And all the members are from Canada, to boot! Yeesh
a-boot.
Wenner stepped down as chair of the Foundation on January 1. We’ll see if inductee patterns change in the next few years.
It seems to me, sooner or later, pretty much anybody who’s cut more than 3 albums with some top 40 singles ends up in the R&RHOF. What does it even mean anymore?
Touché
You slay me!
I do wonder if they’re getting to the point where the vast majority of acts that should be in, already are.
Every year, they’re inducting about a half-dozen acts; every year, a new crop of acts becomes eligible (to be eligible, 25 years has to pass after the release of an act’s first album). One can question if a half-dozen acts which premiered in the same year are all Hall-worthy (in most cases, probably not, I suspect), which means that many of the inductees are those who had been previously considered, and not made it in.
On the one hand, this means that acts which are probably worthy of inclusion, but had been overlooked, or not strongly considered, in the past are re-considered, such as Rush. OTOH, with the exception of the occasional obvious choice who is inducted as soon as they’re eligible, most of the slam-dunk choices are probably already in. And, since the annual voting and induction are among the Hall’s biggest pieces of publicity for itself, they need to keep inducting people.
Indeed, IMHO, the lyrics to the RUSH song The Trees (from the album Hemispheres) are another transparent example of Neil Peart’s admiration for Ayn Rand
I’ve never really gotten what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is meant to be hosting in it’s hall. Some of the entries make sense even if I’ve never heard of them (like a lot of the breakthrough rock bands from the 50s). But some of them just seem to be not Rock and Roll at all - Janet Jackson, Madonna, and Whitney Houston are good performers but don’t exactly come to mind when I think of rocking out, and neither do rap acts like NWA, Notorious BIG, Public Enemy, and Tupac. And having entries like The Beatles plus each Beatle independently or Eric Clapton plus two bands he was in seem a bit off too.
It doesn’t seem to have a real ‘who belongs here’ philosophy beyond ‘who do the people running it want to put in’, so it’s not surprising to me that some rock acts don’t make the list until later than you think, and some acts that you’d expect to be in there aren’t.
Maybe they were too niche, because as a non-American or Canadian, I do not know them at all. They didn’t really reach far outside their local scene, is my inference. Though admittedly I’m not sure if that is a factor in Hall Of Fame selection, it may have limited their album sales enough to keep them low on the priority list.
Because it’s misnamed institution, it’s a Pop hall of fame, just nobody would care if it was called that…
The first time I ever heard of Rush was here on this board, and for years I thought they were some weird SDMB in-joke, because I never encountered them anywhere else.
Jann Wenner is a prick with oddly exclusive standards for induction. I’ve heard for years, that the decision to induct is his.
If the Dave Clark Five are in, then the Monkees should be in, too. Rush, Kansas, Jethro Tull. The “Deserving but Screwed” list is depressingly long.
Me 3. And I like elves and dragons…
The Dave Clark Five are in but Rush is not? Kids have not heard of Rush? This world is truely totally screwed up.
Kids, go and watch Rush’s “Tom Saywer” on YouTube right now. Its required viewing before you can enter adulthood.
Rush is, in fact, in the R&RHOF, but they weren’t selected for the Hall until 2013 (hence the thread title).
I do find it interesting to learn that several posters (at least some of whom I believe are located outside of North America) hadn’t heard of Rush, other than here on the SDMB. Undeniably, the Hall itself is very US-focused, and non-US acts who have been inducted are almost exclusively those which have had big impacts in the US.
I have heard of Rush, mostly here, but probably not exclusively here. I couldn’t tell you if I’ve ever heard one of their songs, and certainly couldn’t name one. I’m 58 and live in North America.
People who like Rush love Rush.
But I don’t think they have the universal appeal that their fans think they do.
Always more popular in Canada, their highest-charting single in the US peaked at 21.
That’s not a knock, it’s just that people tend to be myopic about their favorite band.
- Because the RRHOF elections are wildly subjective and don’t really reflect anything in particular, aside from the enormous influence of Jann Wenner.
I mean, Rush isn’t even close to the worst omission. Supertramp still isn’t in, and you’re going to have a tough time explaining to me why Rush should be in before them. OutKast isn’t in. Weid Al Yankovic isn’t in. Iron Maiden isn’t in. Brian Eno isn’t in. Lionel Ritchie, with or without the Commodores, isn’t in.
- There isn’t a lot of room. Six inductees a year is not actually all that many when the RRHOF has a mandate to also include pioneers, behind the scenes influences, and people like that who maybe aren’t super famous. You may not even know who Bill Black or Mahalia Jackson or James Jamerson are, but inducting people like that is important if they’re to have the pretense of being keepers of rock and roll history. They do make mistakes - in my opinion Joan Jett and the Blackhearts was a ridiculous choice - but it takes awhile to get around to all of the deserving acts, and there’s new choices every year.
Almost none of them are rock ‘n’ roll. That’s because rock ‘n’ roll stopped existing sometime in the early 60s before The Beatles. Since then it’s been called merely rock.
But what is rock? Purists will say (they’ve said it here on the Dope) that the only real rock today is heavy metal. They scorn The Beatles for being pop, despite the fact that The Beatles became the dictionary definition of “rock” as soon as they hit the States.
No name will satisfy everybody. Rock and Roll works best because it’s the historic term for the music that introduced the genre, that weird mixture of r&b, rockabilly, country, folk, blues, and swing that coalesced in the 1950s and then spread out into the all-encompassing popular music of the rest of the century in hundreds of sub-genres.
Or you can just say that it’s anyone who got a cover story in Rolling Stone. That’s more cynical than true, to be honest, but the business was founded on lies by crooks so that works in its own way.