2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees POLL

Whenever people do the are they/aren't they influential thing on ilx we start really looking for imitations rather than influence. So while I can't off the top of my head name a band clearly imitating the cars, they were a big deal in giving aor bands a road map into the 80s

I was gonna say: The Cars were responsible for more DX-7 purchases by .38 Special and ZZ Top than any magazine ad.

That's actually what I was thinking, that moves by older bands toward contemporary production and pop-rock composition structure might well have been Cars-influenced.

DX-7s were first made in '83, btw Alfred. Hawkes used a Prophet-5 according to Wikipedia.

As Chuck Eddy described the scene (from a piece I wrote but I think this line was at least partly his) - "Queen and Rush tightening up for a world of Cars and Police."

The main thing that's always bugged me about the Cars - especially the ubiquitous debut - is how the slicked-up, facile production hits you over the head with the band's formula - "see, we're just good-old-time rock and roll band - don't worry about the synthesizers" - and at the same time renders those tried-and-true usages essentially vacuous. They're like Bob Seger or some other cornball's idea of "quirky." I suspect this is what aesthetes from Christgau to S0to love about them. But it's fucking annoying. Their impact in the US was massive (who would've thought that same debut would become the definitive AOR album of all time? Don't believe me, check out the "most played" list from which that FiveThirtyEight article a year back was drawn), I enjoy about half their radio staples plenty, and I don't begrudge them their eventual place in the RNRHOF. But every time I listen to their greatest hits I get less than I bargained for.

"aesthete"!

I don't love them actually! I don't care for any hit after 1980 except "Tonight She Comes."

Christgau's not a fan either iirc

thewufs, you two have lots in common, get a beer:

Greatest Hits [Elektra, 1985]
In retrospect, it seems fairly incredible that this was once the stuff of cause célèbre--that the battle was joined over pop product so sleekly affectless. But of course, once upon a time affectlessness was progress; once upon a time a pop fan couldn't count on the radio to push his or her buttons. Those for whom struggle is all will claim that the sparer and supposedly fresher debut remains definitive, but they're just hyping their own dashed hopes. Fleet, efficient, essentially meaningless, this is the Cars' gift to history--seven seamless years of it. A

I remember reading something describing them as the US Roxy Music, I like that as an idea

they're the American Roxy Music if all they ever listened to was "Virginia Plain."

how the slicked-up, facile production hits you over the head with the band's formula

I could never get past those horrible Roy Thomas Baker stacked backing vocals.

And then they ditched him for Mutt "every snare hit should be the loudest thing that has happened" Lange.

Bryan Ferry is genuinely weird, Ric Ocasek is genuinely ugly.

"Love" was overstating it to make a point - wouldn't have written that the way I did if Xgau's review above weren't already burned into my consciousness. What I get from that review is that, for him at least, sleek affectlessness is the most interesting thing about the band. "Aesthete" is another favorite Xgau term - god, I can't get the motherfucker out of my head when I'm writing on ILM.

XXXP

I could never get past those horrible Roy Thomas Baker stacked backing vocals.

Bingo, exactly what I'm talking about.

They recorded one good album, half of another, a few singles. I like a couple tracks on Ocasek's first two solo joints.

once upon a time affectlessness was progress

I'm struggling with this one! I wonder what he was comparing them to.

Should be obvious, but "love about them" and "love them" mean two different things. Substitute "like most about them" if you want.

I'm rereading The Wings of the Dove, so I guess you're right about "aesthete."

Haha

wait wait wait i just realized pearl jam was eligible THIS year...i can't believe they're making them wait one

― da croupier, Friday, October 9, 2015 5:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm pretty surprised by this, seems like the HOF would be super-eager to get Pearl Jam in. Pumpkins were eligible too but not nominated.

I think you're right that they're spacing them out, knowing there are a handful of alt-rock HOF locks with debuts 1989-1995, followed by a fairly barren period for potential "hall-of-famers" at least by their standards.

Almost positive the rule is at least 25 years from first commercial recording to nomination year, not induction year. Looking at past shoo-ins and when they got in seems to bear this out.

The debut is pretty much perfect, front to back; the follow-up and Shake It Up are great singles and very good filler; Panorama is the weirdo art-project album with no hits that everybody forgets about. Heartbeat City and Door to Door I don't like as much, but I have almost no complaints about the first four.

It will be interesting to see if Radiohead gets in during their first year of eligibility.

according to futurerocklegends.com, next year's list of eligibles is as follows:

2Pac, Alanis Morissette, Antestor, Aphex Twin, At the Gates, Bikini Kill, Boyz II Men, Brooks and Dunn, Catherine Wheel, Color Me Badd, Cornershop, The Cranberries, Crash Test Dummies, Crystal Waters, Curtis Stigers, Cypress Hill, Deceased, DJ Quik, Earth, EMF, The Frames, Frankie Knuckles, GZA, Helmet, Joan Osbourne, Kyuss, Letters to Cleo, LFO, Lisa Germano, Live, Marc Cohn, Marilyn McCoo, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Mercury Rev, Meshuggah, Moe., Moose, My Dying Bride, Naughty By Nature, Paul Gilbert, Paul Weller, Pearl Jam, PJ Harvey, PM Dawn, The Prodigy, Ricky Martin, Right Said Fred, Rocket from the Crypt, Saigon Kick, Seal, Skyclad, Sleep, Spin Doctors, Stereolab, Tara Kemp, Teddybears, Temple of the Dog, Therion, Tori Amos, Type O Negative, Ugly Kid Joe, Wayne Kramer

super psyched for moe.

and the following year:

4 Non Blondes, Ace of Base, Anathema, Annie Lennox, Arc Angels, Arrested Development, Beck, Black 47, Blind Melon, Body Count, The Bottle Rockets, Brian McKnight, Buckethead, Buju Banton, Common, Cracker, David Gray, Dixie Chicks, Dr. Dre, Eva Cassidy, Fear Factory, Free Kitten, The Gathering, The Heights, Hootie & The Blowfish, House of Pain, Insane Clown Posse, Jade, Jamiroquai, Jeremy Jordan, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Juliana Hatfield, Kris Kross, Lagwagon, Lambchop, Lifetime, Luna, Martha Wash, Mary J. Blige, Morphine, Moxy Früvous, No Doubt, The Pharcyde, Pragha Khan, Praxis, R. Kelly, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Red House Painters, Reverend Horton Heat, Shadow Gallery, Shawn Mullins, Sophie B. Hawkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Sublime, Suede, Sugar, The Supersuckers, SWV, Tasmin Archer, Tim McGraw, TLC, Tool, Vanessa Daou, Vertical Horizon, The Verve, The Verve Pipe, Wallflowers

Panorama is the weirdo art-project album with no hits that everybody forgets about.

I know it wasn't a huge hit, but "Touch and Go" is possibly my favorite Cars single.

Former Beatle John Lennon mentioned the song in his final interview on 8 December 1980, praising it for its fifties sound and comparing it with his current record at the time, "(Just Like) Starting Over." He said, "I think The Cars’ 'Touch and Go' is right out of the fifties ‘Oh, oh… ‘ A lot of it is fifties stuff. But with eighties styling, but, but… and that’s what I think 'Starting Over' is; it’s a fifties song made with an eighties approach."

Almost positive the rule is at least 25 years from first commercial recording to nomination year, not induction year. Looking at past shoo-ins and when they got in seems to bear this out.

― Futuristic Bow Wow (thewufs), Saturday, October 10, 2015 12:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think that's true, Nirvana was a 2014 inductee, Bleach came out in 89

gonna lol when the verve thinks their name is being called but the guy then says 'pipe'

Prince:
First commercial release - 1978; induction year - 2004

U2:
First commercial release - 1979 (U2:3 EP); induction year - 2005

Bruce Springsteen:
First commercial release - 1973; induction year - 1999

Led Zeppelin:
First commercial release - 1969; induction year - 1995

Guns N' Roses:
First commercial release - 1986 (Live - Like a Suicide EP); induction year - 2012

Nirvana:
First commercial release ("Love Buzz" single) - 1988; induction year - 2014

Etc.

Per above, Nirvana released a single in 1988.

{Panorama is the weirdo art-project album with no hits that everybody forgets about.}

I know it wasn't a huge hit, but "Touch and Go" is possibly my favorite Cars single.

― timellison, Saturday, October 10, 2015 2:06 PM (3 minutes ago)

otm -- my favorite by them by a wide margin

haha, yeah, just realized that and was about to post the same about my mistake

Actually, after posting that above, I'm dead certain it's 25 years to nomination, not induction. I was under the impression it was the latter for years until I did the math.

I mean, Springsteen? The HOF would have inducted him in 1988 if they could.

Induction happens the same year as nomination, right? It's just the ceremony itself that's pushed into the following year.

fwiw "La Bamba" is the only Los Lobos song I've ever heard

― welltris (crüt), Friday, October 9, 2015 1:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not a Los Lobos song

but you will accept that they have performed it

Induction happens the same year as nomination, right? It's just the ceremony itself that's pushed into the following year.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, October 10, 2015 3:38 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no. "induction" occurs at the ceremony. selection occurs later in the year of nomination.

not that this isn't all meaningless drivel.

god, i really want to believe there's a smug los lobos fan out there who has no idea they covered la bamba and went to #1 with it

the only nazareth song i've heard is love hurts.

not a nazareth song!

"Don't really see a case: Chaka Khan, Los Lobos."

Quoth Xgau...

"Second Toughest in the Infants [Wax Trax, 1996]
Americans enticed by talk of "rock"-dance fusion should bear in mind the cultural deprivation of our siblings across the sea. Befuddled by the useless "rock"-"pop" distinction, they believe "rock" is something that happened in the '70s. The more inquisitive among them are aware of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, but if they've ever heard of Los Lobos or Husker Du they probably think they're "pop."..."

and, in longer form...

"while it's philistine to pretend that the music has no formal attractions of its own, that it doesn't produce works that impinge unaided upon those who know the language, it's evasive if not effete to make too much of the microcosm those works create.

Basically, this dilemma was the ground of the "rockism" debate that raged through the U.K. music press in the early '80s. Rockism wasn't just liking Yes and the Allman Brothers--it was liking London Calling. It was taking the music seriously, investing any belief at all not just in its self-sufficiency, which is always worth challenging, but in its capacity to change lives or express truth. One result of this debate was that as the '80s ended, the hippest and most fruitful rockcrit fashion pumped functional pop that fetishizes its own status as aural construct over rock that just goes ahead and means. This schema was convenient in a couple of ways. For one thing, the blanker music is the more you can project on it--the more listeners, especially professional interpreters, can bend it to their own whimsies, fantasies, needs. And rarely has it been noted how blatantly the rockism debate that produced the fashion favored the growing nationalism/anti-Americanism of U.K. taste.

I mean, really--British rock has always been "pop." Irony, distance, and the pose have been its secret since the Beatles and the Stones, partly because that's the European way and partly because rock wasn't originally British music--having absorbed it secondhand, Brits who made too much of their authenticity generally looked like fools. This polarity was reversed briefly around 1976--American punk was an unbashed art pose, while the British variant carried the banner of class struggle. But when the Sex Pistols failed to usher in the millennium, lifelong skeptics who'd let their guard down for a historical moment vowed that they wouldn't get fooled again. Ergo, Rock Against Rockism.

For all the hybrids and exceptions, American rock really is more sincere, even today. Or anyway, American rockers act more sincere--they're so uncomfortable with the performer's role that they strive to minimize it. Often their modus operandi is a conscious, and rather joyless, fakery. But sometimes--and here's where the schema becomes a lie--they end up inhabiting amazing simulations of their real selves, whatever exactly those are. The early '80s proved an especially rich time for this aesthetic, especially in L.A., where singer-songwriter sincerity had been perfected a decade before. So roots-conscious postpunk Amerindies X, Los Lobos, and the Blasters, together with two Twin Cities bands, the virtuosically posthardcore Hüsker Dü and the roots/junk-inflected quasihardcore Replacements, were spearheading a U.S. rockism revival just as the New Pop was dwarfing a U.K. indie scene symbolized by Joy Division-styled gloom merchants.

Antirockism had no way of accounting for these bands, and now in effect claims that they never happened. After all, who did they reach? Sloppy American college boys and similar pretentious punters--not real people (or classy ones, either). I'm exaggerating, of course, although I do recall a U.K. Los Lobos review that took offense at their flannel-covered bellies. And certainly it's true that Amerindie garage orthodoxy, which is at least as narrow-minded as any more wittingly trendy musical ethos, seems close to the end of its rope. But Wild Gift and How Will the Wolf Survive? and Hard Line and Metal Circus and Let It Be remain. They impinged on me then, and they impinge on me now--I know, because I replayed every one while making this a book I can vouch for. For me, they hold up, stand the test of time, reveal new shades of meaning--all that stuff good art was supposed to do back in the modernist era. Rock lives."

soo...the case is that xgau thinks british people are ignorant about los lobos?

I love Los Lobos, but fail to see their impact reverberating much past late 80's "roots rock." Though maybe you could make the case for them as the definitive roots rockers. I dunno.

Voted JBs, N.W.A, Chic, Janet, Spinners. All richly deserving, even - maybe especially - the group with the maddeningly frontloaded debut and wildly problematic legacy.

Only two total duds on the list are Chicago and Steve Miller. Fuck that shit.

los lobos would be kind of an arty choice really - not unlike tom waits

los lobos were part of that whole mitchell froom moods explosion that for better or worse definitely in some way defines something about the nineties

I saw Los Lobos once in 1987. They did an interminable solo-heavy "jam" at the end, which segued into "La Bamba," a few months before its release (and, I was told, the first time they'd played it onstage; dunno if that's true).

But I mostly remember the opener, Otis Rush. Not only did he absolutely kill, but the audience demanded an encore. To this day, he's the only opening act I've ever seen who played an encore.

i enjoy chicago far far more than i should - there's at least a cd's worth of music by them i straight up love and it spans many years - but i worry that inducting them would open the door to blood, sweat, and tears somehow getting in down the road and that simply can't happen

steve miller's ubiquity and popularity is something i suspect brits can't begin to suspect or understand. i'm not sure there was a time he was ever wildly popular, if he was ever popular enough that critics had to have an opinion like w/ grand funk or three dog night or whatever, lots of acts w/ similar rep had a similar number of hits but gradually they got whittled down on oldies and classic rock playlists so that they're now only known for one or two songs while his hits just somehow never went away.