2/26: A Rotten Opinion Of Rock's Hall Of Fame
I don’t consider myself an expert on the punk-rock scene, although I do like listening to some music in this genre from time to time, (especially a certain song from the Ramones). One album I like listening to is “Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols.” While I do know some news and notes about the Ramones, which I’ll talk about later, I don’t know much about the Sex Pistols other than they lasted for one album and their one member Sid Vicious died from a drug overdose. However, I have to say that whenever I see Johnny Rotten on television, I usually put down the remote and see what kind of trouble he’s getting himself into, whether he’s on the now-cancelled “Politically Incorrect” or “Judge Judy.”
One memory that sticks out involving Rotten was when he did this show on Vh1 back in 2000. In it he covered the 2000 election season, and to my surprise it was splendidly done. In fact, it was my favorite analysis program covering the '00 election (not to mention it's one of the few that I still remember). In the span of 30 minutes he had an intelligent conversation with Newt Gingrich (?!), made fun of some pseudo-hippies protesting outside a Convention site and took the high ground when questioning some pro-life demonstrators. It wasn’t at all what I expected this episode to be like, especially the segment involving the abortion protestors.
Anyway, the reason for my Sex Pistols nostalgia is because they recently told the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to take their induction and shove it. Of course this begs the question as to what the R&R HOF would expect one of the renowned punk bands of all time to do when told of their inclusion into this institution. I don’t get this hippie enshrinement to the music industry, and I couldn’t name one person who has been inducted into this Hall of Fame. However, if people travel to visit this place, and the proceeds put a few extra tourism dollars in Cleveland’s coffers, then who am I to denounce it?
I mentioned the Ramones earlier, and for those that don’t know by now, my TSM handle of “kkktookmybabyaway” is a title off one of their songs. The first time I heard this song was during some hippie MTV special on RACISM back in the day. In this “special report” they followed the antics of some idiot teen skinhead that was planning some retarded rally at a local mall or something. At the end of the show, they played “The KKK Took My Baby Away” while giving us an update on how his rally fared. I can’t remember the exact details, but I think only two or three people showed up alongside him, and they ended up getting arrested or beaten up (or both).
One thing I didn’t realize about the Ramones until a few years ago was Johnny Ramone’s conservatism, which is astounding considering back the 1980’s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were considered Mr. and Mrs. Anti-Christ to many people who the Ramones played music with and in front of. Then again, punk always seemed to be an alternative to mainstream culture, so in a way it would makes sense to have one of its forefathers be an unapologetic Republican. One of my favorite quotes from Johnny before he passed away a few years ago came from this article:
“I remember in 1979 doing an interview for Creem magazine with [famed rock and roll scribe, now deceased] Lester Bangs and telling him that Ronald Reagan will be the next president. He was really mad that I liked Reagan, who was the greatest president of my lifetime. So I turned it around on him and asked to see his commie card. In fact, ever after that, I would ask him for his card. I think he had one, really.”
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