May I give one of my crap measured and lawyerly statements? Hear me out in my defense of Cleveland:
I'm happy that something like the RRHOF exists at all to commemorate and celebrate"rock and pop" music as a part of US/Western culture, irrespective of whether I have personal sympathy for each and every decision inducting an artist or a band or letting them wait in the purgatory of non-admission. And with most inductees I can understand
why they are in there. I just sometimes scratch my head why some people are
not yet in there. I understand that the list of possible inductees has in the past seen some political/woke wrangling on that there should be more women, more black artists, more non-US acts, more electronica etc., but that is fine with me as it just reflects a social discourse that goes on everywhere, the RRHOF doesn't operate in a vacuum.
I also don't feel that hard rock, heavy rock and heavy metal have been ignored. Let's see, the 'holy English heavy trinity' of the 70ies (Zep/Purple/Sabbath) is meanwhile in, the three major American heavy acts with decade-long relevance (Aerosmith/Kiss/Metallica) are in there. Heck, even AC/DC, that cerebral outpouring from Australia, is in there. The Alice Cooper Group is. Lynyrd Skynyrd (essentially a hard rock band with some Southern roots influence) is. Hard-rock oriented AOR acts like Journey and Bon Jovi are in there too (though I wonder why Foreigner, REO, Toto and Styx aren't, those bands once ruled American airwaves, had one hit after another and sold shitloads of records). That's not a bad representation, much as the exclusion of Grand Funk Railroad grates me (but they were never critics' darlings, let's face it). Judas Priest has had the chance for induction twice, they just didn't get the votes together, blame the JP fans then, not the RRHOF.
The one genre that probably has a right to complain is Prog. There are Genesis/Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues and Yes, there is Rush, Frank Zappa too. Roxy Music if you consider their art rock a Prog sub-genre. But no Jethro Tull, no Emerson, Lake & Palmer, no Kansas, no Mike Oldfield, King Crimson/Robert Fripp, Procol Harum or Asia, no one from the B league Proggies such as Gentle Giant, Caravan, Camel, Van der Graaf Generator, Barclay James Harvest etc.
Let me ask you a question. All you guys so hung up/obsessed about the 'RR' in RRHOF,
what do you think of Kraftwerk being inducted?Not Blues or C&W influenced. No guitars, basses or real drums. No r'n'r image. Yet they are in there (in real life, not just in some "The Man In The High Castle" alternative universe scenario where Nazi Germany has accidentally won ze wär
). Also with a huge impact on (hopefully) indisputable previous inductees such as David Bowie.
Should they be in there, yes or no? Answers on a postcard please, why Kraftwerk should be rock'n'roll!
If I might add on a slightly nationalist note: No doubt, Rammstein and the Scorpions will follow one day too. Today Cleveland, tomorrow ze wörld!!! Or the other way around.
