There seem to be two camps of people when it comes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: those who feel that rock and roll deserves a permanent place to showcase the important effect it’s has had on popular culture, and those who believe that the intention of rock music was rebellion against the mainstream; that a stuffy old shrine goes against everything the music stands for, and screw you if you don’t agree with them. I belong to the former group, partly because I’m from Cleveland, Ohio and got caught up in the hysteria of bringing the Rock Hall to the north coast, and also because I feel that there needs to be a place where people can look at rock and roll as an art and examine its history. I’ve been to the museum, and could have stayed for days marveling at Hendrix’s guitar and fragments of Keith Moon’s drum kit.
This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and there’s a star-studded concert in Madison Square Garden to celebrate the occasion. In conjunction with the anniversary, Time-Life has released a nine-DVD collection called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live. It includes eight discs of Hall of Fame inductions and a DVD featuring some of the performances from the 1995 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert that took place in Cleveland. Since the very first induction back in 1986, we’ve seen and heard about the induction ceremonies (usually in New York) that are a gathering of music legends. They get up on stage and perform their biggest hits; give speeches that are sometimes emotional, sometimes raucous, sometimes spiteful, and at the end of the night all of the inductees and presenters come together for one kick assjam session. With this DVD collection, it appeared as if music aficionados — you know, you and I, the people who made these rock stars legends — were finally going to be included in these events, and not just through the chopped-up versions we’ve seen on VH1.
Well, not quite. (more…)
It’s been a busy time lately for Marshall Crenshaw: He released his 10th studio album, 
Well, we did a story last year about people who send around petitions to get various acts into the hall. Anyway, we all know you’re a student of pop, rockabilly, honky-tonk, and god knows what else. As such, are you a fan of the Hall of Fame, or the various music museums in general?
Leonard Cohen has been referencing his own mortality in his lyrics for decades now, and on his current world tour the first such hint arrives about a half hour into the show. Near the end of his 1988 classic “Everybody Knows,” he sings, “Everybody knows it’s coming apart / Take one last look at this sacred heart / Before it blows…” One couldn’t help but sense that Cohen’s mortality – he’s 74, after all – was part of what packed the house on two consecutive nights this weekend at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theatre. It was, perhaps, our last opportunity to watch pop music’s most poetic singer/songwriter do his thing, and we treated the occasion with all the reverence it demanded.
His humor, like his set list, is well-rehearsed — he’s been using that line for nearly a year now, and the order of songs performed at his L.A. concerts was nearly identical to the track listing on the recently released 
PAT BENATAR