2024 Rock & Roll HOF screechfest

They kicked Iron Maiden off the ballot. They still fill arenas all over the world with their classic lineup intact and still put out legitimately great albums (2 in the last 8 years). But sure - let’s put Sade in the RRHOF lol.

 

Oasis is Mariano Rivera.

Of course Mariah is getting in.

 

Regarding Foreigner: music is an artistic medium, and at some level artistic merit has to be a consideration. And Foreigner is fucking terrible. Yes, they sold records in the 70s. Those records were bad.

(And a side note: I've really tried to stop arguing musical taste on here. It's kind of pointless. But Foreigner is the absolute worst of the 70s corporate bullshit rock.)

And I don't know where Foreigner is playing 10,000 seat sheds. They just played in my area twice in the last month -- once at a car auction, and once at a tiny Indian casino 60 miles out of town.

 

(Edit: None of this post, other than the first sentence, was in response to BYH's post, but rather to the post immediately before this one and any others of its ilk. Carry on.)

While I appreciate you dragging me in here, I sort of decided to avoid these threads anymore after some of the internet musclemen around here (some of whose stuff I enjoy on 99 percent of the other threads, by the way) decided to make it personal and came up with a cute little label for me (at least I think it was for me) a couple years ago. Not worth it.

But as long as I’m here … First, I could not care less whether Foreigner gets into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s not going to affect me one iota. It’s a Hard Rock Café without all the fried food. Or any food. In fact, I hope they don’t get in because so many miserable fucks will be a little bit happier as they continue to derive enjoyment from belittling and blasting away at things many others enjoy.

They’re like the people who shit on someone who has the audacity to eat Papa John’s and wash it down with a Miller Lite. Who gives a fuck? Lite is less filling, tastes great and costs 75 percent less than the superior swill the cool kids drink and accomplishes exactly the same thing: makes you piss more, laugh more and feel more like shit the next day. And while Papa John’s is the Loverboy or Heart of the pizza world, I’ve never been anywhere that, when 10 boxes of it were dropped off, they didn’t disappear faster than they would if Mike Reno and Ann Wilson rolled in coming off their intermittent fasts right when the pies arrived.

Jesus, though, can’t you fucks just let people like what they like? Foreigner is fucking terrible? To you, perhaps. To me? They broke when I was 10 years old and all sorts of impressionable and they had five top-5 albums and something like 15 top-20 songs over the next eight years. And literally everyone I knew back then liked it and a lot of them still do. They played to 18,000 a night in every fucking city around the world. So yeah, all those fuckin’ morons. Worldwide. How could they have been so wrong en masse?

But let’s go with the prior analysis, and say they were in fact the “absolute worst” (putting the “corporate bullshit rock” tag on there kind of makes it a compliment, by the way, so I’ll take it off). Yes, Foreigner sucks. They just played simple three-chord rock with a Les Paul through a stack of Marshalls with no effect pedals and sang some boy-meets-girl lyrics that lots of people could memorize and sing along with. And that’s exactly what they did. Impressionable kids like me, and every single other fucking kid I knew, could go and watch a show and meet girls and make memories with our friends, or 18,000 people who became our friends for a couple hours. And we did it all for less than $15. So belittle that all you want. It made a lot of us happy, which for some reason makes you miserable.

I had the opportunity to meet and interview Lou Gramm recently. Asked him about the Rock Hall. While I imagine he was being at least a little dishonest, he said he couldn’t give two shits and blamed it on a fight between Jan Wenner and Mick Jones. Well, Wenner is gone, and hey, look at that. And Gramm said something I’ll never forget, which was he’ll keep doing this (playing little shit-hole venues) “As long as my voice holds up and there’s an appreciative audience that still wants to listen.” Well, his voice sounded better than 99 percent of current popular artists, and there were 2,500 there that night, at a county fair in the middle of country music land. So yeah, maybe not 10,000, but it also was just one guy.

I know I’ve been guilty of shitting on stuff others like, especially on these threads. So no need to go all JC or Regan McNeil on me and look through your catalog of notes you keep on every poster to see how full of shit they are. I admit it. And it was wrong of me. And I apologize.

It took my 9-year-old son to help me realize just how dumb that was. He finds joy in everything. I remember when I was 9 and my own dad shit on literally everything I liked, from toys to athletes and teams to food to music and TV shows. Probably a big reason I’m so fucked up now. The next generation is helping fix what the prior one broke. I bust my dad’s balls for it every chance I get and any time he tries to shit on something my kid likes, I cut him off quickly because I don’t want an impressionable youngster to be told – by anyone, let alone his grandfather – that something he likes isn’t worth liking.

I took the kid last October to see Kiss. And Kiss was not very good. They’ve lost it, and then some. But they were entertaining as hell. And that little boy ate up every second and every note and to see the expression on his face when Paul Stanley introduced “Lick it Up” (a great example of their “art,” much of which I still love from when I was the spawn’s age) well, it was joy I cannot explain, other than to say I felt it to because of my reaction to his reaction, which I have on video because I knew it was coming.

Someday he’ll realize that Kiss really wasn’t very good. Much as I’ve realized that about Foreigner. And that’s ok. They don’t need to be good. Because hopefully he’ll also recognize that not-really-good can still be fuckin’ enjoyable as hell, and that if thousands upon thousands of people, maybe even millions, enjoy it, whether it’s music or watered-down beer or mass-produced pizza, it’s probably because, amid all its suckiness, there’s still an awful lot of good in there. And if people enjoy it, he should just let them. And if he can’t enjoy it with them, hopefully he can enjoy their enjoyment of it, or, at the very least, not shit on them for liking it, shut his mouth and walk away.

(Sorry if any of this doesn't make sense. Gotta get to a work lunch meeting. I'll edit it later if needed.)

 

Dude.

 

If you ever get a chance to watch the "Dad" episode of Louie, do it.

It ends with this visual and the why and how he got there speaks exactly to what you wrote.

 

I'm not too puked out about Foreigner being on the list, whether they get in or not they are more deserving to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame than Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, Carly Simon and others. Stuff like "Hot Blooded", "Double Vision", "Cold As Ice", "Dirty White Boy" and especially "Urgent" still sounds great cranked up.

But fucking hell, still no Motorhead, Little Feat or Maiden?

Of the rest I think Ozzy gets in, his solo career was pretty solid and God knows what kind of speech he'll give. I'm a no on Kravitz and to me Oasis had one awesome album (What's the Story Morning Glory?). Mariah Carey probably gets in as does Dave Matthews, who's not my thing but he was mega huge for a number of years. This year's Jann Wenner Special (yeah, I know he's gone but bear with me): Cher.

 

3 awesome start to finish albums: Definitely Maybe, Morning Glory, Dig Out Your Soul.

Heathen Chemistry was excellent too.

Be Here Now has 3 or 4 great songs.

This needs to be in the next Bond movie, and Tramell Tillman should be the next Bond with his Severance mustache.

 

I'm not a fan but obviously others' mileage may vary. They are a better candidate than Lenny Kravitz in my opinion.

 

Junkie-

Well put. When these threads pop up you can really see who doesn't know fuckall about some of these bands. It's fun to see them whale away at it and pick it apart - sway to the music if you can.

Some people like some things and other people like other things.

 

My prediction for who will get in:

Mariah Carey
Ozzy
Foreigner
Mary J. Blige
Cher

If they induct 6, I'd add Dave Matthews Band.

 

People who hate Foreigner probably read album reviews and think it’s literature.