OFF: R&RHoF voting

[Carl E Anderson]

On mån 2 mar 1998 13.03 -0500 "Keith Henderson" <henderson.120 at OSU.EDU> wrote:
> Carl sayz...
>>     Yup.  Gene Vincent kicked arse :)
>
> Andy sayz...
>>Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps!  "Be-Bop-A-Lula", for goodness' sake!  If
>>there's any justice, Gene Vincent should be a founder member!
>
> This isn't helping, sorry.  I don't know who this is, or what that song is.
> Sounds like "Little" Richard Penniman to me.  (I know him from Taco Bell
> commercials.)  :)  To me, music has an AD/BC demarcation at 1967, such that
> we are now in the year 31 AD.  Anything before that is virtually
> non-existent in my world...

     Ah, that explains it.  Well, to translate: Gene Vincent was big in
the BC rock world, and "Be-Bop-A-Lula" is probably his best known track.
John Lennon was a big fan, and covered "Be-Bop-A-Lula" on his 1975
_Rock & Roll_ album.

>>> But still,
>>> people think the Monkees should be inducted??  For what?  Lame slapstick
>>> comedy?  Or cheesy renditions of other people's songs?  Take your pick.
>>
>>     Oooo!  Them's fightin' words, mistah!
>>     The television show, at least, is classic--and for its time, it was
> extremely >progressive.  The music, of course, is secondary, though Mike
> Nesmith is a god (and Deke Leonard would agree! :)
>
> Hey, I watched that show quite a bit when it wasn't that old. Haven't seen
> it in some time though.  But yeah, I think some bits were sort of clever,
> like Bullwinkle kind of, but of course, did Mike Nesmith write that stuff??

     Didn't write material for the shows, though I suppose he did direct an episode.  He did write some of the better tunes they recorded, though, and his solo stuff is great (though I can see why it was unmarketable!).

     (It's a kind of "hat" music, I suppose ... maybe Andy would like it! ;)

> Actually, he was responsible for a movie I quite like, 'Repo Man', so I
> don't dismiss the guy entirely.  Just he's no R&RHoF'er in any stretch of
> the imagination.  But perhaps Mickey Dolenz is.  :)

     Well, individually, I don't think any of them can qualify :)  But as
a "rock phenomenon with an enduring legacy" (for good or for ill) I think
the "group" (such as it was) does.

     Trouble covered "Porpoise Song", after all :)  But the show was an
important precursor to MTV.  It drew on and expanded Lester's work on "A Hard Day's Night" by really melding the visual and audio experience.  I believe Nesmith observed that the songs weren't much on their own, but combined with the video aspect they were supercharged.

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/