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Man, I was sure this was a mistake... That you were reacting to a list of nominees instead of official inductees... I was already drafting a “Calm down buddy, this is just the short list” post..
Then I clicked that fucking link.
Seriously, why are we even bothering to get fired up anymore? Clearly the HOF has lower standards than the MTV Video Music Awards (which, I'm almost certain, are no longer a thing... Please tell me they're not a thing anymore... VMA's no longer exist... right?)
Anyway, I briefly un-boycotted the HOF last year because of Nirvana's massive (or so I thought) achievement of being first-year inductees. It seemed to validate their legacy... Not to me, or you, but maybe to a world that I was starting to think had forgotten them. It was gratifying to see the band of my generation being given the same treatment as established classic artists like the Beatles and Hendrix.
It was like: ok, so maybe we '90s brats didn't have a cool definitive band that scored 20 #1 singles and changed all of pop culture forever like our parents' did, with the Beatles. And maybe we didn't have a whole lot of pop groups that remained both commercially viable and fucking bloody awesome for the entirety of our formidable decade. And yeah, sure, a lot of the bands we grew up with either became fucking jokes very quickly (Oh, Butthole Surfers-- what was that major label buzz bin shit all about?), or became almost embarrassingly lame and sad by trying to win back super alienated fans (Pearl Jam, Pumpkins, Jane's, REM)...
but you know what we did have? We had a punk band that sounded like pop going through heroin withdrawal, and kicked the shit out of everything before or since... Our own mangy, distorted, bipolar “Fab 3” who went to #1 even when they tried to do the opposite. We had our slacker equivalent to your posh dandy Brita, and our guys never had a chance to get old and lame.
But now I understand how little that actually meant. Green Day was a 1 album wonder for sooooo long... It wasn't until we were long out of college that American Idiot struck a chord with the mall kids of the y generation. Then they finally went miltiplatinum for a second time, and then ... I don't know... They released a carbon copy of that album to squeeze all they could out of their revival. Then everyone forgot about them again, they released a triple album that I've never even heard anyone mention, or read a single review of, and they went skipping off to rehab and middle age. Oh yeah and they had a #1 song that became the soundtrack to high school graduation in 1999 or whenever. And it was awful.
So this is what it means to be a first year inductee?
Oh, and the infinitely more talented, Oscar winning, eternally relevant and astoundingly influential Nine Inch Nails, as well as the FUCKING SMITHS had to step aside for these pimpled geeks with the least imaginative band name ever? Sinful.
Oh, and as an afterthought:
“Blah blah blah list of names, list of names, more names that nobody cares about .... Lou Reed; Joan Jett and the Blackhearts; and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band will all be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next spring.”
... But that guy was only the driving force behind the most influential experimental group in history... Oh right and he DIED last year... But anyway GREEN DAY, yeah!
This is now a real-world comedy. It's a fucking Christopher Guest movie. Anyway it damn well should be.
“It's a Mighty Wind that's Blowin' / It's Blowin' You and Me!”
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