Quite Awhile Since the Last One...
I've been silent on these pages for awhile; that's okay I guess as long as I'm not "soylent." The ARSC Conference was last week and it only ended yesterday.
I hope I'll have more to say about it here over time. My employer sent me there
and I really need to turn in the results to them first. Now that I'm back I'm still in "catch-up" mode.
Chubby's Chequered Career
"I'm not getting the airplay ? no airplay, no payday," said Chubby Checker, who waxes on and on about the popularity of "The Twist. He says even foods with the words "twist" and "checker" in them point to the song's enduring popularity. (He also markets "Chubby Checker's Beef Jerky" with flavors like "Sugar Twist Teriyaki.")
Chubby Checker protested the induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this afternoon. These are given in New York, by the way, even though the actual hall is in Cleveland; the ceremony will be televised this weekend on VH-1. This year's lucky inductees are Prince, Bob Seger, Jackson Browne, George Harrison (who will not be in attendance), ZZ Top, The Dells and Traffic. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner will receive a lifetime achievement award. See, now you know, and you don't have to watch the show, which doubtless will be boring!
Let's see - how do I tabulate these finalists? Prince - okay, I guess you can hardly avoid him; much goes the same for ZZ Top. Bob Seger, sure, although naturally he is not being inducted for his best work. Jackson Browne - are you kidding? George Harrison for his solo work - well, some sentimental value must have come into play here, especially as he has recently thrown off this mortal coil. "All Things Must Pass" and "Wonderwall Music" are good, especially the latter, but there is SO much of George's solo work that is half-hearted, sung badly and seems to have little or nothing in terms of ideas behind it. He seems to be thinking "This is a B-side, I hate making B-sides, but here we are again, so lets get to the end of this thing." I wonder if the Rock Hall committee even considered this aspect of Harrison's solo career - it's so obvious on many of his records.
The Dells - definitely lonnnng overdue. Traffic - certainly! Of all the choices, these are the only two acts I would consider dead ringers for the honor.
And what of poor Chubby? He claims he is not really protesting his lack of inclusion in the hallowed halls of rock and roll fame. In fact, if you read his comments, it's not clear what he really
is protesting. Chubby is upset that they don't play enough of his biggest hit, "The Twist," on oldies radio. He also says he doesn't want to be inducted into the hall, just to have a picture of himself placed outside welcoming people into the hall. Hmm, that just might distract from the big Pink Floyd thing in the front window...
Sorry Chubby - Clear Channel is king, and oldies radio is practically dead. "Classic Rock" has replaced the "oldies" format, and there's no turning back, for now. But even then I'm not so sure I would want to hear "The Twist" all the time anyway. Nor "Limbo Rock" nor any of your other variations on "The Twist" - comparatively I'd much rather hear your fellow Philadelphians such as Little Eva and The Dovells.
I went to the Rock Hall last Thursday. I must say that the people who put up the display cases do a teriffic job, although some of it is a bit cluttered. There is so much confusion, racket and noise in the hall it is very disorienting. The only place where I really drank it in was at the Buddy Holly exhibit, and that was mainly as there was no music playing there.
Lots of the various schools of rock are underrepresented, including Detroit - I suspect this year's inductions are partly to make up for that. I was there primarily as I wanted to see their new exhibit on Ohio rock. It was okay - it put a little too much emphasis on people who were BORN in Ohio and not enough on artists who were active there. A jacket from Dean Martin hangs in the case, as he was born in Steubenville. No one heard of Dean, of course, before he hit the New York cafe society circuit in the early 1940s. If I'd Dean's jacket to hang in the Rock Hall, I'd put it in the exhibit dedicated to the rock singer who loved and admired Dean's music more than any other - Elvis Presley.
At one point in the Ohio exhibit spotted a little piece of sh*t amp with a ripped speaker screen sticking out of the wall, and there was somthing familiar about it. Looking at the caption I noted that "this was the amp used by Greg Dulli of the Afgahn Whigs." I laughed - sure, I stuck a mike up to that piece of junk probably a dozen times if I did it once. Funny to see it behind glass treated like a precious artifact - usually at the end of a Whigs date it was drenched in beer and and the mike was nowhere near it. The hole ripped in the screen was deliberately put there - that's where Greg liked it miked.
We were bused out to the hall from the hotel at 6:45 pm, and the bus driver even drove past it once and had to double back. I was done seeing it, all of it, by 8:05, but our bus wasn't scheduled to leave until 9:45 and there was no one from the Hall who was to speak to us. They had set aside a little cash bar in the lobby, but I certainly couldn't afford to drink there, so I decided to get my coat back and walk to the hotel.
As I was walking a hellacious storm kicked up - the worst storm I've been outside for all winter. Gale force winds wobbled aluminun flagpoles violently back and forth and trees gave up their branches to the black, turbulent sky. Iceballs the size of b-b gun pellets came flying into the hood of my jacket, which offered my face little protection. My biggest concern was not to be blown into the street and be run over by a car, my last vision of the world an erratically dangling traffic sign against the black horizon.
I passed a building near the Terminal Tower, I don't know which one, which was illuminated by huge multi-colored floodlights placed midway up the building atop a parking garage. To see all those millions of little ice pellets dancing around in the colored skylights was an impressive thing indeed - Cleveland is a beautiful city, even when the weather is bad.
As I had left the hotel, my wife was yelling at my kid for ordering an expensive potato-encrusted salmon from room service and then deciding not to eat it. When I came in from the Rock Hall, I
looked like a potato-encrusted salmon.
Back to Chubby, there really aren't a lot of Philadelphia-based artists in the Rock Hall, although Bobby Darin is honored - like Prince and ZZ Top, you really can't leave him out. Come to think of it, there isn't even a picture there of Dick Clark, unless there was a shot from American Bandstand of some artist where Dick is standing in the background. Cincinnati-based singer Hank Ballard, who first wrote and recorded "The Twist," is already an inductee and his picture is placed in the early Soul exhibit next to that of his most famous protege, James Brown. Hank Ballard was supposed to perform "The Twist" on Bandstand, but was held up by a violent snowstorm, and instead Chubby Checker sang the tune in Hank's place, so it became a hit for him. Compared to Hank Ballard, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Les Paul or anyone else whose work is enshrined in the Rock Hall in depth, Chubby Checker is - welllll - kind of tame.
Let's face it Chub - you stretched your fifteen minutes out a long, long time - Dick Clark seemed to help a lot. Dick doesn't seem to have much pull at the Rock Hall, where Alan Freed is revered like "the great white father." Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Dick Clark managed to stay teflon-like squeaky clean during the Payola scandal, whereas the great white father sank into the mire, never to be seen again. It seems you just picked the wrong mentor, Chubby.
Perhaps Chubby Checker will sometime have a presence in the Rock Hall - maybe his picture will be seen on a vending machine near the parking garage, dispensing "Sugar Twist Teriyaki."
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com