Good point, Allan, on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, it's a bogus idea to begin with, of course. Rock and roll should resist that kind of enshrinement. But since it's there, I mean, c'mon, how can Skynyrd not be in it? I think a lot of the Johnson City bands were better than or at least as good as a lot of the stuff that might be enshrined there. But part of a hall of fame is that it's a hall of FAME, not necessarily a hall of GREATNESS. Let's think of Emily Dickinson, who published only 6 or 7 poems in her life. Right after she died, no one would've had any reason to put her in any poetry hall of fame--because she wasn't famous. But now she is, and no one would keep her out of a poetry hall of fame, were one ever to be built.

Halls of fame are for dead people and for people who are no longer really relevant but still alive. That, no offense, is the whole purpose of the Blog, as I see it: to keep alive in our memories something that's basically dead. Something is memorialized. Of course, it also changes in the process of being memorialized. But that's ok, too. We all know that the historical markers at battlefields don't really tell the TRUTH. Rock and roll itself is more or less dead. That's why we have movies like Almost Famous and so forth that try to memorialize some little aspect of something that was unusual and great and worth remember. Sure, the music industry has regulated all the rock out of rock. There's no more renegade computer software developers, either. And the dot com revolution is over. And the hippie movement is over. And the civil rights push is dead. But the successors of all of those owe a great debt to the true originators. Thus, I went to see a Zeppelin cover act the other night that sounded so much like Zep that I'm sure they played it live better than Zep themselves ever did. And some people join the Society For Creative Anachronisms. And no matter how much you know it's gonna suck, you know you're gonna fork over 8 bucks for the next episode in the Star Wars series.

And the Johnson City music scene we all remember so fondly is over, too, even though music in this town still continues. But notice what people have been doing lately here? They've been basically coming up with a Hall of Fame, haven't they? All those lists of bands there were from here and played here at one time or another--what're those if not our own little Hall of Fame? If we were all still full of "piss and vinegar" (the old saying) as we were back then, we'd see no need for the Blog history. But now we do. I'm sure if any of us at age 19 or 20 could have time travelled and seen the Blog, we would say this whole thing was kinda silly.

But we don't say that now. So, yes, the RNR Hall of Fame is silly from the perspective of a real rock and roller. But that's not who it's for.

Also, no offense taken, but of course I knew the capital of Alabama. That was rhetorical.

Gosh, I'm one wordy guy. Forgive, fellow bloggers, and I promise to keep my mouth shut for a month now.

--Plez