Perhaps it's personal, those glaring omissions. Or maybe it's simply a matter of us not "getting it". Take, for example, the Canadian band The Guess Who, with its seemingly interminable string of memory-etching ballads and rockers: These Eyes, Laughing, Undun, No Time, American Woman, No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature, Share The Land, Hand Me Down World, Bus Rider, Albert Flasher, Rain Dance...; maybe it just never rose to the level of musicality and renown worthy of the Hall's recognition. And maybe The Guess Who's front-man, the profoundly gifted Burton Cummings, for all of his pianistic virtuosity and what is perhaps the most mellifluous and tunefully explosive voice to have ever graced rock and roll...maybe, in the arcane proceedings and deliberations that are the induction process, his exceptionality counts as nothing more than extraneous ornamentation. If so, then so it is for the band's counterbalance, world class guitarist Randy Bachman, the other half of the brilliantly innovative, woefully short-lived Bachman-Cummings compositional collaboration. But surely the Hall's modus operandi is to exercise exceptionally nuanced and unbiased judgment, a level of discernment commensurate, as one would expect, with notably lofty standards – standards that were plainly on display in its induction of, say, Green Day, Rush, Beastie Boys, Abba, and Blondie, each and all at the exclusion of The Guess Who. There is cause for doubt. Consider another supernally talented group, The Moody Blues. As is the case with The Guess Who, this band, according to the Hall, doesn't pass muster, and thus, still resides in the exurbs of Halldom; this, despite their giving genesis to a genre that melded classical music with rock and roll and yielded a number of stunningly gorgeous entries on their laundry list of wildly popular melodic gems. Call me a rock-sheltered hayseed, but the exclusion of The Moody Blues from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in favor of the noted, pronouncedly less contributive, less notable entrants is, well, somewhat irrational. It would seem the Hall's admission criteria are years overdue for an evolutionary spurt – a particularly radical one if it has been using criteria that weigh more heavily on what's "cool" or palatable to present-day popular tastes, or the Hall's personal likes (or dislikes) ...on anything that deemphasizes that which matters most: the quality of the music. And while it is granted that any estimation as to that quality will invariably and in large part entail subjective means, quality is the one criterion that warrants the Hall's considered efforts to shape and exercise such means. But mutative progression aside, one would hope that, in the near term, the Hall would, at the very least, right what needs righting concerning the two rock and roll marvels at issue. I can think of at least one scenario that would satisfy the avenging poet within: the Hall issues a groveling apology and, by way of a monetary mea culpa, pays The Guess Who and The Moody Blues for the privilege of admitting them retroactively, setting their dates of entry at twenty-five years subsequent to the release of their respective first records. But who heeds the poets?
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| The Moody Blues |
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| The Guess Who |
