· Hall and Oates
· KISS
· Nirvana
· Linda Ronstadt
· Cat Stevens
Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony 2014
There you have it, music fans. Nirvana's narrative of mainstream-assimilation of grunge/punk comes full circle as they're welcomed into The Hall! And fire-spewing, make-up-splattered, libidinous monster rockers KISS are coming in right behind them.
Brian Epstein (famed for his managing a little band called the Beatles) and Andrew Loog Oldham (famed for working with a little band called the Rolling Stones, among many others) will be honored with the Ahmet Ertegun Award for lifetime achievement.
They've been doing Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies for every single year that I've been alive. So maybe I'm a good measuring stick concerning their sustained relevancy to an audience that's only growing ever-younger, ever-more-easily-distracted, ever-hungrier for weirder, newer, more exciting music made by their contemporaries. But then, maybe I'm worrying for nothing - I shouldn't hem and haw over whether any 18-year-old punk/rap/techno whiz on the up-and-coming is concerned with the recordings of Hall & Oates... Any inductee has to have had their first recording released at least 25-years-ago from the day they enter the Hall, so by design, that batch of artists will appear like old fogies to that same 18-year-old upstart who's listening to Chance The Rapper or the brand new Beyonce album or, I dunno, maybe that latest Okkervil River album, who can tell these days?
It's just surreal, now, to think that Nirvana, as a band, as an idea, are that old... That they might be as lost-in-the-shuffle as Hall & Oates are these days... No...That won't be. Will it? At what point does an immortal icon's immortality-veneer start to chip off against the unforgiving fickle-storms of the Internet? You kids have heard 'Nevermind' right? But...then, do they need to anymore?
