Hall of Fame, Walk of Shame

In honor of this weekend's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, I got curious about who's in and who's out. Not that my talentless opinion matters, but bitching and list-making are our true national pastimes. So here are my top-10 outs who should be ins and top-10 ins who should be outs. As you'll see, I don't have much quarrel with early inductions, from 1986-2009. But the recent crops (2010-13) seem almost random, when you compare who's still standing outside. The numbers next to the unjust outs are the years eligible and the times nominated.

Stupid snubs:
1) Warren Zevon (18/0): You gotta be kidding me that he's never even been nominated. One of the smartest songwriters ever--"Lawyers, Guns and Money," "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "My Ride's Here"--and had a huge hit with "Werewolves of London." He's added more classic tunes to the great American songbook than half the artists in the Hall.
2) Big Star (15/0): a primary influence on REM, the Replacements, Whiskeytown, and Wilco, four of the best bands ever. And all three of Big Star's 70s studio albums are on Rolling Stone's list of 500 best albums ever, and they're all ranked way too low.
3) Lucinda Williams (8/0): arguably the best woman rock songwriter of the last 30 years, and one of the best songwriters period. Lucinda Williams (1988) and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998) are perfect records.
4) the Replacements (6/0): the sine qua non of 80s indie rock.
5) Gram Parsons (20/3): seems likely to eventually make it, but come on.
6) Eurythmics (6/0): really? No love for Annie Lennox? Sweet dreams are not made of this.
7) the Cure (9/1): not necessarily my favorite band or genre (goth), but they defined an entire genre in post-80s rock & roll and were expert musicians and song-smiths. Classic songs and big hits, lots of them.
8) Husker Du (6/0): once again, not a lot of establishment love for 80s indie-rock
9) the Jam (10/0): see # 8
10) Steve Earle (2/0): Still early. I understand this snub--intellectually. But not in my gut. He's making better records right now than anyone on the schlub list made ever. See #1, #3, #8.

(HM: the Cars, Nick Cave, Cheap Trick, Dire Straits, Nick Drake, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, the Smiths, T. Rex, X)

Unworthy schlubs:
1) Heart (2013): they're an OK band, with some good songs in the 70s, and some awful 80s hair metal that almost nullify the earlier work. Just not in a league with the artists above.
2) Donna Summer (2013): disco queen, hits, yawn.
3) Rush (2013): my first concert, in high school. Again, not a bad band--good musicians (for Canadians!), horrible, horrible pseudo-intellectual Randian lyrics/politics. Making prog-metal almost listenable is not a reason to put them in the Hall.
4) Donovan (2012): ewwwww.
5) Neil Diamond (2011): shmaltsy pop-rock for which I have occasional respect.
6) ABBA (2010): please, let Disco die.
7) Genesis (2010): borderline. I understand this--intellectually. But not in my gut.
8) Sex Pistols (2006): yeah, yeah, yeah, invented punk music, one epoch-defining classic album, etc. But really only one album. And does anyone want to listen to it after they're 18?
9) the Bee Gees (1997): see #6
10) Frank Zappa (1995): genius? sure, but how many people actually listened to this? Or liked it?

I left off this list the artists I didn't know (who is Laura Nyro?), especially from the 50s and early 60s, along with the genres I don't much understand (funk, rap, etc.). There are also a few bands that I never liked much (Van Halen, Run-DMC, Metallica) whose induction I totally get and respect. So I limit the latter list to music I've heard, lived through, and even enjoyed on occasion. Can you do better?

Move Along

That photo is from April 2003, downtown Chicago, as Chicago's finest prepared to meet the (largely non-existent) mobs of anti-IRAQWAR protesters. I took this picture. I remember those days. I was there. (I was not, on that day, a protester. I was there for MPSA.)

The 10th anniversary of this disastrous war is a sad occasion. I predicted that the war would go badly, and it did. Largely in ways that I predicted. I take little satisfaction in that. There's no satisfaction to be had when so many died, were maimed, displaced, etc. Whether removing Saddam Hussein was "worth it", I guess we'll never be able to ask the 100,000+ dead Iraqis. Maybe they would've accepted their own deaths for Hussein's? We'll never know.

What I am saddest about is that . . . our country has gone mad, and I don't see a path to bring it back. Whether it's the impeachment of Bill Clinton, or the GWOT, or irrational fears about Obama . . . . Madness. March it is, so March Madness. But it's been 20 years and counting. Is there hope yet?

This one is from March 2003 and is from a brief protest at CWRU--students laying down in Euclid Avenue, and, in this case, being dragged off the road. Curat Lex will remember this.

Pope Frances!

Congrats, Frances. I had no idea you were even nominated! You must have made a big impression in your brief stint as a Mississippi Papist. Can they put a child seat in the popemobile?

A week ago I predicted to a group of colleagues that the Cardinals would look for "the Marco Rubio of Popes": a modestly more diverse face (hence, Latin American) for the same old reactionary policies. My more knowledgeable former-Catholics seemed to think it was going back to Italy. Ha! It's so rare I get a prediction right that I'm recording it here. (Wish I had done it a week ago, but oh well.)

FWIW, based on my vast wealth of understanding of all things papist (i.e., a few short articles from the last 24 hours), I suspect Bergoglio will be an exceptionally good pick, at least from the Romanist standpoint. He seems to exude a charm and humility Ratzinger never had, and he's got some decent populist bona fides on economic issues. Meanwhile, he's pretty hard right on all that sex stuff, which makes the old boys tingle with repressed excitement. They could have done a lot worse. Says the Presbyterian Democrat.

Brief Thoughts on Looper

Am I the last person to see this film? The best sci fi movie I've seen since Minority Report. I'm really surprised this didn't get more critical props here at the end of year awards orgy. It's an original take on an old and simple question: if you had a time machine, would you go back and kill Hitler? Except it's not actually Hitler, but instead some future Hitler. And the bigger question is what it would do to you to try.

There are dozens of ways they could have screwed this up, especially by following the usual cliches of sci fi noir. But there's a refreshing lightness here, setting much of the action in a farmhouse and corn field, as if this were Field of Dreams gone disastrously wrong. And the acting is impeccable, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young "looper" (a hit man given the task of executing people sent back from the future so as to conceal all evidence of their deaths) who will eventually become the old Bruce Willis. Who would have thought JGL, most famous as the kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun, could have become the young Willis with so much tough guy cool and so few seams? I also loved the inversion of the Back To The Future rule about not meeting your "other" self during time travel. Let's just put them in a diner for a tense (and armed) conversation slash stand-off. Great identity questions here. If you met your future/past self, who would "you" be? And would you like yourself, or recognize a common interest? Are these two men the same people, or does time erode our identities and make us into entirely new people? Plus, it kicks ass as an action flick. All around, just loved this film.

Update: Forgot to mention, but Looper also comes across as something of a critique of Ayn Rand/Ron Paul. In the near recent future, when economic inequality has exploded, vagabonds wander begging through cities and cornfields, the government seems nonexistent, organized crime has become rampant, and everyone trades with gold and silver bullion that they horde rather than bank, the natural result is the rise of a bloodthirsty, mutant dictator. Sounds about right.

Rubio Tuesday

Lots of discussion in the last few weeks about the GOP's rather lame effort to "re-brand" while making as few substantive changes as possible to their rather extreme ideological agenda. Rubio has been taking the brunt this week, thanks to his front-man role on immigration and his risky call to answer Obama's SOTU tomorrow night. In particular, Josh Marshall and Ed Kilgore have had interesting posts on whether Rubio is the Republican "Wes Clark," a guy adored by party pragmatists for addressing one glaring party weakness but lacking the ability to cover numerous other gaping wounds.

As much as I like the comparison, consider me unconvinced. Simple reason: ideology is overrated in determining American electoral outcomes. Not that it doesn't matter. In a close election, ideological extremism can obviously have an impact. Obama was vulnerable in 2012, and a less insane GOP could have fielded a stronger challenge than a Romney with a FOX anchor chained around his neck. As it was, that was (actually) the best they could muster. But that's in a close year. If the economy is weak at all in 2016, this is anybody's game, especially given the difficulty of a party hanging onto the White House for more than two terms. Economic growth 6-12 months prior to the election and time in office are most of the game. The latter cuts to the GOP no matter who they run, and the former is likely to improve (to Dem advantage), but can't be taken for granted. Meanwhile, the Dems have one clear successor to Obama in Hillary--but what if she doesn't run? Or gets another blood clot that's even worse? With a down economy and/or a Clinton withdrawal, the GOP could win even without major ideological concessions. And they could do it with a guy like Rubio who certainly looks the part and seems to have some political chops--more than Wes Clark did, I'd say, although, as some of you may remember, I was an enthusiastic Clarky back in 2004.

So Rubio, whose politics are basically just George W.'s (reactionary on everything except Hispanics), may be a gamble for Republicans, but he's also much less of one than the chaos of challenging the conservative movement's righteous and unwavering claim on absolute truth in all things, American-public-be-damned. I suspect he's making a pretty decent play, both for primary and general, especially given the lack of compelling alternatives in the GOP field.

Update: GULP!

Omnibus 2012 Music Post

Crazy year, 2012. Felt a bit like this

And a bit like this

Often at the same time. Or in close, alternating succession. I guess that pegs me as a Calvinist, which is true enough, although surely a liberal and mildly decadent one, at least by the standards of Calvin. The Tenacious One likes his rock and roll, and so I've needed a soundtrack for the crazy. Like last year, I've spent a good bit of this year reveling in and rediscovering the old, especially soul: Solomon Burke, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Gil Scott Heron, Fela Kuti, Bill Withers, Dusty Springfield. Plus a heavy dose of vintage songwriter roots rock: Dylan, Springsteen, Zevon, Newman, Rodriguez. Got a little help on Heron and Fela from Frances, but also a lot of bargain bin scavenging in spare, bored moments, which I now have for a few days every other weekend.

Somehow I've also gotten to hear a few new records, pretty much all of which I put in my end of year list. Overall, a mediocre year. Lots of good music, but no one thing blew me away from start to finish. Settling on a top pick was not easy.

1) Justin Townes Earle, Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now. Country soul, passionate but also tasteful and restrained. "Look the Other Way" and "Movin' On" are standouts. At first I didn't think this could hold up to Harlem River Blues (2010), but it grew on me, and the title's a good coda for my last few years.

2) Band of Horses, Mirage Rock. Hard call here. In some ways, I think this is the most collected and satisfying CD I heard all year, from the opening rocker "Knock Knock," to affecting country ballads "Everything's Gonna Be Undone," and "Heartbreak on the 101." Neil Young meets Built to Spill from some beardy South Carolina boys. But the tent-pole track in the middle, "Dumpster World," annoys me, as if they thought the 70s soft-rock band America could be revived with mid-song punk thrash and some well intentioned but too-blunt political posturing. Save that blemish, a great record.

3) the Walkmen, Heaven. These guys are really under-appreciated. "The Rat" from 2004 is one of the best songs of the last decade--coiled, yuppie anger just about to explode, with a put-down worthy of classic Dylan. The new CD is much more elegant, especially the gorgeous opener, "We Can't Be Beat." Also of note, "Heartbreaker," "Southern Heart," and "The Love You Love." It's the fleeting bliss of new parenthood, with trouble lurking beneath the sweetness of the surface.

4) Alabama Shakes, Boys and Girls. Don't be the last one to the party. Brittany Howard can wail.

5) Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball. Rolling Stone named this the best record of the year, and it is quite good. But I'm torn. It's like he decided to take everything that makes Bruce "Bruce" and turn it up to 11. So it's the most Springsteen-y album he's made since Born in the USA (1985). And my version has two bonus tracks, good ones, but do they undermine the cohesion? I'm always ambivalent about getting "bonus tracks."

6) the Lumineers, The Lumineers. Better than expected. And I already loved the ubiquitous single, "Ho Hey."  A folky heartbreaker.

7) Jack White, Blunderbuss. Deserves all the props it got. He's starting to age with me. Check out "I'm Shakin'." So good it makes me "noivous."

8) Bob Dylan, Tempest. What he's lost in melody, he's gained in grit. I especially love "Pay In Blood." You don't get as much biting political and cultural commentary as in old. Or maybe it's just too subtle for me.

9) M. Ward, A Wasteland Companion. Another that grew on me. Not his best, but a smooth spin. Try "Primitive Girl" for a flavor.

10) the Shins, Port of Morrow. These guys are chamber pop pros. "Simple Song" is one of their best.

11) Mumford & Sons, Babel. These guys should be right in my wheelhouse, but they always leave me a bit disappointed. Although they do melancholy banjo-based stadium rock like no one else, they lack a bit in the versatility department. That said, "I Will Wait" is one of the year's best songs, full of longing and hope. As I stumble pants-down into 2013, salvaging scraps and trinkets of glories past, I can relate.

See y'all in Zihuatanejo.

Filibusted

I'm not sure what's more pathetic--that the filibuster "reform" approved by the Senate is so weak as to almost not even exist (you can only filibuster a bill twice not thrice), or that even the supposedly robust reform plan, the "talking filibuster," seemed so lame and ineffectual. I guess that's today's Senate Democrats. They offer us a shit sandwich and then hope we're not disappointed if they leave out the bread.

Sure would be nice to hear what someone thought who actually knows something about this so-called "Senate."