Category: Music

Chewsday Challenge

Music

Here’s the setup:

The Rock ‘N Roll Hall Of Fame (a stupid concept all by itself, but we can discuss that some other time) has decided that they’ve cocked the whole thing up, and want to start from scratch.  In other words, the HoF is completely empty and needs refilling.  And in their magnificent wisdom, they’ve given you the job of deciding the inductees, with the following restrictions:

The inductees must be genuine rock ‘n rollers:  no jazz, no country and only a few exceptions for the blues can be made.  The inductions happen every year.  The list of inductees may not be longer than twenty in any given year.

I’ll start the ball rolling with my thoughts on the topic.  I’m going to do it more or less historically, just to make things simple (I think), and they’re in no specific order.

Year 1, in which I list the early rock-and-rollers, but leave the R&B vocal bands and singers for next year:

  1. Elvis Presley
  2. Bill Haley and the Comets
  3. Albert King
  4. Chuck Berry
  5. Buddy Holly & The Crickets
  6. B.B. King (one of the “blues exceptions”, because denying B.B. the honor would be sacrilege)
  7. Jerry Lee Lewis
  8. Little Richard
  9. The Everly Brothers
  10. Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
  11. Del Shannon
  12. Carl Perkins
  13. Bo Diddley
  14. Roy Orbison
  15. Fats Domino
  16. Ricky Nelson
  17. Gene Vincent
  18. James Brown
  19. Duane Eddy
  20. Link Wray

Feel free to argue the selection, or tell me about notable exclusions from the list.  One last thought:  I’ve excluded the “influencers” (e.g. Muddy Waters and all those Depression-era blues artists), because otherwise we’ll be here all day.

Musical Aside

Music

Over the past weekend I was listening to Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy A Thrill album, and it staggers the imagination to think that this was their debut album.  I mean, first albums are generally a band’s attempt to get things together, and one expects that things can only improve.  That wasn’t the case here:  Fagen and Becker got it absolutely right, the very first time.  There’s not a single weak song — let alone a bad one — on the entire album.

Which would lead one to think, “Oh well, they’ll probably bring out another album or two, and things will just get worse.”  Except that Steely Dan never did:  every single subsequent album just got better — or maybe they didn’t, they just restated the obvious.  As one commenter said:  “These guys were from a superior musical universe and still are.”  And Can’t By A Thrill, when compared to other albums of 1972 (!!!FFS!!!), just establishes the truth of that statement.

Which brings to mind something that annoys me about the Dan:  every time I listen to one of their albums, it becomes my favorite Steely Dan album — until I listen to the next one.