Turn It Up - Rock Hall Nominees, Part 2

David and Charles finish their spotlight on this year's nominees

It’s that time of year again - the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced its latest set of nominees for induction recently. We posted some thoughts on half of the new nominees on Monday, and here’s a look at the rest of this year’s class. We’re offering them in no particular order. Keep in mind that this isn’t meant to represent our picks for who should get inducted - we’ll get to that soon enough! - but instead our picks for a great and/or notable track by each of the contenders. Also, David offers a couple more acts we sure wish would get inducted someday.

Bad Company – “Shooting Star” (from Straight Shooter, 1975)

Bad Company’s case for the Hall will focus on its role in mainstreaming blues rock and on its best-in-class lead singer, former Free frontman Paul Rogers—though don’t forget the masterful kickoffs and fills of drummer Simon Kirke, formerly of Free himself. “Shooting Star” is perhaps my favorite track of theirs and one that certainly helped establish a key rock cliché for the decades ahead. First off, it’s a kind of answer song to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” whose mama told him he’d be a star someday. Twenty year later, though, things had changed: Bad Company’s “Johnny” loves the Beatles and is the one informing his mama of his future stardom. Plenty of songs by this point had sung about dreams of rock stardom, of course. But “Shooting Star,” which ends with a drunken overdose, is perhaps the first to stress that stardom will be fleeting and end badly, doncha know. –DC

Soundgarden – “Mind Riot” (from Badmotorfinger, 1991)

Soundgarden’s case for the Hall will focus on its role in mainstreaming grunge rock and on its best-in-class lead singer, future Audioslave and Temple of the Dog frontman Chris Cornell—though don’t forget the thunderous chops of drummer Matthew Cameron, subsequently of Temple of the Dog and Pearl Jam himself. Released in the weeks between Pearl Jam’s Ten and Nirvana’s Nevermind, Badmotorfinger retained the band’s preexisting prog-rocky heaviness but, as that album’s “Mind Riot” demonstrates, was more dynamic, more hook-and-story-song focused, ready for its breakout grunge close-up, and of course Cornell sings the confused, alienated hell out of it. “Somebody’s friend died,” the late Cornell cries, voicing an eternal lament. “Now somebody’s talkin’ of third world war / And the police said this was normal control,” he warns, speaking to right now and from the grave. – DC

OutKast – “B.O.B.” (from Stankonia, 2000)

It’s fitting that OutKast’s heyday came at the turn of the 21^st century. The duo of André 3000 and Big Boi (assisted by the alchemic genius of producers Organized Noize) released a series of stunning albums (from 1994’s “The South got something to say” declaration Southernplayalisticcadillacmuzik to 2006’s under-appreciated Idlewild) that remixed musical traditions like jazz, gospel, and blues into an Afro-futuristic kaleidoscope that centered the universe on the South of both mythology and reality. (Scholar Regina N. Bradley’s brilliant work on OutKast and its contexts is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn more.) Balanced between historical reimagination and future-shock innovation, these “ATLiens” sometimes sounded like they were creating the sound of the new millennium as they went. Never was this more apparent than “B.O.B.,” from 2000’s explosive, expansive Stankonia. Over a furious electronic pulse, the duo – displaying their perfect balance of André’s spaceway-travelling flights of fancy and Big Boi’s rooted flexibility – travels through the “inslumnational” city and assesses the lives of its people in “the year we won’t forget” of 1999. Rhymes speed by over bubbling psychedelectronica, an arrangement that makes the chorus’s bracing chant of “bombs over Baghdad” into the track’s secondary premonition. It still sounds timeless, and out of time, and a demonstration of the “power music electric revival” that closes “B.O.B.” and stands as a suitable thesis statement for one of the great recording careers of recent decades. – CH

Phish – “Evening Song” (from Sigma Oasis, 2020)

I find much to admire in how Phish has built and sustained its following over decades, and in how their expert musicianship seems motivated as much by a sense of play as anything else. I don’t begrudge the Phish-heads their love of the band’s extended jams or weirdo experimentation; seriously, I don’t. But I like Phish best when they find a pop-rock groove that suggests an alternative, hit-filled career for the New England quartet. For example, 2020’s “Evening Song” is just gorgeous, a slow-building ballad with epigrammatic lyrics that juxtaposes sonic comfort (with the rest of the band adding harmonies around Trey Anastasio’s friendly lead) with a lyric of cautious warning. Equally steeped in sunset reveries and twilight rumination, “Evening Song” is a stunner that recalls the warm, spiritual ballads of the Grateful Dead, a band to which Phish has often been compared and who never forgot that there was a surprisingly close relationship between the far out and the close up. Phish learned that lesson, and they shine brightest in those moments. – CH

Chubby Checker – “Let’s Twist Again” (single, 1961)

Dance-craze king Chubby Checker had more hits than you might remember, including two separate runs to #1 for his faithful version (i.e. ripoff) of Hank Ballard’s “The Twist.” The best of the bunch is 1961’s “Let’s Twist Again,” a boilerplate sequel that doubles as instant nostalgia. Over a friendly clatter of saxophone and handclaps, Checker calls on the dancers to remember just how much fun they had “last summer,” when everyone was doing the Twist and “things were really hummin’.” It’s all cheery fan service, with Checker coordinating the party through his booming tenor. But I’ve always heard a tinge of melancholy, or at least wistfulness, in how Checker seems desperate to recreate the magic: Note how the melody dips into a minor chord when Checker sings “last summer” and “really hummin’,” as if Checker himself isn’t sure if what worked in the (just) bygone days is going to work this time. That tinge of longing doesn’t stop the party, by any means, and “Let’s Twist Again” is just as raucous as its predecessor, from Checker’s opening invocation to the Superman-riffing bridge. But even the best parties have to end sometime. – CH

White Stripes – “The Air Near My Fingers” (from Elephant, 2003)

There was a lot of talk during their emergence that the White Stripes represented some sort of return to the roots or the real or whatever. But, even beyond how reductive and useless those conversations usually are, they missed the point. The White Stripes’ particular gift was a very modern synthesis of the crunch-and-crash of the garage-blues-punk continuum with a melodic sensibility derived seemingly from the poppier end of the British Invasion. “The Air Near My Fingers,” from 2003’s Elephant, contrasts the big boom of Meg White’s drums with Jack White’s worried lilt on a lyric anchored (as so often was the case with the Stripes and their “neo-garage” counterparts) in romantic/sexual frustration. “I get nervous when she comes around” is a great hook, especially when paired with humming organ, but the magic of “The Air Near My Fingers,” and the best White Stripes tracks, is in the thumping groove of Jack’s guitar dancing around Meg’s propulsive drums, a sonic counterpart and complement to the restlessness of the lyric that shows why the White Stripes were one of the great crank-it-up rock bands of their era. One of the strangest too. – CH

Rock Hall Wishlist: Los Lobos and Nick Lowe

Many of the artists who have mattered to me in my lifetime, and to the broader scenes they represented, and to the persistence even now of that whole thing called rock and roll, could fall into the sweeping sub-genre known as “roots rock.” Critics sometimes use that term a bit dismissively. Even when applied to a band a writer quite likes, the roots-rock tag often carries a strong whiff of being less than other, not so obviously roots-indebted artists. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame hasn’t been a fan of roots rock either, at least not in the way the term is typically deployed. There are, of course, many acts in the Hall who could accurately be described as roots rockers. But, so far anyway, such acts are inducted only after they’re no longer considered particularly rootsy, a transition typically aided by some very unhumble sales figures.

What is roots rock? Not to get too bogged down, but how about saying it’s post first-gen rock and roll, with an affinity for the beat, the beat, the beat, and with blatant blends of blues, gospel, country, R&B, rockabilly, soul, Tex Mex and/or folk and more. If you buy that, then if “roots rock” means anything, it for sure takes in Hall of Famers such as The Band, CCR, and John Mellencamp. You might reply, “Well, if that’s what you mean, what about ZZ Top, the Rolling Stones, or Lynyrd Skynyrd?” I won’t argue with you, but people tend not to call those bands roots rocker any more, if they ever did. Most roots rockers, including many of the best of them ever, never shake the tag because they never get on the radio or move beyond thousand-seaters. What do you call a roots rock band that goes platinum? A rock band.

This year’s nominations include two acts, the White Stripes and the Black Crowes, who have never entirely escaped their merely roots-rock status, commercial successes notwithstanding. I’m not a diehard fan of either group, but I was glad to see them nominated just the same. If only theoretically, their nominations allow for the possibility that more of their fellow roots rockers might be included in Rock Hall conversations going forward. Understand, I am under zero illusion that any of the bands I’m about to cite will ever be nominated, let alone inducted, and I’m not certain in every instance I’d even want them to be. But…

I will stand on famed roots rocker Bob Dylan’s coffee table and insist that I think there’s a far stronger Hall of Fame case to be made for, say, Doug Sahm, The Bottle Rockets, X, Swamp Dogg, Uncle Tupelo, Alejandro Escovedo, or Lucinda Williams, just for starters, than there is to be made for the Stripes or the Crowes. The Hall’s recent big tent, anti-rockist (well, less rockist) turn to nominating more pop and hip-hop artists has been excellent, was overdue and must continue apace. Yet work also remains to be done off the pop charts and off major radio formats to include acts who have had to settle for being merely excellent, distinctive and influential. Granted, there are plenty of snubbed Hall-worthy acts who weren’t giant commercial successes and who also were most definitely not roots rockers. (If they appear on a future ballot, you can bet I’ll vote for Big Star, Afrika Bambaataaa, the Minutemen, PJ Harvey and… It’s a long list.) But the nomination of the White Stripes and the Black Crowes led me to thinking about roots-rock snubs specifically. To that end, here are two more roots rockers high on my Hall of Fame Wishlist.

Los Lobos – “A Matter of Time” (from How Will the Wolf Survive?, 1984)

Los Lobos seems like a no brainer for Hall induction, at least to me. They were already nominated twice a decade ago, so they’re clearly not out of the question. Their cover of “La Bamba” topped the pop charts. They have a deep catalog of albums that have done great when it comes to Best of the Year time and, at least in my circles, the group routinely show up on the short list of greatest American bands ever. Their sound is as roots rocking as they come—borrowing, bending and blending each of the traditions I listed in the definition above, while foregrounding a variety of Chicano styles previously unknown to the L.A. punk and college rock scenes from which they in part emerged. They’re a dance band and a jam band and a covers band and, thanks to primary frontman David Hidalgo, are singer-songwriters par excellence. My favorite on that last front is “A Matter of Time,” a roots rock ballad about a man and a woman in conversation, ahead of his scary journey north for work—this in a moment before border walls and mass deportations but still a potentially fatal trip, nonetheless. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine, he says, sounding hopeful and worried at once. Don’t worry about us, she replies just as hopefully and just as worried, the baby and I will join you soon. “There's a time for you and me / In a place living happily,” just a matter of time is all. Time changes everything. – DC

Nick Lowe – “Cruel to Be Kind” (from Labour of Lust, 1978)

I wouldn’t want to limit Nick Lowe’s music just to roots rock, but that’s always been an essential part of what he’s been up to, from his early days with British proto-roots rockers Brinsley Schwarz (pub rockers, they call ‘em over there) to the roots-rocking new wave on Labour of Lust—and all of his work with Rockpile, not simply their roots rock-founding document Seconds of Pleasure but third and fourth helpings for Dave Edmunds and Carlene Carter. His roots rock bona fides continued straight through, partnering with the Cowboy Outfit here, Bill Kirchen there, plus his collabs with roots-rock masters Los Straitjackets and best of all to his several sets of cool, grown-ass country-soul this century. Full of ironic smarts and sincere feeling (and vice versa), reveling simultaneously in wit and stupidity and leaning into all manners of fun, Lowe’s catalog warrants his induction by itself—in my estimation, it’s that strong and exemplifies my dream of a Hall that embraces acts who are great and influential but not massively popular Need more convincing? Toss his essential productions for roots-rock curious friends Elvis Costello and Graham Parker onto the pile. As with Los Lobos, I could have chosen dozens of cuts to recommend, but I’m going go with Nick’s roots-rock masterpiece “Cruel to Be Kind” because its smirking high-energy smarts and silliness is quintessential Lowe and because it best represents New Wave’s late 70s pop moment. “Cruel to Be Kind” climbed to #12 here in the States—an absolutely massive chart hit compared to anything the Robinsons or Whites ever managed if that matters to you. (For what it may be worth, chart success does matter to me when making these calculations, but it’s never dispositive.) Put Nick Lowe in the Hall.

Recommended reading/listening:

-Caryn Rose on David Johansen’s solo debut, at her Jukebox Graduate

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on David Johansen, for his So It Goes

-Robert Christgau on The New York Dolls, for his And It Don’t Stop

-Quartez Harris on James Baldwin’s children’s book Little Man, Little Man, for LitHub

-Melody Esme on how Miranda Lambert speaks to the author’s transfemininity, for Pop Heist

-Rachel Litchman on the devastating impact of Medicaid cuts on disabled people, for Stat News

(from Billboard 2/17/1962)

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