Rant #3,927: Point of No Return

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is nothing but a dumpster fire of bad choices.

It has little to do with rock and roll anymore, and the names that are consistently left out for inclusion in this HoF reads like a who's who of rock and pop and popular music in general during the rock and roll era.

No Lesley Gore, no Neil Sedaka, no Monkees, no Paul Revere and the Raiders, no Tommy James and the Shondells, no Turtles ...

And I could go on and on and on.

Without these seminal acts, more current acts that get in routinely would not even have had the door left ajar for them to even exist.

This year's crap ... err ... crop of inductees is absolutely the worst class of them all, including Billy Idol, Phil Collins and such non-deservees as the Wu-Tang Clan and Sade.

Blecch!

Absolutely awful.

But for once, this dumpster fire finally did something right--

It named Ed Sullivan as an inductee via the Ahmet Ertegun Award for those who have had "a major influence on the creative development and growth of rock and roll music that has impacted culture."

If you were around during Sullivan's 23-year run on CBS every Sunday night--1948 to 1971--you know just how important he was--unwittingly--in the development and acceptance of rock and roll by our culture.

From Elvis Presley to the Beatles, he put on the national TV stage just about every major hitmaker of that era, pushing them into our living rooms, whether we--or he--liked it or not.

He knew how to grab the kids to his show, and in between Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny and Hollywood's "old guard," he sandwiched in the Rolling Stones and the Doors and even the Cowsills and Tiny Tim.

And those nights where he gave the world Elvis Presley and the Beatles--nights that no one will ever forget.

Sullivan preferred the newer acts that went by the old Hollywood aesthetic--the Supremes, Dave Clark 5, Petula Clark and the 5th Dimension among them--but he was just as open to the Jefferson Airplane and the Vanilla Fudge, anything to draw eyeballs to his show.

And millions watched, millions started to accept the rock and roll aesthetic, and this then new music was accepted into our society.

Sure, we had "American Bandstand," we had other shows of the same ilk, but to put rock and roll mixed in with the plate twirlers on prime time on Sunday night on the number one network solidified rock and roll's hold on the nation.

He championed black acts, he fought with the Rolling Stones and Jim Morrison of the Doors, he wore love beads with the Mamas and Papas, he preferred Ella Fitzgerald but put up with Janis Joplin--

Sullivan was the ultimate showman, and even though he probably didn't know it, his show made rock and roll the music of our times.

For the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to name him to be inducted is way more important than inducting Luther Vandross and Iron Maiden, because quite frankly, without Sullivan opening the door for the likes of Jackie Wilson, James Brown and Steppenwolf, acts like this would never had had a pathway to the popularity that they enjoyed.

And that is why naming Ed Sullivan to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the best, and most significant, move that this place has made in probably about 40 years, since its early days.

Maybe there is hope for the place after all ...

But by naming the likes of Joy Division and Oasis this year, the induction of Ed Sullivan might have been nothing more than a major glitch.

Perhaps they meant it to be Topo Gigio ... ?