It Always Pays to Have a Monkees T-Shirt, But Only The Rock Hall Doesn’t Know That

My typical classroom experience at Northwestern from 1984-1988 is exemplified by yet another Economics class. They all run together in my mind so God knows what it concerned. The Professor looked exactly like George Will, and liked to describe exciting Economic issues as sexy. I think everyone in that class hated my guts, because I was the only one in there who seemed to have a clue what was going on. George Will would toss out a question every five minutes or so, and I would look around the room for a while praying for someone else to answer. Eventually I would raise my hand, and answer the question. George Will couldn’t tell you the name of a single other person, but after about the third day of class he called me by my first name for the rest of the quarter. Sometimes I just would ignore the questions, but nine times out of ten he would look over at me and say, “Brad, surely you have some thoughts on this issue?”

About two thirds of the way through the class, George Will split us into groups and assigned us all presentation topics. On the day of the presentations, he didn’t seem to be satisfied with anything anybody had to say. On this particular day I was wearing a Monkees T-shirt, maybe I was dressing down so people wouldn’t think I was such a suck up. When my group finished our presentation George Will told us that we had done a magnificent job and then went on a fifteen minute spiel about how when he was a kid the only thing he had ever really wanted was a Monkees T-shirt. Even my friends in the class wanted to kick my ass.

But at least George Will was smarter than The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The only reason the Monkees aren’t in the Rock and Roll Halls of fame is the label “Prefab Four”, and yet they have all those guys with PHDs there that are supposed to be so much smarter than that. Their omission is so unconscionable to the point where it is silly to even argue it.

Here is all you need to know about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was born and live in Cleveland.

When Bruce Springsteen was inducted immediately after his debut album’s 25th anniversary, he was faced with a huge dilemma. His debut album did not feature the E Street Band. Now the rule is that an artist is eligible 25 years after their debut recording. There were E Street band members on that album, although the artist was officially Bruce Springsteen.

So whether or not he wanted to be inducted as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band was not up to him. It was a stupid rule and a stupid trap for an inductee to have to be put in. A stupid rule and by now you should know how I feel about stupid rules.

So he went in just under his name, which is fine. Although, I’m not much of a fan of anything he recorded without them, he deserved that anyway, but the E Street Band should have gone in immediately upon their eligibility, but the induction ceremony, which was once an innocent and unseen, sloppy jam of legends, became a TV show, which killed the jams and doomed the E Street Band.

The reason to honor people should mostly be to do so when they are alive. Many baseball players, in their Hall of Fame, actually don’t deserve to be there, but are because someone died and they felt bad about it.

So the E Street Band was inducted, but not before Clarence Clemons was dead, which is such a heinous crime that I can’t even depict it fully.

Like my aunt and her relatives, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame likes their rock stars dead!

Still a Hard Rock Cafe minus the burgers and burgers are still more Rock and Roll than it.

Because of the way the Monkees were formed, it was a craven idea to manufacture money, they have already suffered far too much.

No matter how it happened or who played what, the members all had talent, they all sang, the output was excellent, the songwriting was excellent, the playing was always excellent no matter who played exactly on what. Even if they never had played or wrote a note, which is totally not true, they should have been in just like the Temptations or the Four Tops. Am I comparing Mickey Dolenz’ singing to David Ruffin or Levi Stubbs? Of course not, Roberto Clemente was not Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth, but Clemente not being in the hall of fame would be silly, even without the circumstances of his heroic, tragic death.

Because of the way the Monkees were set up this song did not come out until 1987.

There are tons of crimes about the Monkees not being in the Hall of Fame. Don Kirshner may or may not have committed crimes against true art, but the Monkees were true art even if the original idea was completely without purity. The only real crime about the Monkees and the Rock Hall was committed by the Rock Hall, and again with all their PhD’s and their insistence on hiring only people with them, they should know better, they don’t.

Johnny Rotten was right. He usually was right.

Davy is already dead. Time is running out. If Mickey, Peter and Michal are alive when they get in my guess is they will go in with class.

I would prefer them to go in like Mike Love or Steve Miller or like Todd Rundgren, who said during his Berklee induction speech that he doesn’t want to get in at all.

But that’s me, and I’m usually hard to anger.

Plus again burgers!

And again to finish, the only one who so cravenly aimed his music to teen girls more than Don Kirshner was indeed Chuck Berry.

Ignorance is so frustrating.

I keep using this quote, but over and over it is true.

Bob Dylan: Great paintings shouldn’t be in museums. Museum’s are cemeteries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men’s rooms … Music is the only thing that’s in tune with what’s happening. It’s not in book form, it’s not on the stage … It’s not the bomb that has to go, man, it’s the museums.