RedTeamGo! (12-22-2014),Roy Tucker (12-22-2014)
It would strike me as oddly inappropriate for Phish or it's fans to be concerned with mainstream recognition. The origin of the band was about mocking mainstream anything. I'll admit thinking, wouldn't it be great if they were finally recognized? But reading Dom's post reminds me that if you've never crossed the threshold into their musical world, you are likely in a vast majority who still scoffs and laughs about that weird, frivolous band Phish. I don't think it needs to be any other way.
2015 Rotation: Under Construction
RedTeamGo! (12-22-2014)
There is not one song that Phish has recorded that has any type of influence on this country.
Tea Leaf Green? Really? Galactic? Ohhhh, why didn't you say so lol...
I am smiling as I write this, I do not want to hit someone's favorite band, but you put Phish in the hall of fame and the majority of people will have no idea who they are.
And yes, it matters.
And I could apply this to people who are in there already, I'm sure. "Oh you have no idea how much this artist...." Right, and if nobody has any idea, then how influential could they be?
It doesn't have to be a popularity contest, but it also shouldn't be about bands who received a ton of love from 2 ounces of fans.
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Exactly! You've been to 10 Phish shows. Their entire audience is the same people, traveling from town to town.
My two favorite museums - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Baseball Hall of Fame. Probably because I've spent most of my life wasting vast amount of times on the subjects encased in those shrines.
Where we gonna go?
That's why I'm curious as to what the actual criteria are. Pavement may be in the top 10% of most influential bands of the last 25 years. There is a very high percentage of musicians -- some of them very successful -- that would cite them as an influence; they have arguably changed the face of American music, both directly and indirectly. Yet most of America could never name a Pavement song.
For that reason, I don't think they deserve to be in. But conversely, I don't think someone who has been enormously popular but brings absolutely nothing new to music and whose influence didn't clearly produce anything new (yeah, I'm looking at you, John Mayer) deserves to be in.
So I guess it is a combination of musical impact AND widespread popularity. The question is how much or how little you are allowed to inhabit either of those categories. A great deal of that is indeed helped by the filter of time. I don't think there's a chance in hell the Velvet Underground would have made the HOF if it existed in the 70s. It took time for the snowball of their influence to be realized. Even their doing something "new" was passed off by a lot of people as artsy fartsy crap at the time, and they were and still are not widely known. But few who know music even remotely would argue their choice now.
You know who I think is a clear HOF band, who hasn't come up? Wilco. This is a band that transcended genres, was just innovative enough, has produced a consistently good catalogue over a long period of time, slowly built a large and solid if not massive fanbase, and turned the music industry on its head. They did everything just enough for the HOF. That to me is a very obvious example, much more clear-cut than a lot of others people have discussed here, yet I know some would be all WHO'S WILCO WTF. Which is why the criteria are important.
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect.
*BaseClogger* (12-23-2014)
An addendum to my last point about Wilco: I bet that the role an artist/band inhabits in the history of the music *industry* does play a role, even subconsciously. And as the music industry continues to shift, I bet it will increasingly so.
Led Zeppelin, Wilco, Radiohead -- these are all bands that played a major role in the way music is distributed, in the very way it reaches the public's ears. It may not be something we think about a lot, but the music industry sure does. Obviously it's not enough in itself for a band to be included, but I think it could push a cusp band over the edge (and if a band was able to have the clout to have that kind of impact, then chances are it stood a good chance anyway).
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect.
*BaseClogger* (12-23-2014)
Anyone who can't name one song by the Beatles has no business having an opinion on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Seriously, I'm not going to ignore people in third-world countries who have, like, no access to music, but by and large you would be hard-pressed to find someone who really doesn't recognize a single Beatles song. Yesterday? Here Comes the Sun? Hey Jude? Penny Lane? Something? Let It Be? I Wanna Hold Your Hand? These songs are part of the fabric of society. If we are actually having a conversation comparing in any sense the widespread knowledge of The Beatles to Tea Leaf Green, I need the last 10 years I've spent on this message board back.
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect.
redsfandan (12-26-2014),Revering4Blue (12-23-2014),westofyou (12-22-2014)
What wouldn't be here if Pavement never existed?
I say that just because I think "influential" is a word that people give to bands they like oftentimes when that band isn't really that well known or popular.
Nirvana was influential. The Beatles. The Stones.
I just don't see Pavement influencing anything big in music. I think they have a small intense fanbase that makes them ten feet tall.
Last edited by Dom Heffner; 12-22-2014 at 06:59 PM.
Pavement is to the scene 20 years ago what VU was to the scene (with a little MC5) was to the scene in 1970
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/musi...pavement-indie
There's an inherent problem with writing about Pavement: People tend to know nothing or everything about them. To most of the populace, they were a band with a funny name, one minor MTV hit (1994's "Cut Your Hair"), and a lot of abstract credibility among people who get mad at the radio. But to the kind of hyperintellectual, underemployed people who did not find it strange to buy concert tickets a year in advance—and who will buy the band's upcoming greatest-hits release even if they already have all the tracks—Pavement are the apotheosis of indie aesthetics, the "finest rockband of the '90s," according to former Village Voice critic Robert Christgau. They are remembered as the musical center of the lo-fi era, a designation that's spiritually true but technically wrong.¹ Over the span of five albums and nine EPs, Pavement became a decade-defining band, widely regarded as essential and game changing (at least among those who cared
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