The SDMB Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Cafe Society
1

It’s a venerable tradition around here to have an annual thread complaining about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so let’s just elect our own!

The one complaint everyone seems to agree with is that there are way too many members, around 400 at last count, or about ten per year that they’ve been open. We will be more selective by electing only THREE inductees per year the Hall has been open, for a total of 120.

Here’s how I propose to do it: The ballot below lists all the inaugural members of the Hall, from 1986. Vote for the three candidates you feel most deserving, according to whatever criteria make sense to you. Our top three vote getters will be inducted. Next Friday-ish, I will post a ballot with all the inductees from 1987, PLUS any of this week’s candidates who didn’t finish in the top three, but did clear 15% of the vote. Then we will repeat for all 40 years. You can also nominate acts who aren’t in the real-life Hall by PMing me, but only once we reach the year the act would have been eligible, 25 years after their first recording. (Circle the date: if the schedule holds according to plan, Jethro Tull will be eligible on April 17, just in time) I’m going to make this a PUBLIC poll for now, but am open to feedback about this or any other rule.

  • Chuck Berry
  • James Brown
  • Ray Charles
  • Sam Cooke
  • Fats Domino
  • The Everly Brothers
  • Buddy Holly
  • Jerry Lee Lewis
  • Little Richard
  • Elvis Presley
0 voters

Poll closes next Friday at 10 am Central.

Note: This might be a time to consider strategic voting. I think the objectively correct choices here are clearly Elvis, Chuck Berry, and James Brown. However, next week’s candidates are, no disrespect, all the old-timers who didn’t make the first class. So there are IMO many candidates on this ballot who would be strong contenders on next week’s ballot; if you have a favorite outside the big three, it might be wise to vote for them to keep them eligible for next week. The week after that the classic-era rock groups start becoming eligible, so the competition will become a lot stiffer.

2

The other hoary old complaint is that too many inducted artists are only tangentially rock and roll. Are we going to avoid that one? Fine if so, but it is bound to come up so I dunno if you want ground rules covering it.

3

No, not at all. I suspect this group is going to lean heavily toward groups which fit a definition of “rock” which hasn’t evolved since 1970, but every actual Hall inductee will appear on our ballots and the voters will have their say.

4

I just received an ineligible write-in vote, so allow me to clarify:

What we are currently voting on is the ballot from 1986. Therefore, the only artists currently eligible to be nominated as write-ins are those whose first commercial recording was released in or before 1961. For next week’s ballot, the first one which may actually have write-in candidates, the cutoff will be 1962, and so on.

5

Chuck Berry and Elvis are shoe-ins but it kills me that I had to choose between Buddy Holly and Fats Domino. Fats was playing R&R before anybody else on that list, but Holly’s songs were better.