether you call it "confessional" or transparent or whatever, I don't buy the idea that this is some sort of overriding virtue of Blue.

Lastly, there is sometimes an allusion to technical improvements in the recording techniques. Ford says something about her having "entered Studio C at A&M Studios in Hollywood to record Blue" as if this had some technical importance. I don't know what that would be; she used the same engineer as before, Henry Lewy, and the capabilities of the studio count for very little in the relatively simple arrangements that she used in those days.

Now let's talk about Clouds for a minute. Put the record on, and it does not take 30 seconds to hear that this is something completely new, different, almost revolutionary. Nobody in 1969 was writing acoustic songs with the dissonant, complex chords that announce the song "Tin Angel" – unless it was Joni herself, in "I Had a King" on Joni Mitchell. Nobody was picking a guitar the way she does. It was not simply the alternate tunings, which she had picked up from David Crosby, though she immediately puts these to completely different uses than anyone before her. But the style of guitar picking itself is new. If there is something like a Merle Travis picking style going on, it is so radically modified that it cannot be classified as anything but Mitchell-style. After playing the opening arpeggio of "Tin Angel", she announces the end of a phrase by repeating the final chord, just for emotional effect; this repetition is ramified throughout the album, the use of repetition on "Roses Blue" being particular dramatic. She varies the direction, timing and voicing of the picking, all in contrast to traditional fingerstyle methods. The combination of a new harmonic vocabulary and a completely personalized guitar style to match have the effect of ringing in a new kind of acoustic music. This accomplishment, I believe, is not matched by anything on Blue.

As for songwriting, Clouds has two of her best, most famous and most widely covered songs, "Both Sides Now" and "Chelsea Morning" (the first of which proved quite important to the career of Judy Collins). While at least half the songs on Blue have the feel of familiar tunes for Joni Mitchell fans, only "Carey" is really in the same class as not only poetic and deep but having an irresistible hook. The lyrics to both the "hits" on Clouds are extraordinarily poetic and unpretentiously philosophical, as well as emotionally true; the melodic lines are somehow complex while still having immediate appeal. Those two songs are in no sense uniquely accessible, as songs like "I Don't Know Where I Stand" and "The Gallery" leave nothing to be desired. But it is the sense of innovation, of going outside normal expectations, that gives the album its unique quality. Not only "Tin Angel", with its aptly handled dissonances, but "Songs to Aging Children Come", which adds unusual vocal overdubs, and in particular the amazing piece of poetry-psychology-social criticism "Roses Blue". The album as a whole is a major landmark in songwriting.

Mitchell herself has referred to what she was doing then as a kind of "art song", and while their harmonic and melodic complexity might not compare with the Lieder of Schubert or Schumann, or even with the jazz inflected idioms of the Great American Songbook, for the medium of voice and acoustic guitar it was revolutionary. Her guitar in Clouds speaks through careful arrangements that are each completely unique and designed to match the rhythms and emotions of the lyrics. I would say no less of her first album, and it is a slim edge that makes Clouds the better choice. The song that really decides the day is "Roses Blue", where a relatively simple melodic line becomes a formal and emotional knockout. The song takes aim at a trend in the women's movement that tended to legitimize dubious mystical ideas as if their very unscientific character were somehow a suppressed feminist narrative. (We can see where the anti-scientific bias manifested in that ideology leads today.) One of my contentions about the list has been that albums which have particular resonance (I hate that word, but whatever) with respect to the liberation of women should have a preferred place - or rather, that the criteria for including and rating albums should include this consideration, certainly over ordinary Billboard chart positions, perhaps over some aesthetic considerations as well. That doesn't mean they have to be women's liberation anthems, just that they should have a place in the conversation. "Roses Blue" certainly has it. Though Robert Christgau mentioned this song as a high point in his review of the album, I worry that too many people overlook it as just a song about an offbeat friend. It's a devastating piece of social observation, with a sonority that no one had ever heard before in an acoustic guitar part. For anyone who wants to listen, this is a kicker that has no obvious match on Blue or anywhere else.

To put it bluntly, Blue was a safe choice, not only today but when it came out: a way to recognize Joni Mitchell's unique contribution to popular music up to that time without having to deal with the sometimes harsh but seriously innovative aesthetics of Clouds. I suspect that critics would similarly latch on to Court and Spark, another gorgeous but relatively safe album, to represent her later style, had not the intermediate option of Hejira appeared.

*****

Well, enough said about that; I know I am fighting a tidal wave of critical opinion about Blue, an album I love and revere anyway, but not as much as Clouds. More disturbing is the supposedly settled critical consensus on Hejira, which would not be my pick of later Joni Mitchell albums by a long shot. While I have come to like it overall, this album has none of my favorite songs of hers. The best song on the album is the famous "Coyote", but for me, the re-used metaphor "prisoner of the white lines of the freeway" feels less sincere than in Merle Haggard's "White Line Fever", written 6 years earlier. (I don't understand why Ford "was surprised to learn" that the album was "largely written... while Mitchell was revved up on cocaine". Did he not get it?) 

The second best song is probably "Song for Sharon", and it succeeds precisely because it re-uses ideas from "Shades of Scarlet Conquering", which I take to be one of the greatest recorded compositions in popular music and the high point among the 10,000-foot peaks of The Hissing of Summer Lawns. The original elements in "Song for Sharon" are not really to my taste, including some of the chord changes and the chorus of "De de de de de.." 

As for the rest of the songs on Hejira, while they have something of that Joni Mitchell flair, not one stands up to the best material on The Hissing of Summer Lawns: "In France They Kiss on Main Street", "The Jungle Line", "Edith and the Kingpin", "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow", the title track and "Harry's House", as well as the aforementioned masterpiece, are all better than all the other songs on Hejira. (I will grant, not to be completely one-sided, that the appealing "Blue Motel Room" is a much better take on the blues than "Centerpiece", the attachment to "Harry's House"; but the latter is a cover anyway.) Lastly, allow me as an acoustic guitarist to object to the general quality of the guitar sound on Hejira; without trying to research it, I'm going to guess she was using a plugged-in Ovation or else an acoustic with a cheap pickup rather than miking a good acoustic. This has worked well on many recordings, but here I find the guitar sound tinny and lacking in the sparkle a good acoustic guitar can bring to a song.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns sounds entirely fresh more than 40 years later. Perhaps her incorporation of African rhythms in "The Jungle Line"  has something to do with that, as artists from the Talking Heads and Paul Simon to Vampire Weekend and other contemporary groups followed her lead. The superior work of Tom Scott and the L.A. Express also has to be mentioned as a virtue of this album. Finally, tracks like "The Jungle Line" and "Shadows and Light" present her more experimental side, something not strongly in evidence since Clouds, and especially welcome in the context of the super-strong set of jazzrock songs.

The devaluing of The Hissing of Summer Lawns when it first came out was a monumental misjudgment of popular music criticism. Stephen Holden, after liberally praising Mitchell's lyrics on the album in a Rolling Stone review, represented the common view when he intoned:

          If The Hissing of Summer Lawns offers substantial literature, it is set to insubstantial music. There are no tunes to speak of. Since Blue, Mitchell's interest in melody has become increasingly eccentric, and she has relied more and more on lyrics and elaborate production...

          Four members of Tom Scott's L.A. Express are featured on Hissing, but their uninspired jazz-rock style completely opposes Mitchell's romantic style. Always distinctly modal, Mitchell's tunes for the first time often lack harmonic focus. They are free-form in the most self-indulgent sense, i.e., they exist only to carry the lyrics. With the exceptions of "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" and "Sweet Bird," neither of which boasts a strong tune but at least have appropriately lovely textures, the arrangements are as pretentiously chic as they are boring.

A retraction by Holden would at least mean he wouldn't have to carry the stigma of these tasteless comments to the grave. As I noted above, there is a newfound sense of freedom, beginning in the latter part of Blue, in setting the lyrics to music; that is literally the only grain of truth in the whole absurd diatribe. It counts as a virtue, not a defect, of this kind of writing that it is relatively liberated from regular metrical coupling while remaining highly melodic. As for writing a tune, anybody who can't sing most of the songs on The Hissing of Summer Lawns while walking down the street does not have an ear, much less a voice. The fact that she could write tunes, from Blue on, is sufficiently demonstrated by "Carey", "River", "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire", "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio", "Help Me", "A Free Man in Paris", "Raised on Robbery", and others if you care to listen. Appreciating the melody of "In France They Kiss on Main Street", "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" and other songs from this period requires having an ear that can take in more than a couple of bars at a time. To say it is not melody is like saying that Mahler didn't write melodies. Failure to appreciate them is in the ear of the beholder, not the skill of the composer. As for the putdown of the L.A. Express, since the album practically invented "jazzrock" it is worth asking what Holden would take to be "inspired" jazzrock.

Most critics neither appreciated nor understood the album any more than Holden. Many reacted to the critical social portraits in the lyrics as if their bright-eyed Woodstock child had become jaded, the sensitive lovesick girl of "Help Me" suddenly developed a backbone – a reaction they never had to Dylan's endless trail of caustic personal and social criticism. As "Roses Blue" and many other compositions show, this was the same Joni Mitchell. The new material speaks of the same type of emotional struggles in the third person as some of her earlier material does in the first person, which is really just a poetic choice, not a change of personality.

Moreover, after all she did for contemporary music, you would think that critics would have noticed that in the same year she and Steely Dan (Katy Lied, 1975) perfected a new art form, building on their earlier nascent efforts in jazzrock. The opposite was sadly the case, as critical opinion shied away from the rich new sonorities; as if the Crosby, Stills and Nash sound were going to define music forever. In retrospect, this just was the "rock" side of the fusion experiments that had been going on in jazz, where critics were not so dismissive of innovation and new sounds.

While the critics were busy panning the album, which hit the cutoff racks pretty quickly, my two musician brothers and I were playing it daily from almost the moment it came out. And among musicians, at least, we were not alone. Consider the continuation of the first quote from the Ford review above: "...but for Prince, an early fan and later ardent friend, it was The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) that stood out as her greatest achievement." Okay, glad that that was preserved for posterity. Next, please read the following from Elvis Costello's 2004 Vanity Fair article and interview with Mitchell, posted on her web site:

E.C. ...The sophisticated life you wrote about in "Free Man in Paris" and 'People's Parties" was not exactly everyone's experience... The very next record you did was, in my opinion, the masterpiece of that time.

J.M. What is it?

E.C. The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Suddenly you are talking about the isolation of wealth: "She patrols that fence of his / To a Latin drum…." And for some reason the release of this marvelous record marked a critical fracture and a break in the commercial continuity of your career. However, I think that this accidentally liberated you.

J.M. When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down.

So for at least two musicians whose opinion we would tend to respect, The Hissing of Summer Lawns outshines Hejira and everything else of that time. You can also take a look at the Pitchfork review for references to Björk and Julia Holter praising "The Jungle Line". Seems like quite a few musicians "get it" about this album.

The British are typically more attracted than Americans to popular music that contains experimental elements – witness the comparative popularity of Kate Bush in England and the U.S. Thus in Alex Macpherson's celebration of Mitchell's 70^th birthday in his music blog for The Guardian, after duly referring to Blue as "Mitchell's 1971 masterpiece", he then identifies The Hissing of Summer Lawns as "my personal favorite of her albums". According to the album's Wikipedia entry, British music journalist Howard Sounes, in a review from 2006, "has called The Hissing of Summer Lawns Mitchell's masterpiece, 'an LP to stand alongside Blood on the Tracks'". Author and music journalist David Bennun begins his 40^th-year retrospective with the line, "Nobody has ever made an album like this," which he repeats later in the essay. "It doesn’t really matter whether The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is Mitchell’s best album" he continues. "What does matter is that anyone who thrills to, say, Blue, as well they might, may find this even more thrilling if they’ve yet to hear it." My favorite line from the review, though, is his irreverent characterization of the irreverence with which Mitchell stepped over the line in the late 1970's: "People think Bowie, or Prince, were daring. People are right. But Mitchell risked everything, and lost much of it, and a fuck she did not give." I'm not absolutely sure that she was unconcerned about the loss of popularity after Mingus, but I am sure that her departure from the folk-pop mainstream beginning with The Hissing of Summer Lawns was one of the most courageous turns any songwriter, male or female, has ever taken; and considering that it was also one of the most musically successful, more's the pity that NPR chose to overlook it and stay with the safe choice.

Winston Cook-Wilson, the author of the Pitchfork review mentioned above, is from Brooklyn, not Britain; he sums up the album with this oversophisticated comment: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns was one of the earliest and most high-profile albums by a major pop artist—certainly by a female one—to theorize what a distinctly avant-garde-informed pop music might sound like. Its musical vocabulary—as well as its lyrical one—fell magnificently between acoustic realism and symbolic fantasy." Ahem – I'd settle for, "It's a great, deep, important album in every possible way." But he too recognizes its pathbreaking nature. Perhaps American opinion is glacially moving away from Holden's myopic review.

*****

Now, having said all that, the question of which two albums were chosen by NPR is perhaps less important than the fact that at least Joni Mitchell, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira all belong on the list in place of quite a few of the albums now on it; the choice of two is just a nod in the direction of "fairness" to lesser artists. Fairness to artists is not what a "greatest albums" list is about, so the omission of the other Joni Mitchell albums is inappropriate. (If the "150 greatest albums made by men" includes half a dozen Dylan albums, 10 Beatles albums, 8 Led Zeppelin albums, etc. then tough luck for all those artists with very good albums that just aren't that good.) It would have made more sense to create a list of "Greatest Female Recording Artists", to be represented by one album each, but that is not what was done. Taking the list on its own terms, you could get rid of most of the contemporary singer-songwriter albums (Joanna Newsom, Gillian Welch, Ani DiFranco, Iris Dement, etc.), to say nothing of a lot of popular trash, and replace them with any of these and the quality of the list would be improved.

This ends my effort to correct the injustices of history with regard to the critical evaluation of Joni Mitchell albums. I agree, there are more important things to debate in the world, like how to end war and poverty and racism. But I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to have my say on this, and post it on the world's bulletin board. In my next installment I will offer my reactions to the rest of the list, in much less detail (or the world's bulletin board will run out of space).

ABBA Daba Doo: A Hard Look at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

So where has the great green ornithological wonder been hiding all this time? Flying north to avoid global warming? Apparently our Brooklyn parrots are smarter than the average bird. Of course there are a few other reasons, like building my own web sites, which will eventually house this and my other blogs, independent of Googleplex, which is looking more like the ("Don't-be") Evil Empire with every new privacy invasion and copyright issue. (Plus I hate their crappy editor, which manages to screw up font selections constantly; and the fact that I have to sign in with an email address I haven't used in years. On the other hand I give them some credit for standing up to the Chinese censors - a calculated business decision not without some moral weight.) I've also been writing a bit of fiction, with a view to not only becoming the new Hemingway (or should I say Flaubird - didn't he have a parrot anyway?) but possibly making some actual money from my enormous literary talents, though those two goals are to some degree in tension. But before I get into what brings me back to this fabled forum, let me just deal with one practical note.

Due to a rash of the most execrable spam directed at this and some of my other blogs, I have had to move them all to a "moderated comments" policy. I consider this less obnoxious than the little box with the warped and partially obscured random words for you to attempt to decipher. But it may take some time for me to discover your comments and publish them. My policy here, as elsewhere, is to publish every relevant comment, regardless of point of view, unless it descends into vitriolic personal attacks, racist remarks, threats and the like. So please continue to contribute to discussions here, only try to be a little patient as I sort through the dross of autogenerated idiocy to get to your remarks.

So what am I doing fluttering around this blog again? Well, right now, I'm listening to a two-volume collection of ABBA's greatest hits. Does that give you a hint? Anyone who knows my taste in rock from previous PL posts might be a bit surprised. But don't worry - I didn't pay for it, at least. Nor did I pirate or bitstream it; it's all legit, thanks to Lala.com, which I figure I'd better get the most out of before Apple sinks their claws into it. And why exactly would listening to these palindromatic popsters constitute getting the most out of anything? Because they're now one of the benighted members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that well-known bestower of historical significance in the realm of popular music, and I am (or thought I was) woefully ignorant of their artistic accomplishments. As you probably know, the fabled Swedish blondes and their ex-husbands have landed the high honor of a plaque on the wall, and a bio on the RRHOF web site. Worldwide recognition was not exctly something they lacked before (unlike some of this year's other inductees) having long since inundated every disco from Brooklyn to Byelorussia with their, um, infectious melodies. So it must be the plaque, the renewed publicity, the... approval of Jann Wenner? We'll get to that.

My first reaction to hearing of ABBA's induction was probably similar to yours: Squawck! I mean, Yauwnnn.... But feeling the mantle of responsibility land once again on my shoulders as I began to write, I thought to myself: what if these people are actually right? I mean, what if for all these years I have simply refused to recognize the importance of ABBA, their great contribution to Western popular music? Indeed, do I even know enough of their songs to pass a judgment? Just because they did "Dancing Queen" doesn't mean they're all bad! So I listened, and found to my surprise that I actually know many more of their songs than I knew I knew. I know "Waterloo", though I could not have named it if my avian life depended on it. I didn't know it won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest until I read it in the RRHOF bio; this, in the Parrot's pecking order, is actually a more significant recommendation that inclusion in the infamous Hall. The chorus is more than a distant echo of the verses of The Foundations' 1968 hit "Build Me Up, Buttercup" (it's the harmony to it, basically) but let's not pretend it isn't catchy. I also know "Fernando", and can't even imagine where I might have been exposed to it so often as to remember it after all these years. I have to admit I actually kind of like it. I know "Take a Chance on Me" and a couple of other bits of trite dance hall trash. I know "The Winner Takes It All", or at least, it sounds a lot like three or four songs I know. In general, though, I must admit that I don't even know most of ABBA's numerous top five UK hits. Or I didn't. Now I do. And sad to say, my impression is now confirmed that in spite of a couple of decent early singles, they are a veritable demiurge of formulaic pop tunes, with vapid lyrics and minimal harmonic interest. Their singing seems to disdain real emotion, their production qualities come down to a guy with a sequencer and their instrumental capabilities are all but nonexistent.

So can 50 million ABBA fans be wrong? Oh, I think there are probably a lot more than that out there. (Including some very big ones over at Rolling Stone magazine; but as I said, we'll get to that later.) So who am I to say they're wrong? They're right, after all; just as the Mozart freaks are right. If you want something to flow in one ear and out the other without requiring much processing inside, a steady diet of ABBA and Mozart is just what you should be taking. (Don't get me wrong, please - archaeologists exploring my desert island are going to dig up quite a few late Mozart CD's; but they'll be digging a long time before they find any ABBA.) But this is not mainly about ABBA; it's about what ABBA represents as an inductee into the Hall - the closest thing we have to a standard of significance for rock music.

To see what I men, compare the following news: just a few days after ABBA was iducted, who suddenly passed away at age 59? Alex Chilton, leader of The Boxtops and longtime vocalist, whose influence and artistry were attested to by many later and more famous rock stars. Chilton will never experience the belated recognition that Iggy Pop has just received. But he arguably should have been honored long before the idea of inducting ABBA had even entered anyone's head. Though well known for only two early hit singles - "The Letter" and "Cry Like a Baby" - those recordings are for many people much more what rock is about than all of ABBA's million-sellers put together. "The Letter" came out in 1967; Chilton was 16 years old, and had a number 1 hit in the greatest year ever for rock music. (The year of Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, Surrealistic Pillow, Disraeli Gears, and a whole lot more.) The song must be one of the most memorable recordings in all of rock; endlessly covered by later artists, it seems to have lost little or nothing after 43 years on the rock circuit, and a good deal of the credit for that goes to Chilton's gripping vocals. Chilton went on to become an influential guitar player as well, and, with or without his later band Big Star, is usually counted as an important influence and early practitioner of both punk rock and alt-country. That looks to me like one guy who was a big force in three major developments in rock music; an accomplishment that has "hall of fame" written across it in gold letters.

Just weeks before "The Letter" started climbing the U.S. charts, across the Atlantic the new group Procol Harum had released "A Whiter Shade of Pale". How do you capture the importance of a 4-minute single on pop radio that was #1 for six weeks on the UK charts in a year that was almost unbelievably loaded with brilliant examples of rock music? One fan has tracked down 900 cover versions of "Whiter Shade of Pale". A Procol Harum fan site cites an article stating that the song is the most played single ever in the UK. (The source for this is British "performing rights group" Phonographic Performance Ltd, which is actually an industry group, so I'm not sure how objective this claim is.) If Procol Harum had done nothing else, they would have earned a key place in the history of rock and roll for this song. Interestingly, though, the importance of the song is not merely in the sales it generated, but in other groundbreaking features: its Bach-like organ introduction, the interestingly obscure but poetic lyrics, the slow, dreamy, almost drunken vocals, and the fact that other than The Doors' "Light My Fire" it was about the longest single released at that time. These qualities can each be traced to important developments in rock. (To name one less obvious one, it was the first of a slew of extremely popular slow, moody tunes that topped the popularity charts in spite of more upbeat competitors - think "Color My World", "Let It Be", "Candle in the Wind", "Free Bird", many others). But Procol Harum, in the course of things, did much more than that: pioneering the use of a full orchestral sound, with Robin Trower taking the possibilities opened up by Hendrix's guitar style in new directions, they helped lay the foundations for the era of progressive rock that dominated the early 1970's. Procol Harum never achieved the level of popularity of groups like the Rolling Stones or even The Doors, but anyone who understands a bit about the history of rock and roll should know that their importance far surpasses their record sales. (For my two cents on the royalties dispute over AWSOP see my earlier post on this subject. In spite of the Parrot's loud squawking, this absurd decision has been upheld by the highest British court.)

Neither Alex Chilton nor Procol Harum have been elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nothing in that fact says much about Chilton or Procol Harum. But it says everything about the RRHOF. The choices have not been made on the basis of influence or historical importance in any sense; or perhaps the better way of putting it is that to the extent that these factors have played a role, it has more often led to serious errors of judgment than to something that might help the public appreciate under-recognized figures, or less understood lines of development.

Take for example the inclusion of Jelly Roll Morton. He was an early jazz influence - but certainly not an early rock influence. Every form of African-American music from the mid-19th century on was an influence to some extent in every form of popular music in the 20th century. But no rock artist was particularly influenced by Jelly Roll Morton, nor even the early urban blues artists. I have two histories of rock and roll (including the Rolling Stone history!) which do not so much as mention his name, and three histories of the blues, none of which considers him particularly important. He was an early transitional figure between blues and jazz and not particularly relevant to rock and roll. The RRHOF bio even overstates the general consensus on his influence on jazz, and makes no attempt to link him directly to rock. There are quite a few other jazz figures in their list, on very lame logic. Billie Holiday's "exquisite phrasing and tough-tender persona influenced the likes of Janis Joplin and Diana Ross, among others". Excuse me? I find it a bit difficult to come up with one vocal quality in common between Janis Joplin and Diana Ross, but these folks are telling me that Billie Holiday influenced both of them? In any case, it doesn't really matter if she did or not: merely having an influence on someone's vocal style is not enough of a connection to put someone in the RRHOF, otherwise there could be hundreds of unrelated artists equally worthy of inclusion.

Speaking of which, Frank Sinatra is not in the Hall. He actually had several major hits on rock radio, and it's hard to believe his style didn't influence numerous later artists who are in it. He was still a force in popular music when rock was the music of the day, unlike Billie Holiday; and he was more revered by many rock fans than a host of lesser singers who were getting AM-radio play and were offered up as rock artists, from Englebert Humperdink to Burt Bachrach. Frank Sinatra is not in the RRHOF; but Louis Armstrong, Ma Rainey and Miles Davis are. Hmmmm... Maybe Chuck Berry belongs in the jazz HOF? Chubby Checker, who popularized the dance most closely associated with R&R, is not in the HOF. The Weavers, The Chad Mitchell Trio, The Kingston Trio, The Lettermen - those folk groups were the immediate predecessors of the American rock group; not one of them is in. Yet Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Hank Williams and Jimmy Rodgers were admitted on their own. The idea seems to be: let's recognize every major American music trend in the first half of the 20th century, and then later on maybe we'll recognize the people who all those rock musicians actually knew and heard before they became rock musicians.

So where is the logic, oh tastemakers of the Great Hall? There is none. Though if we look the ABBA choice right in the face, along with others included for nothing more than having a lot of hit records (Billy Joel, Bob Seger, Madonna and AC/DC for instance) we may just have to admit that the one criterion that plays an outsized role is record sales. I can't honestly say that it is the only or even the main criterion. After all, Frank Sinatra did sell quite a few records. Celine Dion has sold about 200 million records, but she's not there. Oops, wait a few years please. She has technically been eligible for four years, since her first recording came out 29 years ago, in 1981. But she didn't release a record in English until 1990. There are no inductees in the RRHOF who did not record primarily in English. So give her a few years and I suspect she will be in like Flynn. ABBA, on the other hand, has been charting since the 70's, and occupies the noble position of being just behind The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson in total sales. Now, I'm not saying that sales are not a legitimate criterion to consider. Sales indicate popularity; popularity is sometimes an indicator of quality; though often not. It does suggest a high level of exposure and recognition, which may indicate influence and importance. On the other hand, it may not. It's hard to know what ABBA's influence might be, but I suspect it is less than that of The 1910 Fruitgum Company, pioneers of bublegum rock. Along with The Archies (actually just a bunch of studio musicians), The Jackson Five, The Cowsills, The Osmonds and various other "family" groups who were knocking on ceilings in the late sixties and early seventies, these fruitie types offered a watered down version of what had mainly been gritty, black and white working class music. IMHO, ABBA, in spite of a few catchy tunes (or because they were nothing but catchy tunes) contributed very little other than to take this trend and offer it up as discotheque fare. Not that it was actually disco in its classic form, but it was danceable and bouncy even when the subject was not exactly uplifting ("The WInner Takes It All"). They did not start or significantly expand anything I consider to be of much value in rock, they merely plied the lighter side of pop tastes for a string of hits.

The artists who precede them on the album sales list clearly did something important; many of the artists who follow them clearly did. Queen is next, and though they may not be my favorite group (love Sheer Heart Attack, other than that they're not my taste), they obviously took rock vocals to a level that has rarely if ever been equaled, and they helped make the extended composition a standard of FM radio fare. Someone please tell me about ABBA's similar accomplishments. They were not exceptionally good singers, their instrumentals were forgettable, their songs not pathbreaking in any sense I can think of. For light rock I'll take The Carpenters or Hall and Oates any day. Neither of them have made it in, and I doubt it would look quite as bizarre if they did. ABBA simply represents the dumbing down of taste to the lowest common denominator, diminishing everything that was vibrant, experimental, original or challenging in 1970's rock. They were about as responsible for this as their RRHOF mates Fleetwood Mac, a group that at least had earlier (pre-Buckingham/Nicks) incarnations which would never have gotten in on the basis of album sales, but perhaps deserved to be there for one reason or another. But for ABBA, sales and Top 5 hits are the beginning and the end of what anyone can say about their place in the history of R&R.

Although record sales are clearly a major consideration for entry into the Hallowed Hall, the bigger impression is that the criteria are just haphazard and arbitrary, putting in question whether there are any criteria at all. Consider the Hall's own description of their decision process: "Criteria include the influence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll." So, that is about as vague as you can get, and gives the nominating committee the flexibility to pick just about anyone they like, and ignore anybody they don't like. As a result, you've got a lot of tangential "early influence" type inductees who really had very little to do with rock; lots of sidemen, blues players, impressarios, gospel singers, and country influences, and yawning gaps in actual rock and roll. Bill Monroe is considered a rock influence in this ever so vaguely delineated hagiography, whereas in fact it is not likely that bluegrass had very much influence even in country rock, as it was quite a while before it even had much influence in country music. Charles Brown was a great blues pianist; I was fortunate enough to see him perform live, a treat I picked for my 40th birthday; but he had almost nothing at all to do with rock and roll. On the other hand, the Rev. Gary Davis, a player who directly influenced numerous major R&R artists (a short list would include Jerry Garcia, David Bromberg, and Jorma Kaukonen) has unaccountably been overlooked. A less obvious, but extremely interesting early urban blues figure would be Tampa Red, who not only inspired some of the bluesmen who inspired rock (including Muddy Waters and Elmore James), but played a style that is oddly modern and upbeat in a way that clearly anticipates rock and roll. Yet he is missing.

So, for that matter, is Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, whose songs provided early material for Elvis Presley, as well as influencing a number of important urban blues artists. While we're on the subject of important early performers who also wrote hits for major rock artists, Arthur Alexander has not even gotten his due in the arbitrary and capricious Hall. Early pop/rock artists who did no more for the medium than 100 artists who are not in have apprently been inducted on no other grounds that that they happened to be early. Thus, I don't need to question the contributions of Gene Pitney, Dusty Springfield or Ricky Nelson to raise an eyebrow that they, and quite a few others like them, are in the RRHOF, when a large number of later artists who were more influential are not in. Ricky Nelson, but not Lou Reed? (To pick a name out of a hat.) Be serious. Better yet, Dusty Springfield but not Neal Sedaka? He not only contributed to her career but had a major, lengthy career of his own, involving artists from The Monkees to 10CC and many more.

The early influences also seem to be more like obvious names to drop than interesting connections. Everyone who had one or two memorable early hits - Frankie Lyman, Del Shannon, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley, Richie Valens - has been duly voted in. Perhaps one or two memorable hits in the 50's is sufficient to claim importance. But if so, why not one or two hits in the 60's? That's when rock really took off and became a major cultural force. There were lots of two-hit wonders then, and some of their songs are as memorable as "Rock Around the Clock" and "Teenager in Love". I've already mentioned The Boxtops, but I could name dozens more. Rather than that, why not pick three: Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, The Left Banke, and The Foundations. Each, to my recollections had two major hits. Those hits were not just good songs but sounds that we will never forget; and I'll bet a whole lot of people a generation or more younger than me know the bands and would recognize the songs they are famous for. Why are they any less worthy of commemoration than the 50's groups?

Then again, there are groups that had a hell of a lot more hits than that, and were inlutential in some notable way, who are still not in RRHOF. I mean, how can you not have Gerry and the Pacemakers in the RRHOF? They should have been among the first ones, one of the most important Mersey Beat groups, a movement that changed R&R history. Tommy James and the Shondells practically defined sixties acid pop, and to my mind did a lot to make new kinds of sounds acceptable to a wide audience, moving the whole mainstream forward. Almost every one of their hits contained prominent, interesting new uses of keyboards, reverb, rhythm, drums, etc. Where's The Association, with their harmonies second only to The Beach Boys in the 1960's, not to mention several of the most frequently played singles in the history of rock? The Monkees were the first group to use a Moog synthesizer on an album, among other things. Their history alone, from a manufactured t.v. pop group to an independent progressive pop quartet on Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, is enough to mark them as significant - at least since Ricky Nelson's trajectory seems to make him worthy of HOF immortality (read his bio on the RRHOF web site). Paul Revere and the Raiders wore outrageous costumes long before David Bowie or Kiss; they also had five Billboard Top 10 and thirteen Top 25 hits, and 4 Gold albums, and were Columbia's top selling artist for a while (I imagine Dylan has long since surpassed them). More interesting is that they were hard rock pioneers, spinning serious guitar solos as early as 1965 and later becoming a kind of retro icon for punk rockers. Next up: I'm not sure what's the best way to defend the view that Steppenwolf should be a first round pick for the rock HOF; maybe because "Born to Be Wild" is a strong contender for the anthem of a generation; because "Monster" was rock music's most powerful indictment of the political direction of the country; because they have one of the four or five best live albums ever; or because they too were a group whose style looked forward to the hard rock of the 70's. Whatever, it seems pretty obvious to me that Steppenwolf means every bit as much to rock history as many rock artists of the 50's, and much more than most of those "early influences".

But at least quite a few 60's bands are duly represented: just look at the "B" list - The Band, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Buffalo Springfied. Entire trends, however, are barely represented if at all. It's nice that Iggy Pop and the Stooges finally got in; they were a key source for the punk movement. But even before them there were historically important artists who deserve recognition in this regard, e.g., The Troggs, Marc Bolan (T Rex), and Père Ubu. Early eighties post-punk groups are eligible, but all I see in the Hall are a few of the big hitmakers (The Police, U2). The highly influential Joy Division is MIA, and so are The Alarm, The Jam, Joe Jackson, The Psychedeic Furs, The Cars, The Knack - not to mention all the 2 Tone and Ska bands (The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, The Beat), Rock Against Racism (TRB and others)... the point is, this is a very important era, a turning point in the history of rock with a variety of manifestations, none of which are represented, just the hitmakers. British folk-rock - Donovan, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Renaissance, etc - is not represented at all, in spite of influencing so many major 70's bands, including Led Zep and Yes. Does this make any sense? Influential guitarists like Roy Harper and Bert Jansch have been passed over, but Leadbelly and John Lee Hooker are there. I think the Hall managers have their priorities completely skewed; you should recognize the people who directly influenced and played rock first, then go and collect the distant cousins who neither knew or cared much about R&R.

I could go on. In fact I will. Let's talk about some of the most influential trends in the history of rock - trends which I will quite frankly say that I don't personally like very much, but whose importance is hard to deny (a hell of a lot harder than that of ABBA). No one person ever invented any form of music, but Barry White came darn close to inventing disco. In any case his influence is undeniable. But as another hugely influential unrecognized group once sang, "he's not there". You won't find Gloria Gaynor, The Hues Corporation, or Diana Ross (as a solo act) in the RRHOF. The Jacksons are in there only insofar as they extend the biography of The Jackson Five. Donna Summer has been denied entry several times. No sunshine for KC and his band either. Forget about The Tavares or the Pointer Sisters. Funk, somehow, is worthy of respect - not only James Brown but Parliament-Funkadelic squeezed in. Marvin Gaye was thankfully worthy of admission. So it is clearly not a matter of excluding artists on the notion that later R&B is not rock. I was never a big disco fan, but to deny that it was a major force in the broader concept of rock music that includes soul, funk, and hip hop is just nuts. I thought I was an ideologue, but if I were in charge of a public-facing institution like the RRHOF I like to think I'd try to be objective. The razor-like excision of disco is just vindictive, whether you were ever a fan or not.

On the other end of the spectrum, let's talk "heavy metal". AC/DC happens to be in the Hall; by no surprise, they are something like 7th or 8th in the list of best selling groups of all time. But they have no other business in the HOF. They were not one of the pioneers of heavy metal, and I doubt anyone could show that they influenced other heavy metal bands more than Kiss or Aerosmith, both of whom were founded the same time as AC/DC but released albums earlier. (AC/DC did not release any notable albums until several years after they were founded.) Iron Butterfly, Deep Purple, MC5, Grand Funk - they belong in the HOF as the early explorers of what became heavy metal. Of course Led Zeppelin is in; who would pay any attention to this museum if they weren't? But they should not be there for their illustrious place in album sales, nor for the popularity of "Stairway to Heaven", but for their virtually reinventing hard rock in 1969 and leading the way into the next decade; for expanding the instrumental sound and introducing radical new techniques on both guitar and drums; and for many other qualities. What similar contributions has AC/DC made? I know - they pioneered a new vocal sound in which the human voice is made to sound like a parrot struggling to escape the talons of a hawk? Sorry, that doesn't strike me as a significant accomplishment. The RRHOF bio of Metallica has one thing more or less right: Black Sabbath "invented" heavy metal (not quite, but close) and Metallica "redefined it in the Eighties". So what exactly did AC/DC do besides sell a lot of records? Probably less than Ozzy did in his solo career. "Huh?" you say, Ozzy's not there? Sacrilege, to an awful lot of rock fans. But neither are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motorhead, or Motley Crue (sorry, metalheads, for dropping the cute little umlauts over some of those names) - all of them eligible for many years. Guns 'N Roses? You'll have to wait a couple of years, their first album came out in 1987. But I wouldn't be surprised to see them get in: they're just behind AC/DC and Metallica in heavy metal album sales. (Discounting Zep and Deep Purple as not "pure" metal.) So what will that prove; that the rulers of HOF have carefully considered the merits of any of these bands? Doesn't look that way to me.

More than anything, I am shocked at the total lack of respect for progressive rock in the inductee list. Sure Pink Floyd is there, but not for Atom Heart Mother, I suspect. Genesis has just been admitted; again, I suspect that Phil Collins's contributions have more to do with that than Peter Gabriel's. Just guessing. But to me, a Rock Hall of Fame without the Moody Blues, Yes, King Crimson or Jethro Tull is a complete joke - and all of them have been eligible for more than 15 years. (I could shorten that and say that a Rock Hall of Fame without Jethro Tull is a complete joke, even if progressive rock never existed - since I consider Tull to be far from a pure prog band. But I digress.) That says to me that there is an ideology keeping these bands out. And I can go a bit deeper, because I think prog is so important that I'm not sure some lesser-known prog groups shouldn't be in there. If popularity and album sales are the criteria, then perhaps a group like Gentle Giant does not belong in the Hallowed Hall. But there's a long list of prog rock artists doing highly technical, rhythmically and harmonically complex songs, and I'll bet nearly all of them have been influenced to one degree or another by GG, who did it before any of them. (Not that I'm ignoring Zappa's role here.) I'm not so sure that even groups like Rush didn't get something from them. Can't prove it without a lot of research but my ears tell me so.

Last and certainly least, I hate to mention this, but there's a slew of late 70's groups that I can't stand, and I'd be happy to hear that the guardians of rock's kingdom can't stand them either. But again, if there's a reason for keeping out the likes of Rush, Styx, Journey, Toto, Foreigner, Boston, Kansas, Steve Miller and a crapload of other late 70's/early 80's pseudo-progressive pop, I'd like to see the criteria. Arguably, those groups defined everything in rock and roll in that era that was not punk or "new wave". There are some dim signs that taste has at least some influence in the choice of inductees, e.g., the fact that Steely Dan has been inducted and Rush has not. Then again, Bob Seger has been inducted and 10CC has not; there goes that theory. Anyway, I'm not in favor of a rushed journey down the Styx, but if we're talking about impact, we will be forced to admit that those groups more or less absconded with the FM airwaves for a decade or so.

I'm going to stop, eventually. In fact, I'm not even going to mention several other important trends in rock, all pre-1985 and therefore eligible, which are pretty much unrepresented in the RRHOF, such as glam (Roxy, Bolan, Dolls) or jazz rock (BS&T, Chicago, Soft Machine) or fusion (McLaughlin, Corea, Coryell) or euro (Kraftwerk, Focus, The Fixx) or... Well, either I'm going to stop, or perhaps the RRHOF team should start - recognizing that they have managed to ignore most of what is really significant in rock, while compiling a list of distant predecessors and pop stars. No, they have not ignored history altogether; they have made their motions in the directions of The Clash, David Bowie, and other artists who are not simply popular but seminal. But they have turned their backs on so much else, while digging into the jazz and blues archives and the interesting sidemen and the gurus of one sort or another, then adding numerous artists whose contributions are little more than a list of hits.

Now why is all this? A friend of mine has a simple answer: "Jann's club", he calls it - a short way of saying that Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, controls the Hall's membership list according to his own personal taste. Is it true? Hmmmm.... Take a look at Roger Friedman's critique of the 2007 nominee list, if you have the patience to read any more HOF critiques after my longwinded diatribe. (Okay, it's on Fox. If it makes you feel any better, Friedman was fired soon afterward for reviewing a pirated copy of the film Wolverine, and pointing out to readers how easy it was to get hold of. Wonder why Fox might have cared so much about this...) If you don't like that, take a look at some of the comments about Wenner to the same effect on his Wikipedia page.

One comment there, cited from a New York Post interview with Peter Tork, is worth noting: Tork says explicitly that Wenner has personally kept The Monkees out of the RRHOF over the worn-out criticism that they didn't play the instruments on their first two albums. On the first album, that was by understanding with producer Don Kirshner. The second, however, was released without The Monkees' prior consent to this arrangement. In any case, the criticism is not only unfair but ignorant. It's unfair because any number of Motown groups and quite a few rock bands who are in the RRHOF (e.g., The Beach Boys) did not play many (or in some cases any) of the instruments on some of their albums; the use of anonymous studio musicians backing major rock groups on albums was extremely common in those days. And it's ignorant because in fact, The Monkees did play their own instruments in concert, on Headquarters, and to a large extent on Pisces Aquarius Capricorn & Jones and their later albums; because Peter Tork is widely known to be a top notch musician who could have played any instrument in the band and then some (and in fact did play a guitar part on their first album, alongside James Burton); and because Nesmith was not only a competent guitarist but an excellent songwriter with a career that dated from before The Monkees existed. What Dolenz lacked in drumming ability he made up in unique vocal qualities that created the sound of some of the most memorable hits of the 60's. The Monkees may have suffered from the discrepancy between their t.v. show personas as rock stars and their early acceptance of studio backing on the albums; certainly to hold this against them at a time when we have a much broader perspective on the whole era is ridiculous and vindictive.

Wenner's Wikipedia page contains another paragraph with a list of groups he is said to be responsible for keeping out on the basis of personal taste. According to Friedman, "Wenner’s nominating committee consists largely of his current and former employees from Rolling Stone (Nathan Brackett, David Fricke, Jim Henke, Joe Levy, Brian Keizer, Toure, and Anthony DeCurtis). But they have little say over who really is inducted." There are lots of people questioning the objectivity of the Hall's criteria. The Hall's Wikipedia page has more examples of the criticism of Wenner et al., and this Rush fan site has a page of quotes from a variety of rock legends doubting the value of its choices. When The Sex Pistols were inducted, Johnny Rotten wrote a letter calling the Hall "a piss stain" and "urine in wine" and refusing to attend the ceremony. Complaints about RRHOF are usually paired with complaints about Wenner, and often target the overdependence on record sales as a criterion; here's another example. Dig around, you'll find comments like this for most bands that have been snubbed, with especially heavy emphasis from progressive rock and heavy metal fans, who know from the pages of Rolling Stone how much Wenner dislikes those trends. It's hard to find an authoritative source to confirm Wenner's autocratic control of the nominating process, and there certainly are counterexamples to the influence of record sales (another: Chicago has never gotten in) but I have not been able to find anything, by Wenner or anyone else, providing evidence of the diversity or objectivity of opinion among the RRHOF crowd.

And what none of the comments about Wenner point out (which it is therefore my duty as a blogger to do) is that if he has any influence there, much less controlling influence, it is a depressing comment on this personality cult that he has managed to have himself elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Yes, shocking though it may seem after what we have just said, the ever opportunistic Wenner, with the help of colleagues who "have little say over who really is inducted", has granted himself not only rock immortality but a glowing biography, in which the only thing that is understated is his role in the RRHOF itself: "He was in on the ground floor with a small group - which would become its board of directors - that began planning the institution back in 1983, and he remains vitally active in its operation to this day." Vitally active indeed!

In short, the RRHOF is not really the generally recognized standard of excellence, influence, or importance in rock. Though it may have begun with a variety of industry heavyweights counterbalancing each other (Ahmet Ertegun was part of the lineup at first, and one source says that his departure was the beginning of Wenner's total reign) it is widely believed to have long since become a personal playground for one outsized personality and a number of his sycophants. And that is a shame, because so many of us believe that rock is one of the most important musical art forms in history, with tremendous variety and vitality, and no sign of its diminishing after half a century (indeed I see signs that it is once again in a phase of expansion and new forms of expression). It deserves a serious institutional standard for its history and iconography, not a cabal of self-indulgent arbiters whose criteria for admission are fuzzy at best and seriously flawed at worst.

So, how could we fix the Hall of Errors? Well, clearly I think there are certain inductees who should not be there at all right now: virtually all the jazz artists, some of the blues, folk and country artists, all rock stars whose sole contribution is a lot of hit singles, possibly some of the less important divas and crooners from the 50's and early 60's. The problem in a nutshell is that there are certain artists whose absence virtually leaps out at you, having been eligible in some cases for as long as 15 years or more, and without any rational explanation of why ABBA or Bob Seger should be there and not them, it puts the whole project in question.

So here, then, is a LIST: call it the NPRRHOFM! (For the acronmyically challenged among you, that would be "Neglected Potential RRHOF Members".) Now, please note: this is not a list of my personal favorites. Far from it: anybody who knows my tastes knows that I can't even listen to half the groups on the following list. Never particularly liked The Strawbs, Roxy Music, or Mott the Hoople. Hate Kiss; not a Sabbath fan. Grand Funk and Queen each have one great album (Closer to Home and Sheer Heart Attack), the rest of both is almost unbearable. Chicago, Alice Cooper - a few songs here and there that I can get into, that's all. I could also offer you a list of favorites who I would not include at this point: Nektar, The Fixx, The Parachute Club and the Gang of Four, for instance. In short, I'm wearing my objectivity hat here (clearly an unknown piece of haberdashery at Rolling Stone) and trying to identify groups I think are important enough in some way to be clear choices for the Hall. My choices are all made on mainly historical grounds, which I would define as:

(a) Influence: artists who were widely admired, imitated or looked to for inspiration among other important artists who came later. (Examples: Alex Chilton, Iron Butterfly, Laura Nyro, The Flying Burrito Brothers)
(b) Defining role for an era, sound or trend: artists whose overall style or sound, or some aspect thereof, is a touchstone for what became a recognized rock trend or genre. (Examples: Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Moody Blues, Blood Sweat and Tears)
(c) Important representative of sub-genre: artists who may not have been the first or only examples of their particular form of rock, but who are widely considered one of the most important representatives of that form (Examples: The Replacements, Tommy James and the Shondells, Boston)
(d) Originality: artists who stood out as unique in some generally admired way. (Examples: Tim Buckley, Jimmy Buffet, XTC, The Smiths)
(e) Key contributions: artists who don't fall into any of the first four categories, but who either took some critical step that expanded the horizons of rock, or created tracks of extraordinary quality (whether or not recognized in popularity or sales), or made very admirable technical innovations, or some similar important contribution. (Examples: King Crimson, 10CC)

I think most of the groups on my list actually have a foot in more than one of these categories. If this or some similar list of criteria were used, I suspect that a lot of the members of RRHOF would not be there, and a lot of others would. But let me say this, by way of charity: I am not against adding a category "(f): Major hitmakers", and bringing in some of those groups at a later time. It is the vindictive excising of really obvious choices like Jethro Tull and the casual inclusion of popular but otherwise unremarkable groups that exercises me. After due recognition has been given to the people who are actually important to the history of rock, let us open the gates to the people who merely wrote some catchy tunes with good hooks and made million$ from them.

Here, then, is the list. I could entertain the thought of removing some of them after hearing arguments from the field, but I'm putting in bold the artists I think it is really bordering on the absurd to keep out at this point. Add your own in the Comments section, and try to observe the criterion of 25 years since their first released recording, as I have:

A - Arthur Alexander, The Association
B - The Boxtops, Blood Sweat and Tears, Tim Buckley, Bad Company, Blue Oyster Cult, Jimmy Buffet, B-52's, Boston
C - Alex Chilton, Chicago, Canned Heat, Alice Cooper
D - Rev. Gary Davis, Neil Diamond, Donovan (Leitch), Deep Purple
E - (Empty for now)
F - The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Foundations
G - Grand Funk, Gentle Giant, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Guess Who
H - Roy Harper, Herman's Hermits
I - Iron Butterfly
J - Jethro Tull, Joe Jackson, Judas Priest
K - King Crimson, Kiss
L - Love
M - The Monkees, The Moody Blues, John McLaughlin, Mott the Hoople, Motorhead
N - Laura Nyro
O - (Oops, can't think of any)
P - Procol Harum, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Psychedelic Furs
Q - (?)
R - Tampa Red, Mitch Ryder, Todd Rundgren, Lou Reed, Roxy Music, The Replacements
S - Neal Sedaka, Steppenwolf, Sonny and Cher, The Strawbs, The Specials, The Smiths, Donna Summer
T - Tommy James and the Shondells, The Turtles, 10CC, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
U - UB40
V - (Vote for your favorite)
W - Johnny Winter, Barry White
X - XTC
Y - Yes
Z - The Zombies, Warren Zevon