Noted.
Do I need to nominated Yes or will they automatically come up? They got going in 1968 so eligible in 1993 I guess. They did finally make the hall recently. 2017, sadly after Chris Squire passed.
Let’s just keep it simple. Acts that are actually in the Hall will go on the ballot for the year they were admitted, even if they had already been eligible for some time before.
OK, thank you, that makes sense.
Yeah, I’m retracting my Elvis vote. Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me. Straight up racist he was, simple and plain.
Any of these have a strong argument for their influence, so best I can do is go with the ones who influenced it in the direction I like (which means James Brown).
Agree 100%. I know the objective is to filter out the stiffs and include only the best of the best (I think that’s the objective?), but limiting to 3 a year absolutely does not necessarily do that. There are years (IMO) where nobody should have been inducted and other years (like this one) where everyone looks like an elite, worthy artist. As pointed out, do we really think voting in Jethro Tull but excluding Buddy Holly increases the “average quality” of the hall?
What I’d suggest, if three a year is the limit, is to use an MLB approach: carry over artists who don’t make the cut for X numbers of year, then drop ‘em. Still only 3 a year get in, but Freddie and the Dreamers doesn’t get in at the expense of the Kinks.
And this has the added benefit of greatly complicating the process without an ounce of effort from me, so I can’t see a downside.
Yeah, the problem with that is if we keep everyone around for several years the ballot gets ridiculously long. I suspect anyone who can’t get to 15% in any year probably isn’t going to ever make the cut.
I’ll stick with the system as it is for now. Maybe when we’re done we can go back and do some sort of old-timers bonus round if we still feel a lot of acts are being unjustly excluded.
That’s as little unfair, considering Holly’s career was cut short because he died. If we say a short but brilliant career is necessarily a down vote, there’s gonna be a whole lot of people who get knocked out, including Sam Cooke.
That’s true, and if some voters want to give him extra credit for his tragically premature death, I get it. There are, of course, a lot of artists this issue will come up with.
Personally, I feel that since MOST artists produce their best and most memorable work relatively early in their careers, it’s not safe to assume that someone who died at their peak would have stayed at that level much longer. if they’d lived.
On the other hand, artists like Hendrix who was only 27 probably could have at least doubled his number of great songs.
Janis Joplin was also 27.
Otis Redding was only 26.
Maybe not Jim Morrison, he may have been done anyway.
Paul Simon might defy the rules, his stuff in the 60s was incredible but Graceland was probably his best album in 1986.
No, sales aren’t the only criteria – Backstreet Boys will not be getting the call – but they are the only objective measure of how popular acts really were in their day. In the case of Holly and Brown, who are both overwhelmingly qualified by any other standard, I can’t get past a difference of nearly two full orders of magnitude in album sales. And Holly’s short career isn’t that much of an excuse, since many artists have had short careers, and continued to sell lots of records posthumously.
Yeah, I think there is going to be a problem here. I haven’t looked at the entire R&RHOF list, but I really think that every artist on this ballot deserves to make it. I imagine the bloat came later.
Like I voted for the Everly Brothers just to give them a chance, but that still leaves the WAY short of even staying on the ballot. And I honestly think Domino and Cooke also belong.
Eek, looking ahead the 1987 ballot might be just as bad. Are we really going to give someone like Marvin Gaye or Muddy Waters the one-and-done treatment?
Oh well, I did the best I could to save the Everlys!
My personal thoughts on the candidates I haven’t mentioned:
Buddy Holly would be my fourth pick, based on the difficult-to-define quality of “influence”. It seems like Sam Cooke and Fats Domino were objectively bigger stars when they were all active, but Holly seems to have survived as a well-known “oldies” artist, while Cooke and Domino have fallen into obscurity. It may not be fair, and very possibly might be racist, but I think it’s clearly the case. And Buddy Holly, to be clear, was awesome.
Ray Charles was also awesome, and influenced everyone in popular music, but his connection to rock is tangential enough that I’m comfortable leaving him out.
Likewise, the Everly Brothers were hugely influential on every rock group that employed vocal harmonies, but they themselves simply did not rock. I’ll be curious to see how this group responds when Simon and Garfunkel reach the ballot.
Jerry Lee Lewis was mostly a country guy. He had a handful of great rock and roll songs, but I’m comfortable saying that Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard were on a different level. Frankly, Lewis is just the sort of artist I’m trying to prune out; “a handful of great songs” may be good enough for that place in Cleveland, but not here. Listen to the most easily accessible greatest hits CD, “All Killer No Filler!” and I think you’ll have to agree it sadly fails to live up to its name. An act that can’t fill out a full CD’s worth of great songs isn’t a Hall of Famer in my book.
With only three choices, I’m going be very narrow with my definition of Rock n Roll. Unless they had a huge influence on Rock (like Dylan), I’m not voting for any Folkies no matter how much I like them.
Yes, I agree. Dylan should unquestionably go in; many of his best-known songs may have been written during his early folk period, but he’s been fronting a rock band since 1965. I can’t see Simon and Garfunkel ever getting my vote against the competition they’ll be facing.
OK, explain how “Hazy Shade of Winter” or “Baby Driver” or “Keep the Customers Satisfied” aren’t rock, but Buddy Holly is. It’s guitar, bass, and standard rock beats. “Cecilia”, “At the Zoo”, even “Mrs. Robinson” are way more rock than folk.
I think that’s the problem with getting too fixated on the definition of rock and roll. Any definition is going to be vague and probably won’t match how you classify the bands anyway.
We’ll debate if S&G are vote-worthy when they come up. I suspect I won’t vote for them against stronger competition, but if I don’t vote for them, it won’t be because of the definition of rock.
You’re right, of course, and the implicit comparison I made upthread was kind of dumb. Unlike the Everly Brothers, S & G were backed up by a full rock band except at the very start of their career.
Just a reminder, the board software does allow you to change your votes! I have strategically moved a vote from Chuck Berry to Jerry Lee Lewis. This does not at all reflect my actual opinion of the two artists, but Chuck obviously doesn’t need the vote and I want to keep Jerry Lee eligible because I feel he could be a legitimate option on next week’s ballot.
I just did the same - gotta keep as many from this ballot alive as possible. Maybe Jerry Lee and Sam Cooke never make it, but I think they deserve another week at least.
A trivia question to pass the time: Who, in 2024, broke the record for most career Top 40 albums on the Billboard 200 chart?
Keep in mind that almost everyone gets their music through subscription streaming services these days; hardly anyone is buying individual albums, whether in digital or physical formats, and the people who are doing this may not be typical of music fans overall.
Answer:
The Grateful Dead. They still release multiple live albums every year, and apparently a lot of their fans still like their vinyl.