BLOGS

OK, I spent most of last fall ragging on the R&RHoF and it's problems. It's easy to cut something down....look at political commentary, for example.....but to come up with a creative idea to fix a problem is hard. This probably isn't it, but we'll give it a shot.

First, some groundrules for the fans.
1) Realise "Rock & Roll" is a big tent. From about 1955 until now, it covers a lot of ground, and those folks who screamed when Madonna was inducted, saying she's "not Rock and Roll" should just stuff it. If Dusty Springfield can be in the Hall, Madonna has just as much right.

2) You can't satisfy all the people all the time. They tend to induct ony 5 or 6 performers a year, so there's a lot of folks out there who deserve to be in it but aren't.

Now that we have that out of the way, what would I change? Well.....

First, I'd have a "Veteran's Committee" which would allow for the selection of early pioneers of rock and roll that have been passed over for nomination. This would help solve Linda Nash's Ben E. King problem.....

.....and any other oversights. This is how the Baseball Hall of Fame corrects it's mistakes, and as we get further and further away from the origins of the musical genre, there's a real problem with these artists being overlooked. BUT, I'd limit it to 2 artists a year, with the artist not having a "Top 100" record in at least 45 years.

Second, I'd re-energize the "Early Influences" catagory. This is the catagory for those people who maybe weren't rockers, but had influence on the early years of the genre, but hasn't had an inducte since 2000. This would be the place where a lot of country and blues performers, who DID have an influence, but probably should not be in the main hall, would get their due. Again, limit it to 1 or 2 a year.

But here's the biggie, the main award voting itself. First, I'd drop the current nominating procedure. Currently, the Hall has a 30 person committee pick the nominees. The problem? A small group of people control who gets in by controling the nominating process, and besides, any procedure that would allow Laura Nyro to be nominated as a performer and ignore her as a "Non-performer/writer" has a problem that has to be fixed. What I'd do is collect a large quantity (the Hall says it uses 500 voters now) of the best minds in R&R, writers critics, performers, historians of the genre, you know, a group of the best R&R minds you can find. So now you've got the people. What do you do with them? That's the easy part.

Each of our 500 names writes, in order one through 5, the 5 artists they think should be in the rock hall. The ranking is important, your #1 choice getting 5 points, your lowest, 1.

Once the votes are tabulated, the top 20 POINT gatherers advance to the final round. Again, these same people are polled, but only on the top 20 votegetters. This limits the field, and makes culling it down to the TOP 6 a lot easier. These top 6 are your inductees for the year. Then when the inductees are announce, but before the awards, you make sure to publicise the vote totals.

This is a modification of the system that The HUGO Awards (a very major Science Fiction literary award) uses and it's worked well for them. With a system like this, there is no quibble about vote rigging, and the "They didn't induct The Dave Clark 5 in 2007 even though they had the votes just because Jann Wenner thought there should be a Rap artist in the Hall" problem, a BIG rumor that was heightened when DC5 lead singer Mike Smith, who had been in poor health, died just before their 2008 induction.

Everything else remains pretty much the same. The Lifetime Acheivement award, Non Performer, Sidemen and Early Influence (although these may need to be altered, too), and the rule that you can't be inducted until 25 years have passed since a performer's first release A rule, by the way, I don't really like but don't know how to modify.

I'm not saying this idea would get my pick, The Marvelettes....

or Linda Barta's Paul Revere and the Raiders....

or Madolyn Rogas' Cat Stevens.....

but I think it would make the whole process fairer and more objective. What do you think?

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