If This is What Respect Looks Like. . .

So I’m eating my re-heated pasta from my celebratory dinner at The Buggy Whip last weekend (celebrating because the Wisconsin Review accepted one of my older poems) and enduring last night’s live broadcast of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on VH-1 Classics, a broadcast reminding us that neither Cher or Sonny & Cher have yet been inducted or are likely to be inducted anytime this solar life-span into that prestigious canonical orb of proper pop music despite the well-intentioned petitions of Cher Convention fans.

Which is fine. Because it’s stupid.

That Blondie drama last year was off-putting. The Van Halen debacle this year was ridiculous. Of all the worthy bands, these ass-clowns get in and then don’t even show up or send a note. Well, recently booted-to-the-curb Michael Anthony did show up as did 80s lead-singer Sammy Hagar. But not Eddie or that other-Van-Halen-brother or the glutton-for-attention David Lee Roth? Where was he? Did Eddie threaten to not let him come back into to the Van-fold if he dared show up alongside Sammy? Is this tomfoolery all over the latest Van-melodrama regarding long-time player Michael Anthony who got replaced on the tour by Eddie’s 15-year old son Wolfgang by Valerie Bertinelli?

No, this isn’t like the time Elijah played on the Love Hurts Cher tour. Micahael Anthony is a beloved founding member of Van Halen. This is despotic nepotism!

Sammy and Michael tried to recreate the magic with “Why Can’t This Be Love” and the help of every-musician’s friend Paul Shaffer among others; but without that iconic sound of Eddie, it sucked. I love Sammy but his performance was lackluster. They looked embarrassed. The whole show was cringe-making with its long pauses between performances which were filled with heckling  from the crowd and film clips of vintage Hall of Fame induction performances from years past with the likes of B.B. King and Eric Clapton, in other words past inductees with a bit of class and reverence for something beyond their navels.

So now Eddie’s in rehab and the civil war between him and all his long roster of former band-mates continues. Yawn. Can I see the next vintage Hall of Fame performance now? Ah, that’s it: Prince playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” with Tom Petty. It’s as if the Hall of Fame is saying “Now here is a real guitar genius eccentric…who puts out!” Prince kills us with a performance full of flair and dexterity and then maddeningly prances off the stage like an arrogant elf. I love him! I hate him!

Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes was also inducted. Remember Cher wrote the introduction to Spector’s autobiography and these gals used to pal around when both were working under the banner of Phil Spector. Cher also sang back-up on the iconic Wall-of-Sound recording “Be My Baby”. The autobiography of the same title is a must read for Ronnie’s take on the early punk/folk version of Cher and to understand what life was like behind that Wall…speaking of irrational eccentrics.

At the end of the show, all the inductees convened to sing a ditty, including Grandmaster Flash, Ronnie herself, two-fifths of Van Halen, and Patti Smith looking homeless as usual – which is fine because she’s an auteur and all…but why are her teeth so icky?? She would make a good ghost-of-rock-tours-past in one of Eddie Van Halen’s hallucinogenic drug episodes.

I’m frustrated with the rock canon right now and so I’m going to go buy the newly issued Cher dance mix collection, which includes remixes of “Dark Lady” and “Bang Bang [Return to the Five & Dime Mix]” which is sure to ensure Cher will continue to be snubbed from any future R&R HOF inductions to come. Darn it all.