CARPE MEDIA

by Chad Painter

Lester Bangs, who proved that writing about rock can be just as exhilarating as playing it. (Photo: Stephanie Chernikowski)

CLEVELAND, April 4, 2009—“Le Freak” is blasting from the speakers as disco legends Chic step to the stage and are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

While Chic has no business being rock hall-of-famers, that’s a discussion for another day; the Cleveland institution has a long tradition of inducting non-rockers such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (rap), Miles Davis (jazz), Parliament-Funkadelic (funk), Bob Marley (reggae) and the Bee Gees (bad pop).

And while the RRHF has honored David Crosby, Eric Clapton and three-fourths of the Beatles multiple times, it has only opened its doors for music journalists twice: for former Billboard editor Paul Ackerman and Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner.

According to its website, the RRHF aims to “… recognize the contributions of those who have had a significant impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of rock and roll.” To that end, nominees can come from four categories: Performers, Side Men, Early Influencers and Non-Performers. The last category is defined by the RRHF as “songwriters, producers, disc jockeys, record executives, journalists and other industry professionals who have had a major influence on the development of rock and roll.”

Non-performer inductees have included Holland-Dozier-Holland, the songwriters behind the Motown sound; San Francisco booking agent Bill Graham; producers George Martin and Phil Spector, who helped created the Beatles’ early and later sound, respectively; record heads such as Sun’s Sam Phillips, Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun and Sire’s Seymour Stein; and disc jockey Alan Freed, the Cleveland record-slinger who first coined the term “rock ‘n’ roll.”

All of these people are worthy of recognition, but have they contributed more to the “evolution, development and perpetuation” of rock and roll than Robert Christgau or Jon Landau? For that matter, is Jeff Beck or Metallica (both 2009 nominees) more RRHF-worthy than Richard Meltzer or Lester Bangs?

It’s time for the RRHF to set aside space for rock critics, and it should start with this inaugural class:

• Jane Scott: The longtime reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who’s largely credited with inventing rock criticism.

•Lester Bangs. A wildly influential writer for Creem and Rolling Stone, his book Psychotic Reactions and the Carburetor Dung sits on the bookshelves of most rock critics today.

•Robert Christgau. The self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics,” Christgau spent 37 years writing about music for the Village Voice. During that time, he created the annual Pazz and Jop Poll, a synthesized best-of albums list complied from the top-tens of hundreds of critics nationwide.

•Richard Meltzer. His Aesthetics of Rock is a must-read for anoyone wanting to call himself a rock critic. In additon to writing, he spent time as a musician, booking agent and professor.

•Jon Landau. The Rolling Stone writer helped popularize the idea of critics hating everything. He gave bad reviews to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, and called Eric Clapton “the master of blues clichés.” He’s also credited with discovering a legend, writing in a 1974 piece, “I saw rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

This list is by no means exhaustive. How could it be without including Paul Williams, Nik Cohn, Arnold Shaw, Richard Goldstein or Sandy Pearlman? But it is a much-needed start.

The RRHF’s induction committee has been nominating folks since 1986, and, if Chic is any indication, they’re starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. It’s time to start recognizing some of the true visionaries in the field: the critics.