"Great" moments in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame History: 1989

Fried chicken. Grotto pizza. A pound of crispy bacon. Turkey Hill peanut butter ripple ice cream. Scrapple. Fried cheese curds. That chicken you get at Indian food places that comes in the orange sauce.

Scrapple tastes gooooood. Pork chop tastes goooood.

All of these things are awesome. All of these things at the same time still could be awesome. But it'd also be really confusing, almost impossible to digest, and probably in the end it might not be so, well, satisfying. You'll probably vomit at least once that night. You'll definitely shit yourself silly the next day.

What happened on Jan. 18, 1989, is similar to the very same feast described above. At the end of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that saw The Rolling Stones, The Temptations, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder and Dion (not a bad class) go in, as well as cockface Phil Spector, who proved once again why he's as much of a cockface as he is a genius producer by inviting both Ike AND Tina Turner to induct him in the Hall. Interestingly enough, Ike is the one who pussed out, saying he was uncomfortable being around her.

At the end of what was probably a quite entertaining event to attend, all of the groups and an absolutely amazing assemblage of guests got on stage for a big jamfest performance of "Satisfaction."

Sure why the f*ck not, get out the cowbell.

Besides the inductees you had Dylan, Springsteen, George Harrison, a-hole Mike Love, a very uncomfortable looking John Fogerty (but when is John Fogerty ever comfortable looking?), possibly a coked out Billy Joel on the keys (it was possibly him, but whoever it was definitely was coked out); and then a super solid B team that included Mick Jones of Foreigner, Jeff Lynne, Arlo Guthrie, maybe Todd Rundgren and a few of the other Beach Boy dweebs.

There were so many f*ckers up there I'm not sure if any of the other Stones were up there besides Jagger.

The dizzying roster and the decent performance makes this a pretty incredible Rock Hall moment, but we're teetering on vomit, we're teetering on overindulgence and a sense that this might be too much, and then two more things take it to Over The Top Ville.

One is the presence of Paul Shaffer. But it's not just that he's there. It's that he used a Keytar to get himself front and center, whoring his way to the center of the action, like some dude nudging his way into the Last Supper scene so he could make the painting. F*ck you, Paul Shaffer.

This I get. The other thing, not so much.

Then there's what happens at 2:40. Bruce and Mick, sharing the mic like it was a metal schlong with a wire. When Bruce and Little Steven do this, it's cool. It's a bro thing. I get it. But here there's 400 mics sitting around, and no one's using them, and Bruce doesn't even have a guitar (another puzzling aspect), and there's no reason for them to get so close that their teeth are touching.

I dunno. The more I write about this the more I'm thinking this really is "great."

Great Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Performances, #1

In 2004, Prince and George Harrison made for a decent year, although CDNR's own Michael Anthony might disagree with the latter. The rest of the pu-pu platter consisted of ZZ Top, Jackson Browne, Traffic, The Dells and Bob Seger's still-warm cadaver.

That year's ceremony will be most remembered-for an "all-star" tribute to George and his "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that wasn't much of an all-star tribute to start, but mainly a pseudo-Wilburys reunion (Petty and Jeff Lynne Funk) and George's kid.

At about 3:30, you see Dhani look over to stage left with a mixture of excitement, awe and "holy shit this is going to happen!" He sees Prince strapping on his ax, and since he's doing it in the song's outro, you sort of have to wonder if he even planned to jump on stage in the first place. But he does, and what happens next is Rock Hall history.

Prince unfurls one of the greatest rock solos in the history of music, and in the process does all of these things at once:

- Makes the old comparisons to Hendrix become more than just a blind bullshit racial thing. Yes, they're both black, but they also shred like mofos.

- Somehow makes Tom Petty seem whiter and limper when he falls back into the crowd while still soloing right in Mr. Into The Great Wide Open's face (4:51).

- Makes Eric Clapton roll over in his grave in advance.

Insane. Nuts. Awesome. Prince.