2000 Man's Rock N Roll HOF

OK, so I'm a Clevelander (sort of - I live in a suburb and can be in Public Square in twenty minutes) and when the powers that be decided they wanted us taxpayers to pay for the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame and Museum I was dead set against it.  My usual argument was that every record store in the city was like a wholesale Rock Hall and they let you take what you considered the truly worthy stuff home.  They were also already in existence, so why did we need to waste money on something else?  Well, I lost that election and after they built the damned thing, I had to admit, I like it.  I think it's really cool and if you've never been, you should definitely see it.  Come when it's not winter, make sure you have a car (Cleveland is a car kind of place), and be hungry because there's really great food here.

My real complaint is the HOF.  The museum and the things they do in the community is fantastic.  The HOF?  Dumb as hell.  When it originally opened, it was at the top of the building, they only let like 12 people in at a time and it was very quiet and the lighting was dim.  When my group was next to go in, the usher says (in very hushed tones), "Please, no talking in the Hall itself.  Many people will want to reflect quietly."

I looked to see if she was just fucking with us.  It appeared she wasn't.  While the others in our group started looking at their friends with quizzical looks, I said, "Be quiet?  Why would I be quiet?  Rock N' Roll is the loud music we got high and fucked to.  The music we threw parties with.  The music we played to piss quiet people off!"

Just then the inside usher opened the door as it was our turn to go in.  Everyone started laughing and people were saying, "Yeah, when I see The Beatles (Stones, Clapton et al.) plaque I'll say whatever I need to say."  So we actually had a pretty raucous group inside the actual HOF.  They have since made it much more open and the whole place has lightened up.

So as you can see, my HOF is a little less amazing and doesn't have a museum or gift shop.  My HOF doesn't give a shit if you like the band or not.  My HOF doesn't have nearly as many people in it as the one in Cleveland, because my HOF says that the day you induct Rush is the day you need to go back and start over, because you'll take anybody.  So let's get to the first inductee, shall we?

Chuck Berry.  This induction will include Johnnie Johnson and Willie Dixon for appearing on Chuck's first hit, Maybellene (and others).  Chuck Berry is inducted for the following Act of Awesomeness in 2000 Man's eyes:

When my mom was 13 (she doesn't think I can do the math, that's why she told the story truthfully), she cut school one day and drove around with older kids and smoked cigarettes and drove around Schuyler County, New York.  Now, that part may or may not be true. Maybellene came out in the summer, so mom may not have cut school, but that's how she remembers this happening.  It's not like Cow Country, New York kids were the cutting edge, I'm sure.  When they got hungry for lunch, they stopped at a diner of the sort that had a jukebox.  Being with older kids, someone dropped a dime in there and played a new song, by a black man named Chuck Berry.

My mom was hooked immediately.  The sound of the guitars and drums.  A boy with a car asking her to dance in a town she couldn't normally get to on her bicycle or walking, cigarettes and chocolate malts.  She tells me she played that song until everyone said they'd heard it enough and that there were other songs on the jukebox.  My mom knew that there may have been other songs on there, but that one song was the only song on there that mattered.  Looking back sixty years later, my mom, when she was just a punk of a thirteen year old, really understood what Rock N' Roll was about.  She played Rock N' Roll on the radio all my life and when the oldies station played Maybellene she told me that story.  I have a feeling that there are other songs that remind her of similar days, but I don't know all of them.

So when I was a kid in Junior High, we had a class that gave me all my music credit for high school because it was a year long, full hour class.  It well may have been the first History of Rock class ever offered in a public school for real credit.  We got to bring in records, and we also got to listen to Mr. Demkowicz' records.  I could talk Chuck Berry and some other fifties Rock pretty well for a kid just older than my mom when she first heard Maybellene, and I loved that class.

Which bring me to inductee number two:

Alex Demkowicz.  Mr. Demkowicz was a music teacher at my school.  Back then he well may have had to drive from school to school teaching music all week, but I wouldn't know about that.  I do know that in Jr. High we had an offer of a History of Rock class that would give us a full year's credit, good for high school credit if we needed it, so long as we had enough kids sign up.  We wound up with a good sized class and I still think some of the things he said were pretty astute observations.  Mr. Demkowicz said that yes, Rock N' Roll was born in the South primarily.  Too many people discount the Doo Wop groups of the North and their impact, and too often everything is simplified.  Mr. Demkowicz started with music from so far back it was unbelievable.  We had kids drop out, because you couldn't pass the class until you could write the words to the Star Spangled Banner or because I swear it was at least nine weeks before we heard an electric guitar.  I seemed to get the feeling that he thought the leisure time of kids, cheap musical instruments and electric guitars and kids with money had as much to do with the birth of Rock N' Roll as anything else.  I'm not saying he discounted anything, he just wasn't one of those "It came from Sun Studios in Memphis and if you disagree you can suck my dick" kind of guys.

Every Friday we were encouraged to bring in our own records.  Our music room had a custom made cart with an AR turntable, a Realistic integrated amp of some sort and some Advent speakers (which cam off the cart and had stands).  This sounded pretty nice!  I took a lot of records in there, and I remember taking Dark Side of the Moon in and telling him there were swear words on it, so he'd have to audition it first (if we sneaked one by and he caught it while we were listening we'd never be allowed to bring our own records in again).  When he came back with it that Friday we listened to the whole album, goody good bullshit line and all.  He said this record was too important and that one day a song like Time would completely blow us away.  Plus, there was wildly innovative use of synthesizers and we would find out that one day this would be a landmark album.  I'm pretty sure it was three years old by that point, but hey, the guy didn't just listen to Rock N' Roll like some boring blogger I can think of.

I met a kid in that class and he was like me.  He answered questions, did the homework, asked questions and always brought records on Fridays.  We started to hit it off.  He turned me on to Sparks' Kimono My House and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.  I turned him on to Manfred Mann's Earth Band and Yes.  We smoked after school sometimes and talked about music.  Halfway through the school year his father got transferred and they sold their house.  Coincidentally halfway through the school year we bought his house and moved in.  That kind of sucked, because while my friends liked music, they didn't like it the same way as this kid and I did.  I looked a little less forwards to those Fridays the second half of the year.

Mr. Demkowicz encouraged me to listen to what I liked, and try to listen with a critical ear, but to always remember that music was about the song.  If the song was good, it didn't matter if a woman sang it, or a black man, or a white guy or even a band that was uncool.  It only mattered and it was only good if I thought so, and I shouldn't let other things get in the way of that.  So while Yes was still a big deal to me, I could see that all those old songs I liked that weren't 20 minutes long were just as good, even if the guitar player had never heard of Mozart.

I'm happy to include these first two inductees to my Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame.