What sank the Titanic?

No recap wrap-up of the vacation just yet. I'll get it finished soon. In the meantime, enjoy this gorgeous poster from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is stupid

I'll get it right out of the way off the bat.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is stupid in every possible way.

It's a museum created by Jann Wenner and others of his era to celebrate the music of their childhoods - not the music of today but rather the music that they remembered from when they were younger.  The Rock Hall says things a little differently, but...

In 1983, A small group of music industry professionals led by Atlantic Records Founder and Chairman Ahmet Ertegun and including Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner, attorney Allen Grubman, manager Jon Landau and record executives Seymour Stein, Bob Krasnow along with attorney Suzan Evans set out to establish an organization to “recognize the people who have created this music which has become the most popular music of our time.”

They had no problems picking the first few inductees - James Brown, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Robert Johnson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Elvis, Sam Phillips, and a few more.  Even years two - Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Smokey Robinson, Lieber & Stoler, Marvin Gaye, Ahmet Ertegun (on the Hall's Board interestingly) - and three - Beatles, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Les Paul, The Supremes - couldn't have been tough.

But eventually the font of easy inductees dries up.  There isn't a new Bob Dylan to get the crowd excited and united every year.  You end up with Tom Donahue (a SF DJ from the 1960's - hmm...wonder where Rolling Stone  was headquartered around then), The Bee Gees (no rock in their career), Buffalo Springfield (three albums recorded - total), The Young Rascals (seven recording years, only three years as actual commercial forces), Paul McCartney (whose solo output doesn't remotely qualify as good enough - neither does John Lennon's, by the way), Richie Valens (who recorded for less than one year and died at the age of 17), Miles Davis (jazz, yes, rock, not even), the Dave Clark 5 (whose Rock bio says "their records were, quite simply, fun to listen and dance to" - such a ringing endorsement).

And eventually you get around to ABBA and Blondie and Run-DMC and Madonna and Grandmaster Flash.  Great artists?  Probably.  Rock artists?  Not remotely.

I've been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I've been to the Baseball Hall of Fame, too.  Didn't enjoy either one, but really didn't enjoy the Rock one.  They're both museums trying to freeze moments in time and capture glories that were fleeting enough as they happened, but at least the Baseball Hall of Fame had some sort of continuing thread that could tie all of the players together.  They all did basically the same things.  They threw the ball; they caught the ball.  Sometimes they won; sometimes they lost; sometimes it rained.

The Rock HoF, on the other hand, seems to be trying to bring together genres and musicians that are just too disparate.  How can you put the Velvet Underground in the same hall of fame with Elvis Presley and the Tom Waits and the Sex Pistols and Madonna?  The artists are so different, so separated in time, so radically unlike each other that trying to judge them against each other on some sort of quantifiable but qualitative scale just seems ridiculous.

And where do you draw the line at what is and what isn't Rock enough to be included?  Madonna?  ABBA?  Grandmaster Flash?  These aren't Rock artists, but then again, the music of Elvis is probably as far from that of Black Sabbath (2006) as is Madonna (2008) from the Eagles (1998).  There is, at this point anyway, no underlying rockness to most of the inductees that are left because rock isn't the dominant popular force that it once was.  In twenty years, we're going to need to somehow judge whether Daft Punk and the Avett Brothers are both rock enough to make their ways into the Hall's hallowed halls, and by then rock will mean even less as music will have morphed even further.

So, check out this year's inductees...as well as any of these articles complaining about or reporting on the choices...

• Rock Hall announces new inductees
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Neil Diamond's in, Bon Jovi's out
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Bon Jovi's in good company not getting inducted
• 2011 Rock Hall Nominees: Let the head scratching begin
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees: Who's Who!
• LL Cool J, The Beastie Boys Do Not Make Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees
• More Like 'Hall of Lame', Am I Right?
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Who Should Be in for 2011 and the Future?
• Rock And Roll Hall of Fame's Most Egregious Snubs
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: the Outcasts
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees: Who Should Get In, Who Got Overlooked?
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Could Change Induction Criteria to Suit Bigger Acts
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Candidates: a critic's elite eight
• Future Rock Legends (an entire website devoted to looking at who does and doesn't deserve to be inducted...see also, navel gazing)

All I can promise you is these two things:

• I will never discuss the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame again other than perhaps to shake my head and move on.  The choices that they make are irrelevant to my musical listening pleasure.
• I will not be going to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame under my own free choice again.  It's boring.

Oh, and I promise that none of this has to do with the fact that they passed over the greatest Jewish rappers in history.  Another genre ignored...

PS - The Baseball Hall of Fame, on the other hand, is fascinating and may soon have a major backlog.

Pathetically late to the art installation

I'm casually down with the work of Shepard Fairey - they guy who did the Obama Hope (red/blue, you know the one) and the Andre the Giant Obey from long ago - and even own a pretty cool parody shirt thanks to the LebowskiFest guys.

So I was pretty surprised and pleased to happen upon a mural of Fairey's work on my travels through downtown Cincy this Wednesday.  It's on the side of a building right next to Piatt Park across from the downtown branch of the Public Library...kinda cool mural...

...and it's a big thing, probably twenty to thirty feet across and solidly ten to fifteen feet high.  Kinda cool.  Click the photo to the left if you want to know specifically where to look for the thing (photo source here, so I'm not Fairey-ing things)

Turns out that this mural is one of at least ten murals that Fairey installed in Cincinnati - check the map here to find 'em all - in conjunction with an art installation at the Contemporary Arts Center (it's there 'til August 22nd).  Apparently the murals were installed back in March - check Fairey's photos of the freezing installations here - and I'm just finally getting around to the right spot downtown to see one of them.

Pathetic how little I get downtown since I've moved out to the exurbs.

I only saw the bridge into the zoo for the first time this week, and it's apparently only about three years old.

Sheesh...

The Girl's recommendation of the day

The Girl was showing her elementary students - she's a librarian about a mile from home - some functions on various website. She was showing them things like forms and radio buttons and webcams. She came home and was telling me about he day and mentioned the National Zoo's website with twenty webcams that run twenty-four-seven.

Check out the panda-cam...naked mole rat-cam...ferret-cam...most impressively, octopus-cam.

In one of her classes, she had octopus-cam projected onto her SmartBoard while the kids were checking out books. At one point, then, a single tentacle tip began to slink its way across the camera, followed by suctions cups and the entirety of the tentacle, after which the rest of the octopus worked its way over the camera and began to feed. She said that the entire class sat in rapt, silent attention.

I'm hoping to catch a little of that cool octopus action when we get to the National Zoo this summer.

Got the apartment rented for the ten days, and we've got the tickets bought for all three baseball games. Now it's just to getting the train tickets.

Too much rock for one poll

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has a poll up asking whether we think twenty-five artists are future hall of famers...

• Guns 'N' Roses - 60/40 (current poll results 60% yes/40% no) - Nope...one phenomenal album, Appetite for Destruction is one of the best hard rock albums ever...and Use Your Illusion was solid but overly long...too little product and too much internal destruction...five albums total - one legend, two very good - just isn't enough to overcome that
• Jay-Z - 35/65 - I'm too far out of my depth in rap to even comment
• Madonna - 76/24 - she's been too popular and relevant for too long to be anything but a yes...but she certainly doesn't feel rock to me in the least...
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - 61/39 - they seemed like such throwaway punk/ska in the 80s that I probably would've said no...but their late career rebirth (Californication, By the Way, Stadium Arcadium) puts them in for me
• Mariah Carey - 45/55 - after ten albums, she still feels like a much lesser, much crappier Madonna...and she's not even close to rock...I'm thinking that the Hall should be changed to the Pop Music Hall of Fame...and she'd still not be in for me
• Radiohead - 20/80 - again, I'm out of my depth...probably couldn't name a single song by Radiohead
• Snoop Dogg - 37/63 - man, I'd say no, but his discography suggests that it'd be closer than I think it would be...again, I'm honestly out of my depth
• Justin Timberlake - 30/70 - no way...he's put out two albums and been a member of a big boy band...the solo work doesn't come even close
• Bjork - 12/88 (lowest positive reaction so far) - more a curiosity than a musician here in the US...no
• Metallica - 78/22 - easy choice for me...yes..twenty years of making relevant, clearly rock music...some phenomenal albums in the process...easy, easy yes...
• Beck - 22/78 - interesting choice here...I like the heck out of him, so I might be biased...I see the potential for Beck to continue to be relevant for decades because he is so stylistically diverse...is he a hall of famer? - no...will he be? - I think so...
• Sheryl Crow - 57/43 - only five proper albums so far...her music is pleasant and non-offensive...seems cut in the same vein as the late 70's singer songwriters to me but with a little more guitar, a little poppier sound...I don't like her music, and she's not a hall of famer yet, but my guess is that she'll put out the same sort of music she's doing for decades...may end up with a career similar to Bryan Adams, honestly...
• Green Day - 54/46 - only seven proper albums so far...two of which are awesome (Dookie & American Idiot - the latter of which is the best album to come out this decade)...tough call...I'd say that they're on track but not there if they got hit by a bus tomorrow, and before American Idiot, I would have certainly said no
• Eminem - 40/60 - as much as I hate him, as much as I think he's white trash with millions of dollars, I think he's got a pretty good shot...he'll have to put out another couple of albums that are closer to his first ones, but his first ones were so revelatory, he was such a media presence that I think he's got a chance...and it's hard to believe that we've only know about him for seven years or so...
• Pearl Jam - 72/28 - Googs would kvetch if I said anything but yes, and I'll do so easily enough...they are the greatest rock band of the last two decades and are still putting out great music...they've taken social stances and connected with their audience like no band since the Dead...their music isn't a direct connection, but their band is the living legacy of the Dead...
• Beastie Boys - 46/54 - tough for me to separate my love for them from what they mean to the industry as a whole...I'd go with yes, though...sure, License to Ill was frat boy rap trash, but their 90's albums brought in an era of sampling that has rarely reached the heights of their own discs...the big problem is that they've only put out six albums in the last twenty years...if they'd've been a little more prolific, they'd be a slam dunk...as it is, they'll get in on artistic merit...
• Mary J Blige - 45/55 - see Jay-Z but replace rap with R&B...
• White Stripes - 13/87 - wow, way lower than I thought the poll would be...now? - no...eventually? yes...
• R. Kelly - 14/86 - no, and if only because his two lasting images are of the friggin' "Trapped in a Closet" video and of Dave Chapelle's parody
• Motley Crue - 70/30 - seriously?...80's big hair hack music...nope, no, nu-uh...and any late career, reality tv resurgance actually detracts from their chances
• Joan Jett - 58/42 - I am amazed at the voting results now...c'mon, name two Joan Jett songs...I'll spot you "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", and I'll still bet that most of you (and me) can't name a second one...one hit, no matter how rock that hit, does not a hall of fame career make
• Nine Inch Nails - 33/67 - there is a chance, but they'll have to have some commerical success - something they haven't seen since the early 90's...only five albums...probably not and definitely not in the "hit by a bus tomorrow" test
• Alanis Morissette - 36/64 - Jagged Little Pill was a heck of a debut but very much dated now...and she's recorded an acoustic version of it which makes it somehow lesser...has the original seriously sold 30 million albums?
• Oasis - 18/82 - too short a peak...though supposedly they came out with a really good album in 2005...in spite of title of that one (Son't Believe the Truth), they seem to have fallen victim to believing their own hype...
• Destiny's Child - 30/70 - never had a great album...probably will go down historically as Beyonce's first group...nope

Return of the Random Ten

Okay, that last plot was evil (it was post #666 since I started this hubristic endeavour), so we'll go back to the standard random top ten...

Today's random ten from iTunes...

Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

One of the most beautiful, haunting songs of the 80's...gorgeous guitar over a heart-wrenching, amazingly effective story...the drums sound a bit high in the mix when they kick in, but it's still nearly perfect

Loch Lomond by Richard Thompson Band

From the six-disk boxed set RT...interesting cover of the classic Scottish tune...odd to hear with saxaphone but still enjoyable

Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World by U2

Another haunting tune...this from U2's Achtung Baby - the first part of which is wonderful...the last third - meh...

Kentucky Mandolin by Yonder Mountain String Band

Entertaining instrumental from one of the best bluegrass/jam bands playing today...if they'd start playing smoke-free venues (or at least ones with some ventelation), I'd be seeing them more often and enjoying their amazing live shows again

One by U2 with Brian Eno and Pavorati

From the bootleg Duets, this live track brings out more of the feeling than the album version did

Stay (Faraway, So Close!) by U2

Another from an unofficial U2 release - this from Jesus was a Cool Guy...the sounds's not great, so I'd stick with the album version this time

The Shining by Badly Drawn Boy

Excellent, dragging melody played on chello and french horn (I think) bringing in a wonderfully slow song that's in high rotation...love lost, one of the finest realms for any artist to plumb

A Man in Need by Richard Thompson

Not the finest live version he's done - I think I prefer his solo lives to his band concerts - Thompson here goes back into the catalog for a song that he did better with his wife...her voice is missed on this one

Colours by Donovan

Sap...pure, simple sap...pretty sap, though...Donovan was a decent artist but certainly not the next Bob Dylan as Dylan pointed out in Don't Look Back...Colours isn't his finest work, but it's good enough to not let him be forgotten

Happy Together by the Turtles

Ah, sunshiny 60's pop...goota love the Southern Cal music of this era...the Mamas, the Papas, the Airplane, the Dead...Happy Together sums the whole thing up for me...a lovely song

America's museum...

The Smithsonian is an amazing museum, and it's mine....well, it's ours.

It's a phenomenal collection of the most treasured artifacts - cultural and historical - and every American should take a tour of its dozen branches around Washington, DC. But if you can't, you might want to check out some of its travelling exhibits if they come anywhere near you.

Or if you don't have a chance to do that, at least check out Dan Barone's article over at ESPN's Page 2 as he gets to go into the vaults of the Smithsonian to check out some of the best sports artifacts found there.

MASSIVE attack...

Not the band, c'mon...

This is the Math And Science Song Information, Viewable Everywhere. It's a resource for science music of all levels - elementary through college science - letting you search by topic or artist or album or song title. That's not the coolest part, however. The coolest part is MASSIVE Radio, a streaming radio station of science music.

You really have no idea how excited this whole thing makes me...it's kind of sad...

A bit of modern archeology...

Oh, good stuff. It appears that the British National Archives has made its public service films available online. I've linked to the page listing the films from 1945-1951, a time ripe for modern thinking - well, modern for the time. These are the sorts of films that reminded people how their taxes were being spent, told folks not to put that handkerchief with a sneeze in it into the family laundry so as not to spread germs. Some of them are color cartoons, some are black and white PSAs with quaint Brits discussing the importance of supporting the government and paying taxes. Generally interesting stuff - some of it hilarious. Each film also comes with a short explanation of the climate of the film or reasons why the film was needed.

I especially recommend the Modern Guide to Health.