Who's in next: Def Leppard vs. Bon Jovi - Round 4

Hits? Respect? Na, JBJ just wants to live in sin.

The cage match continues: Def Lep's "Adrenalize" vs. Bon Jovi's "New Jersey."

Round 4, Track 4:

Bon Jovi's "Living In Sin"

Michael Anthony: OK, so it's not the worst song recorded in 1989 (here you go!), but it's a close second. And the fact that it's even mentioned in the same breath as that stank travesty is all you need to know. That it hit #9 on the charts should make us all ashamed to be American.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, here are some fun facts about the great American band, Bon Jovi:

1. Did you know that Mr. Biongiovianni's 2009 non-hit "We Weren't Born To Follow (In The U.S.A. (To Run))" was seminally responsible for the Arab Spring, in which ordinary citizens in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, among others, rose up and successfully overthrew regimes responsible for everything from corruption and poor economic conditions to authoritarian oppression and state-sponsored censorship?

You didn't? Me either! I've never even heard the song to begin with! Because it got literally zero airplay! But boy did it change the political climate of the Middle East!

Here, I've taken a screenshot of the actual Wiki page, so you can see it before it gets removed:

Brayan: Least-bad-ass keyboard player in the history of rock?

2. Kroeger-haired BJ keyboardist David Brayan has released two solo albums. The first contains an intstrumental version of 1993's "In These Arms", and about a dozen other masterworks. The second, released five years later, contains the exact same songs as the first one, except now "In These Arms" has vocals again! And they're David's!

3. Bon Jovi re-recorded the oft-mentioned "Living On A Prayer" as a lite-grunge/folk/hip-hop hybrid called "Prayer 94". Why?

I suppose I shouldn't have to waste my breath, but I will anyway: it's BAD.

3a. Bon Jovi's grunge counterpart, Art Alexakis - and his sub-literate, trailer-park Springsteenisms - has foisted upon the public re-recorded versions of Everclear tunes, not once, but TWICE in two years. I mean, I kinda dig those tunes to be honest, but why are they doing this at all, let alone, all the time? Is it some kind of twisted, self-deprecating in-joke about how all their songs sound the same? Hopefully it's not just some kind of cash-grab!

RATING: -0.0 (out of 10)

No doubt Carvey's "look at my butt" skit was an inspiration.

G.E. Smith: Maybe something's wrong with my eyesight, but I think there's a mistake in the credit on "Living in Sin." It says "J. Bon Jovi" when it should say "Michael/ J. Bon Jovi/ Springsteen." It should say that because the verse is a carbon copy of the verse to George Michael's smash hit "Father Figure," released just a year earlier, and because the outro lifts the ending to about 50 Bruce Springsteen songs. But hey, no big deal, a typo is just a typo. We have our share here on CDNR, and a typo on a blog read by 6 people everyday is on the same level as neglecting to give credit to two guys who dominated the pop charts in the '80s when you so obviously ripped them off, er, used their songs.

Look, this is JBJ's time in the spotlight as a songwriter on "New Jersey," so let's not let an act of complete thievery ruin the occasion. Of all the stains on this skid-mark-laced pair of worn-for-five-days boxer shorts, this is the only one that he can take all the credit for - and, well, all the blame.

He's swinging for the fences, trying to capture that timeless story of young love on the run, the kind of thing Bruuuce was a master of. Instead, he continues his devolution into some kind of sappy-ass white trash version of Barry White, breathing hot and heavy about some chick he wants to pry from her daddy's overprotective arms so he can get her all to himself back at his place. He calls it "love," they call it "living in sin," I call it a creepy ass dude abducting an underage girl.

Marx: Don't touch the hair.

And instead of getting anywhere close to something like The Boss' "Born To Run," he ends up delivering a homeless man's version of a vintage Desmond Child song rife with Child's knack for McWriting and dumbing-down of a concept: Pack a verse with more cliches than a Richard Marx song ("sign it on a dotted line," "look me in the eye," "your daddy don't approve," "get me through the night") throttle up for a soaring refrain, cue the cookie-cutter Sambora solo, then break it down with a slow-it-down clambake ("I don't know ... just where we fit in ...") punctuated by a line that's spoken through a muffle of chest hair and Old Spice: "Sometimes it scares me."

Yeah, I'm scared too. I'm scared that this failed Casanova and his band of hacks could get into the Hall one day.

RATING: .2 out of 10

Def Lep circa 'Adrenalize.' Obviously, someone is "Bonerized."

Def Leppard's "Tonight"

Michael Anthony: All hail the Lep! Even though they resort to ripping off themselves - albeit with with slightly diminished returns - it's a wise decision that you can't really blame them for. Clearly, they've run out of ideas, melodies, and any knack for writing guitar hooks, so why not steal the arpeggiated riffs and shout-along style of earlier tunes? It worked then, right?

The tune doesn't measure up to something you might find in the guts of a solid block of Metal Mania - but it has this propulsive, rhythmic quality to it that a lot of power ballads are missing, proving that corny romantic wimp-rock bereft of any lyrical value doesn't have to be slow on top of everything else.

There's no way Def Lep (or any band besides this) could have lost this round up against "Living In STINK", but regardless, Joe Elliot and co. came up big in the clutch.

RATING: 6.65 (out of 10)

G.E. Smith: Yeah man, musically this is more like it. Instead of banging away at chords like they had He-Man pal Fisto's big silver hand, there's some actual playing like back in the "High N' Dry"-"Pyromania" days.

Oh yeah, some guy on 'Game of Thrones' gets stabbed in the neck.

You're right, the song ain't great by any stretch - you know something awesome is going to happen when those verses finally unravel, but the pay off is like the "Star Wars" prequels (Is that it? All we get is a bunch of Yoda tricks and Darth Vader putting on his helmet?) or the finale of the first season of HBO's "Game of Thrones," where a string of heart attack-inducing shows in which the creators gave one eff you after another by killing off main characters, cutting the screen to black to create unreal cliff-hangers and making heads explode (not literally) by doing things like showing someone getting their neck ripped out (literally) came to an end with a head-scratcher where a chick made three dragon eggs hatch, well, dragons and dead people started coming out of the forest.

Also,  I'm not really sure what a "haute beat" is, as in "listen to your haute beat," but I do think that sometimes these guys sing like they just got out of the dentists' chair.

RATING: 6 out of 10

Who's in next: Def Leppard vs. Bon Jovi - Round 3

Popeye to Joe Elliott: I smell what you're cooking.

The battle rages on: Def Leppard's "Adrenalize" takes on Bon Jovi's "New Jersey" in a winner-gets-in-the-Rock-Hall death match. This is Round 3, Track 3: "Make Love Like A Man" vs. "Born To Be My Baby."

"Make Love Like A Man":


G.E. Smith: "Make love like a man. I'm a man. That's what I am." These are the Popeye-esque words that propel the chorus of the third track on the follow-up to one of the biggest albums of all time. This is kind of a problem, because the third slot tends to be a pretty prominent spot on an album, not just because IT'S THE THIRD SONG ON AN ALBUM but because there's a precedent that's been set: On Led Zeppelin's "IV," it was the kind-of-silly but kind-of-epic "Battle of Evermore." On The Doors' classic self-titled debut, it was "The Crystal Ship," weak-ass by Doors' standards but transcendent compared to, say, Muse. Then there's "Come As You Are" ("Nevermind"), "Life In The Fast Lane" ("Hotel California") and so on.

Here, however, the Leps have put a real toilet-clogger right up in the front of the pile. It would be like the horrid 1987 Chicago Cubs moving part-time starter Ed Lynch (2-9, 5.38 ERA) to the top of their rotation ahead of ace Rick Sutcliffe (18-10, 3.68 ERA). Actually, it'd be like putting Harry Caray's corpse ahead of Sutcliffe.

"MLLAM": the Ed Lynch of "Adrenalize."

I've avoided talking about the actual song here, but that's because doing so is like taking a stick and looking underneath a dead bird that's been sitting around for 12 days. You got your cowbell, you've got your mentions of gigolos, you've got your pointless midsections where Joe Elliott begs, "Gimme some rock and roll! A little bit of rock and roll!" and you find this request sincere, because there is zero rock and roll going on here.

Truly four minutes and 13 seconds of the worst music ever conceived and recorded.

RATING: .01 out of 10.

Michael Anthony: Sigh, I guess it wouldn't be right to just skip this one.

Being a Lep Lover, this is like seeing my dad go up against Mike Tyson circa 1986. It's like Glass Joe against Little Mac, with the once-mighty pop-metal singles machine Def Leppard playing the role of the undermatched, light-hitting, glass-jawed dope who gets knocked out with one punch to a 110-pound child.

Seriously, what happened to these guys? Once capable of hammering out quality meatheaded buttrock riffola (everything from this to this to this would fit the bill) - solidly written, even somewhat complex tunes, complete with their own wit, personality, and sexist charm - this is what they've been reduced to?

"Make Love Like A Man"? More like "Make Songs Like A PIECE OF SHIT", am I right?

To blame: Phil Collins or Phil Collen?

People like to give Nirvana credit for ushering in serious, introspective (and bad) alt-rock and forcing all the lame, unserious arena-rockers out of the public consciousness, but I blame this horrible song and video (also, any Van Halen video released in the 90's).

Hey, "Make Love Like A Man" - thanks for ruining pop music forever!

0.F (out of 10)

"Born To Be My Baby"

G.E. Smith: Man, I sure hope you aren't serving up some home cooking for your fellow Garden State boys. But whether the hometown pride is there or not, this tune is definitely worthy of Goodwill or the Salvation Army and not the outright dump like the rest of this landfill of music. The na-na-na's are cool but definitely hackneyed, and it seems like a cheap trick for a maestro like Desmond Child to yank out of his pants.

I always thought the video for the tune, where they show the boys working hard behind the scenes, and isolate the vocal tracks, was kind of cool. But look at it now:

Still, there are some puke-worthy moments here. It totally rips the underneath harmony from the verse of "You Give Love A Bad Name," and lyrically the story goes right back to the same kind of story where Tommy's working on the docks and Gina working at the diner all day in "Livin' On A Prayer." And then the pre-chorus seems to be in a totally different key than the verse, and then the chorus is ok again. It's almost as if they couldn't come up with something, reached into a batch of tape and threw something in there to create a bridge. Why ruin a song that's only slightly odorous and spray it with a scent that crosses skunk with burnt hair?

Rating: 4.5 out of 10.

Mystery solved: Here's what Dez looks like.

Michael Anthony: This is the sound of Hall-worthy* hired gun Desmond Child running out of steam. It's still better than most songwriters can manage on their best day, but the formula is starting to show its age. Could be why there's that awkward, forced key change that G.E. mentioned earlier. It's kind of cool that he was trying something somewhat unique, and I suppose in a way it makes the song more memorable, but it's not very subtle, and again - do we want creativity and artistic leaps in a Bon Jovi song? No, we want the balls-out hairband pop of "Living On A Prayer" and "You Give Love A Bad Name". Clearly these guys had a hard time living up to the pressure of those mammoth hits, and wilted into generic balladeers and eventually even adult contemporary country "stars". Yikes!

Still, it's got more style and melody than what we've heard so far off the limp "New Jersey," and it kicks the crap out of a putrid offering from Def Leppard. Hand another one to the Jersey Boys.

5.69 (out of 10)

* Turns out Child is in this Hall.

Who's in next: Def Leppard vs. Bon Jovi - Round 2

"Heaven" it ain't: "Bad Medicine," bad haircuts.

Our prize fight, Def Leppard's "Adrenalize" vs. Bon Jovi's "New Jersey," winner gains entrance to the Rock Hall, continues. Round 2 of these two casks of cow semen pits their second tracks against each other: "Heaven Is" vs. "Bad Medicine."

"Bad Medicine"

Michael Anthony: How inventive! It may seem minor, but on "Bad Medicine", Jonny and crew give us the chorus first, which pre-empts all the bad stuff you usually get. Isn't that what you listen to a Bon Jovi song for - the epic chorus? True, there are those who listen for the faux-bluesman solo stylings of Sambora, or the occasional ham-fisted key-change ending, but with "Bad Medicine", we know what to do right away: ignore the stodgy blues/garage chord progression weakened even further by the pointlessly treated guitars - this one is all about that chorus.

Maybe it's not quite "epic" (or "Epic"), but you give me a BJ song that starts with a chorus and I'm a happy man. There's also a decent pre-chorus that gets away from the blues-riffing with a fairly striking chord change.

Ripped often, and incorrectly.

So, yes, I still like this song 20+ years later, but in some ways, they really dropped the ball.

In going for a somewhat more organic "live" sound, believe it or not, they did capture something akin to what Bruce was doing on The River, which itself was a clone of glam-rock gods the New York Dolls. Good job! However, though it aligned the Jove with the Dolls in more ways than spandex and teased hair, it was really just cosmetic and did them no favors. Who wants a "gritty" sounding Bon Jovi? (No one.) I'll take the high-gloss (pun intended) 80's junk with even more bombast and true nutless rock opera singing over this any day.

RATING: 4.69 (out of 10)

G.E. Smith: I smell the bathroom of a nasty strip club where the hottest chick has a bad c-section scar and a tooth missing. I smell sweaty mullets and cig-smoke smothered acid wash jeans. I smell the complacency of a band on autopilot because they know they can do whatever they freak they want and still hit the top of the charts blindfolded.

Still, your point is valid. I DO still dig this song, and it's funny - it sounds 10 times better without the video where the skanks get handed cameras to shoot the band, who mug for the cameras before getting their pants unzipped. We've watched the clip for this track together on Classic at 2 in the morning 20 times and ripped it to shreds, yet right now I'm not feeling the same venom.

All the telltale signs of a decently plotted but nauseatingly bland lead single are there: the aforementioned starting with the chorus, shout-along pre-choruses, another patented by-the-numbers solo by Sambora. Words are crammed in everywhere, like they discovered the music didn't match the words and just said bleep it, hit record and let's go sniff some more white stuff. Not that they said that, but you know what I'm saying.

The ending only hammers home how bad this really is. Just when you think it's going to end, JonBon breaks it down again, with a lame stab at Springsteen songspeak: "I got it bad, I got it I got it, I gotta do it again, wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, I'm not done, one more time with feeling! Help me out now!" and then he rolls back into a chorus that is really not worth a second outro.

Rating: 3.79 (out of 10)

"Heaven Is":

Clearly Clark was missed.

G.E. Smith: OK, I danced around this in Round 1, and I know it's as morbid as Ashton Kutcher's career, but I feel the Lep sinking fast and I gotta go there: We can't underestimate the loss of guitarist Steve Clark, the Johnny Thunders-esque glam master who died after "Hysteria" came out. Why did Def Lep have so many sick singles before "Adrenalize"? Because of Clark. Why did they suck monkey balls after? Because of the Kenny G. of hair metal, Vivian Campbell.

I'm not as down on "Heaven Is" as I know you'll be in a few seconds. We've got another Cheap Trick rip in the opening riff, and if you're going to keep pilfering from a band, that ain't a bad one to hit up. The verses are pretty cool - Phil Collen bangs out some nice beefy power chords, clearly some of the same cream that glazed "Hysteria," "Pyromania" and the rest of the band's good stuff.



Anyone who could pull this off has to be a genius.

 But that's about it. The chorus has way too much Mutt Lange going on - it's like Mutt pushed the "No Balls" button on his machine before returning to picking up hot chicks despite looking like a handsome version of Beastman.

Lep shows why X-rays would reveal rocks in their head - wonder where they got the idea for this brilliant pre-chorus: "Leave your name at the sound of the tone, call you right back when I get home." Clark tried to bust out of his coffin when he heard Campbell try to ape him and fail in the solo.

It's not the worst song ever, but it's definitely the worst song with "heaven" in the title, beating out such luminaries as Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is A Place On Earth," The Talking Heads' "Heaven" and Bryan Adams' "Heaven" in complete suckitude (actually, the first and last of those are pretty sick. The middle one still sucks).

RATING: 2.1 out of 10.

Michael Anthony:

In a Joe Elliot statement on the "Rock of Ages" and "Best Of" compilation albums, he referred this song's backing vocals on the chorus sounded much like The Beach Boys, and said that it was the first time Def Leppard went that far. He also referred this song as "More Queen than Queen".

Did Joe mean these Beach Boys?

Really? I assume Joe "Chris" Elliot is a reasonable man who understands and appreciates music - and knows what The Beach Boys and Queen sound like - and it's perfectly fine if he was emulating or perhaps just listening to those two bands when "Heaven Is" was recorded.

But seriously? I do not hear anything remotely Queen-esque in this song. In fact, it's probably much less Queen than, I dunno, King's X. I will personally paypal $5 to anyone who can point out any valid, legitimate Queen-isms in this song.

And those supposed Beach Boys harmonies do not fit at all - with the rest of the song being as densely overproduced as it is, it simply adds up to a grotesque mush.

RATING: 1.8 (out of 10)

Who's in next: Def Leppard vs. Bon Jovi - Round 1

Next year's induction of the Beastie Boys, Guns 'N' Roses and Red Hot Chilli Peppers shows that Rock Hall voters have moved on to the 1980s and left Hall-worthy bands like KISS and Rush out of the equation.

This brought up rumblings that Bon Jovi could be next, but some - like CDNR's G.E. Smith - are saying hold on one mother-grabbing minute, what about Def Leppard? Isn't putting Jovi in before Def Lep like putting the shit before the fart?

G.E. and myself have determined that a battle of two post-mammoth-album stinkers - Lep's "Adrenalize" and Jovi's "New Jersey" - would decide who gets in next.

We present to you Round 1: "Let's Get Rocked" vs. "Lay Your Hands On Me"

"Let's Get Rocked":

Savage: Dude looks like a lady.

G.E. Smith: When I was a kid I'd pitch a small tent in my tighty whities every time I heard the intro to this song or saw the lame video that ripped "Money For Nothing." Joe Elliott asks the seminal question followed by that sweet riff and "Good" Phil Collen, that one guitarist who looks like a hot chick, the other Replacement Guitarist for the Dead Guy and the one-armed drummer chanting "Let's get, let's get, let's get" in Mutt Lange-treated vocals, followed by big beefy power chords that lead the way into the meat of this equivalent of a steam room packed with hairy men.

I gotta admit that listening to it now, I get about as soft as Jim J. Bullock at Delilah's Den by the time Elliot sings the chorus for the third time. Slickly produced, expertly played, boring as crap.

"Rocked" isn't horrible, but standing next to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" it sounds like Nickelback at it's worst.

RATING: .3 balls out of 2, which is equal to 2.87 out of 10. I think.

Michael Anthony: What riff? Oh THAT riff. The one that makes "Up The Creek" sound like "Back In Black"? Hell, it makes "Back In Black" sound like goddamn Mozart. As a huge Lep supporter, it saddens me to report that never in the history of bad-ass Def Leppard singles had there ever been such weak non-riffery in a song (up to that point, of course; anything after 1992 is actually even worse than this).

And didn't you guys tell me to get rocked a couple times before, albeit in somewhat more poetic terms? Alright, so "Rocket" ain't Bob Dylan, but as far as meatheads-telling-others-that-they-should-rock goes, it's pretty solid prose. At the very least, it'll pump you up for a big flag football game or a big rock gig. Same with "Rock of Ages." "Let's Get Rocked" makes me want to listen to like, Kraftwerk only, forever, so I never have to think about awful guitar music again. Let's not.

RATING (on the Pitchfork scale): ONEOFTHEWORSTSONGSOFTHEDECADE.1 (out of 10)

"Lay Your Hands On Me":

I'm wanted. Waaaannnnttteeeeeaaad!!!

Michael Anthony: Hey, Mr. BJ! Why does it take you almost 3 FULL MINUTES to get to the turgid point of this fetid pile of big album-opener trash? Jesus, this is worse than I remembered it, and I remembered it being pretty much the worst thing that I'd ever heard. Was it supposed to be a "Hysteria" knock-off? A Mutt Lange-inspired "Born In The USA" with lyrics about jack shit? Something more experimental? Who knows? Whatever it was supposed to be, it wasn't anything other than horrid, and the American public, with their great taste, quickly turned on Bon Jovi forever.*

To be fair, the perpetually uncool Richie Sambora does rip some semi-cool faux-Vai licks in the long intro, though, given a multi-million-dollar studio and 3 FULL MINUTES to dick around in, you'd expect a little more than some half-hearted solos and the occasional flourish of noise.

There's also this tight accidental harmonic feedback thing, which is more likely the fault of Bruce Fairbairn, uber-producer of more than a few not-so-Hall caliber albums from otherwise HOF-worthy bands, and probably has nothing to do with Jon Bon.

RATING: 2.69 (out of 10)

* Not true.

One of 30 for a penny, via the BMG Music Club.

G.E. Smith: To do this up for real, I went and dug out the TAPE version of "New Jersey," and to do so I had to wade through a sea of Robert Palmer, Huey Lewis and Al B. Sure. I feel dirty.

Anyway, yes, the rip of "Hysteria" Mutt Lange magic in the opening is right there in our face, but if you're going to lift from that album why take one of the sludgy parts from "Gods of War" on side two? What happens after this is more disturbing. Before the music kicks in Jovi does a Michael Hutchence on that spoken word part, then he's doing those David Lee Roth vocal screeches ("I've been to school-HA! Oh baby I've been the teacher.") And then Steven Tyler's "P.U.M.P."-era sex tease on the "your satisfaction is uh, guaranteed." Why the hell does a guy who dominated the world on his last album have to rip from anyone on the follow up?

Fairbairn helped make this happen. I bow to Fairbairn.

Sure, that feedback thing is cool, but unlike "Rocked," this track is sloppily produced, with weak and lazy vocal takes, sloppy cut ins and uneven volume levels. This is odd, since, like you said, Fairbairn helmed some of the '80s biggest hard-hair rock albums, like Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation" and Loverboy's "Get Lucky." Maybe Fairbairn was off his game. Or maybe he felt duped because Jovi and Sambora handed him a steaming pile of cat poo instead of a solid batch of tunes.

This is soulless corporate rock at best, most likely the product of self-congratulatory smugness and copious amounts of attention from dirty groupies and even dirtier rock critics.

RATING: .2 balls out of 2, or 2.1 out of 10.

Heroes of the Hall: Neil Young

There's a million reasons to pluck a rare gem like Neil Young from the overabundance of turd piled up within the walls of the Rock Hall.

He's a veritable Babe Ruth of rock, excelling in both acoustic heartbreakers and full-on rock-your-ass off blasters. He sang "my my, hey hey" and "hey hey, my my" to bookend an album and name-checked Johnny Rotten in the process. He made 90-minute classics like "Cortez The Killer" seem like they were only 15 minutes long. He left a big fat footprint in four straight decades (a Woodstocker in the '60s, a stadium rocker in the '70s, a take-it-to-the-man renegade in the '80s and hip-old-man in the '90s) and is considered the Godfather of Grunge, and whether that's true or completely manufactured because it makes a cool story is besides the point.

At this point, he could basically hock a loogie on tape for 30 minutes, put it out with a white cover and still get four stars from Rolling Stone. And that's OK, because he earned it.

Yet nothing demonstrates Mr. Young's Hall Hero Status like his 1983 album "Everybody's Rockin'," released under the name "Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks."

Geffen Records didn't like 1982's "Trans," which featured some synth and robot crap but isn't really as crazy as everyone makes it out to be, and they didn't like the follow-up Young submitted, the all-out country record "Old Ways." They demanded a "rock & roll album," so Young went back to the drawing board.

He came back with his own interpretation of what they wanted: A 10-song pile of junk featuring doo-wop and rockabilly originals and covers from the 1950s. Technically, Young didn't defy Geffen: They didn't specify which era of rock that he had to go back to.

"Highlights" include faithful covers of songs by Jimmy Reed ("Bright Lights, Big City") and Bobby Freeman ("Betty Lou's Got a New Pair of Shoes") and originals like "Cry Cry Cry" (where Young sounds like he's ready to bust up) and the Chuck Berry-esque "Payola Blues," which calls out Alan Freed, features the Pinks chiming in with harmonies of "cash-a-wadda-wadda" and boasts lines like "Listen to me, Mr. DJ, hear what I got to say/ If a man is makin' music they oughta let his records play."

But the crowning achievement, the creme de la creme if you will, is "Wonderin'," a typical Young track written way back in his early days that's given the eff-you treatment, complete with "doo wops" from the Shocking Pinks.

Taking it over the top is the video, which speaks for itself. Thank you, Neil Young, thank you. We'd induct you again if we could.

Making a Case: Weird Al

By the Rock Hall’s standard, the most honored artists are those who don’t reinvent the wheel. It’s much easier to continue spinning it and spinning it.

A bevy of Rock Hall members and future Hall members are guilty of stealing the riffs that made them famous.

The most heinous con artists would be Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, and thrice-inducted Eric Clapton, whose careers began the moment they plundered the catalogs of black bluesmen before them.

Any Replacements fan knows that Goo Goo Dolls’ singer/songwriter Johnny Rzeznik owes a treasure trove of “creative royalties” to Paul Westerberg.

The kind of company rip-off artist Rzeznik (center) keeps.

And not too long ago, we pointed out how ungracefully Green Day ripped off the Kinks.

There are too many examples to chose from that I have to resort to a visual description of the history of rock and roll.

Which brings us to Weird Al Yankovic. What separates Al from his riff-raping predecessors is that Al makes no bones about it.

And he has been doing this since his 1979 debut. Think about it: Weird Al has had widespread name-recognition for 32 years. By pop culture standards, that’s at least 3 generations that know who he is and know at least a handful of his songs.

That’s both a cause and effect of this role within music: pop culture’s kingmaker. A pop artist isn’t a pop star until Al does them right.

Here’s a taste of Rock Hall inductees and future inductees that got a free career boost courtesy of Weird Al: Michael Jackson, Queen, R.E.M., Madonna, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, Eminem, U2 and Green Day.

Personally, my favorite Weird Al tune his Devo parody, “Dare to Be Stupid,” – an original song penned by Al that was intended to sound exactly like Devo. I guess this makes me a first-generation Al fan.

If the Rock Hall prefers its music watered down by a bunch of one-trick white boys, wouldn’t Al fit that criterion exactly?

All joking aside, what case could the Rock Hall make against Al? I’d love to hear it. Because the case for him includes:

• 12 platinum albums and singles
• 18 gold albums and singles
• 3 Grammy Awards
• 11 Grammy nominations
• Dozens of singles and albums charting across several continents

Put that up against any artist that’s in or considered a shoe-in for the Rock Hall.

If anything, just nominating Weird Al Yankovic would make the Rock Hall look a lot less of the bad joke that it currently is.

Kickin' Em Out: 1993

Good songs, talented group, but sorry, no Hall.

New Edition should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Why?

Simple: In 1993, the Hall inducted Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers. As a performer. Not even as an "early influence" or through any other kind of b.s. induction category the lame-o voters use to sneak in their favorites.

The Hall says that their smash single "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" defined the doo-wop sound. (No mention of the lawsuit, not long after their induction, that essentially said other members of the Teenagers, and not Lymon, wrote the tune).


To their credit, they made the R&B Top 10 six times, albeit with songs that I bet you can't hum right now: including "Out in the Cold Again," "I Want You to Be My Girl," "Who Can Explain?" and "The ABC’s of Love." They're all really solid tunes, but are they Hall-worthy?

Perhaps Hall voters were swayed by the tragic story of Lymon's death - he died in 1968, at age 25, of a heroin overdose.


They should not need any swaying to put New Edition in. The group placed within the Top 51 of the Billboard Top 100 eleven times, including four in the Top 10. Don't even mention the R&B charts - they freaking destroyed them for more than a decades with tracks like "Candy Girl," "Mr. Telephone Man," "Can You Stand The Rain" and "Cool It Now." (WARNING: THE BELOW VIDEO IS BEYOND SICK):

Oh, and let's not forget the Spawns of New Edition, which are almost better than the group itself.

Post-Bobby, with-Johnny era.

Bobby Brown solo, Johnny Gill solo (his self-titled 1990 album, featuring "Fairweather Friend," is an R&B/ New Jack classic), Ralph Tresvant solo (ditto his 1990 self-titled solo album, which boasted the big single "Sensitivity") and, of, course, Bell Biv DeVoe, authors of "Poison," "Do Me," etc.

When the Hall finally recognizes modern R&B as a legitimate genre of music, New Edition should be among the first to get in.

Shit. I'm wasting my time on something that should (and hopefully will) get its own post down the road.

For now, let's focus on the task at hand: Sorry Frankie - you and your Teenagers have got to go.

Ruth Brown
Dick Clark
Cream
The Doors
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers
Milt Gabler
Etta James
Van Morrison
Sly and the Family Stone
Dinah Washington