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Odds are good that if you happen to have VH1 Classic, and weren’t busy last night with an all new Deal or No Deal, you still didn’t tune into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame inductions live from New York City. Digging through the wire photos from the festivities might tell you something about the show itself, with photos of Ed Burns, Christy Turlington, Chevy Chase and Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers among the various inductees and presenters, and largely no one recognizable as a working musician. I made it through John Mellencamp’s performance and Tom Hanks nearly convincing me to appreciate the Dave Clark 5 before Joan Jett came out to pay tribute to the DC5 and I gave up. So, to catch us all up, here are selections from the web’s various recaps, so you also can pretend you watched it.
Rolling Stone: “As Iggy Pop and the Stooges pounded through punked-up reinventions of inductee Madonna’s “Burning Up” and “Ray of Light” Monday night at the 23rd annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, it was only the most extreme example of what the show did all night long: find unexpected common ground between disparate genres and eras of music.”
ABC News: “Madonna recalled key moments of her career, from playing her demo tape for record company president Seymour Stein when he was in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV, to her shock at looking out from the stage at thousands of girls dressed like her. “It freaked me out,” she said. She fondly remembered a teacher who encouraged her to follow her dreams when she was only 14, and said she’s lucky to have people around her that are still doing that.”
Boston Globe: “Fellow Hall of Fame member Billy Joel, who inducted Mellencamp, said, “You scared us a couple of times when we thought we might have lost you a couple of times, even though it might have been a good career move.” The world needed Mellencamp’s voice, he said. “They need to hear somebody out there feels like they do, in the small towns or the big cities,” Joel said. “And it doesn’t matter if they hear it on a jukebox in a gin mill or on a … truck commercial.”
The Glasgow Daily Record: “Soul producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, literate songwriter Leonard Cohen, and surf instrumentalists the Ventures were among the other inductees into the Cleveland hall.”
To wrap things up, the Boston Globe mentioned one interesting component of the gift bag: a box of thirty blank CD’s.
