The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced "his" 2012 inductees: The Small Faces/Faces, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns N' Roses, The Beastie Boys, Laura Nyro (A woman? What?), and Donovan. I can't disagree with any of these artists, although I only really like half of them (and hate, HATE the Beasties!). I'm sure there are blogs out there with authors screaming about the non-inclusion of just as, if not more, deserving artists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The RRHOF is more of a marketing museum anyway, and besides, eventually everyone gets in. But looking over the list of artists in the Hall, I've come to conclude that there is some general nuttiness in the air. Something is rotten in Denmark indeed if the following artists have yet to be enshrined. (And, okay, I do think it's a little screwy that hip-hop and jazz artists are in a museum dedicated to rock and roll.)
- Okay, first, how are the Marvelletes not in? They didn't have as many hits as the Supremes, but they were just as catchy and smooth, with a barrel of great songs, eight years' worth, including the first ever hit on the Motown label, "Please Mr. Postman." "Don't Mess With Bill," "Too Many Fish in the Sea," and the eternal "Beechwood 4-45789" are all great.
- I would posit that Mary Wells, of "My Guy" fame, was the greatest female singer housed within Motown. "Bye Bye Baby" has such a raw, churning power, and "Two Lovers" might be the most stirring, casually enchanting tune ever about having multiple 'friends with benefits.'
- The Cure. Okay, come on! Who grew up in the 80s or 90s and didn't at least like one or two Cure songs? They practically invented the whole goth/emo thing and made it seem cool. "Lovesong," "Just Like Heaven?" No? "Pictures of You," "Fast Car?" Still no? "Let's Go to Bed?" Okay, then I don't like you. (You can make a similar case, I guess, for Depeche Mode)
- The Cars. Way too many hits, way too singularly angular a sound. Catchier New Wave than Blondie, in my opinion.
- Duran Duran. Does anybody really sound like them? A lot of popular and critical appeal, still able to sell out big arenas.
- Donna Summer. If ABBA and the Bee Gees are in, then how can the Disco Queen not be? She was disco, had a zillion hits and an immediately recognizable voice.
- Todd Rundgren. Unexplainable. One of the greatest rock albums ever: Something?/Anything? "I Saw the Light," "Can We Still Be Friends?" Producer of classic albums by Badfinger, Meat Loaf, The New York Dolls, XTC, The Patti Smith Group.
- solo Peter Gabriel. "Solsbury Hill," So, "Biko," "Games Without Frontiers." If Genesis is in, why no Gabriel?
- War. An appealing stew, War was - a little funk, rock, border blues, Latin, reggae. "Slippin' into Darkness" is one of those actually good nine-minute-plus laidback stomps, and don't forget about "Why Can't We Be Friends," "The Cisco Kid." And does any song drop you into 1975 more thoroughly than "Low Rider?"
There are others that deserve to be in (Warren Zevon, Pat Benatar, Janet Jackson, The Replacements, Ben E. King), but like I said earlier, it's just a matter of time.
Today, I'll inaugurate a weekly look at a renowned work of art by a famous American painter. The selection today is The Gross Clinic, an 1875 work by Thomas Eakins. Eakins was known as the American Rembrandt, and it's certainly easy to see that because this work especially brings to mind Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp. Gross was a real person, one of the country's most renowned physicians/surgeons, and Eakins took one of Gross's anatomy classes at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. In the work, we see Gross in a moment of clinical instruction within a surgical ampitheater. Around him sits students, the patient, and the patient's mother. Gross is explaining the procedure taking place - the removal a diseased bone from a patient suffering osteomyelitis. Everyone but the mother, looking away in grief or agony, is watching the procedure. The light source in the painting seems to emit from the blood source. The painting was met with critical diffidence, for it was viewed as medical painting with unappetizing subject matter, too realistic, but it caught on with the general public and is today viewed as a classic of immediacy and verisimilitude. Gross himself exhibits deep thoughtfulness, as much a thinker as a doer. A little more about the piece:
http://www.pafa.org/Museum/Research-Archives/Thomas-Eakins/The-Gross-Clinic/80/
Today's Bird: the gray partridge, a non-native species found in the brush, open farmlands and grasslands of the northern plains states and Canada. It resembles a chicken, with its gray neck and chest feathers and with a head the color of rusted red. It is a short-winged, small-billed bird, a grain muncher, only aggressive during mating season; the babies can fly within two weeks of birth! It was introduced to this continent as a gaming bird from Eurasia.
On one final note, I'll add that the TNT Mystery Movie Series is 2-for-2 so far; Scott Turow's Innocent, check; Lisa Gardner's Hide, check.
And, also, that Laura Nyro-Labelle album above, mostly a collection of Motown/R&B covers, is one of my favorite albums ever.
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