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Abstract
ol.) Those things aren’t surprising for a group that, back in the day, played Sun City in defiance of the U.N. boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Let me explain this to people too young to know about it: In the early ’80s the U.N., in conjunction with civil-rights groups around the world, declared a cultural boycott of the fascistic and racist white government in South Africa, which had architected a system that relegated the black majority to second-class citizenship, and wasn’t nice about it either. Sun City was a casino in Bophuthatswana, one of the blacks-only enclaves the apartheid government had set up to strip black citizens of their rights; Queen played there despite the boycott and was duly and justifiably blacklisted by the U.N. “We enjoy going to new places,” said Deacon.</p></blockquote><blockquote id="62a9"><p>The band is being docked 30 notches, however, because of this: After the band’s closeted lead singer, Freddie Mercury, died of AIDS, the entire rock universe held a televised tribute show, broadcast on MTV, during which mentions of homosexuality and AIDS were kept closely under wraps. The band (and everyone else at the show) let a new generation of vulnerable kids — and thousands of the unloved, dying alone on the streets — know that, yes, they should be ashamed of who they are.</p></blockquote><blockquote id="56b3"><p>When this story was originally published, a lot of people said I was being too harsh on Queen and MTV; given the tenor of the times in the early 1990s, I was reminded, AIDS and homosexuality were sensitive subjects. Here’s the thing: Being in a rock band is fun. As I said above, there’s oodles of sex, money, and privilege that most of us don’t know about. The only downside is that if your lead singer happens to be gay and dies as part of an epidemic that is scourging a group that was already dealing with centuries of persecution, you should stand up and talk about it to make life a little bit better for the people who aren’t rock stars forced to spend their last days covered with lesions, wasting away to nothing, and shunned by their families and society generally. Thirty years earlier, the Lovin’ Spoonful, in one of the best songs about rock and roll, captured it this way: “Believe in the magic that can set you free.” By that wholly credible standard, Queen aren’t rock and roll at all and don’t belong in the hall of fame.</p></blockquote><p id="405e">Ah man, what was the movie from Universe Deimos Agent 77 had us watch that one time, oh yeah <b><i>FAST!</i></b></p><figure id="002b"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*Jg9XPRt4BjRWNQZ3cy-y8w.png"><figcaption>Scene From Movie FAST!: I hate moralists Jack, they always have some comment on how someone just doesn’t live up to a moral standard that they probably don’t live up to themselves</figcaption></figure><p id="1147">Yeah that’s right you whimsical madman, I hate fucking moralists too!</p><p id="f3a5">And this isn’t even moralizing about the rapists, murderers, assaulters of women, and the guy who videotaped women going to the toilet in his restaurant that can be found in the rest of the list and that don’t rate the big moral lecture and getting downgraded — this is evidently just about some guys who like money so much that they do dumb and not admirable things to get it.</p>
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</figure></iframe></div></div></figure><p id="5378">Yeah Frito, everybody does.</p><p id="8adc">Do I agree it was bad to play Sun City, yeah, do I think they were some big immoral douchebags for doing it? No, just normal immoral douchebags.</p><p id="3598">People in our present day love going to Dubai on vacation, it is sooo coool to go to Dubai, people go to Qatar, and the World Championship in football (soccer to Americans) is being held there this year. Two places built up with slave labor where the slaves are still probably alive and slaving away.</p><p id="ee47">I bet if someone tells Wyman hey I’m going to Dubai he wishes them a good trip and feels a twinge of envy.</p><p id="97d7">Am I being a moralizer here myself? Not really, I don’t want to go to Dubai and part of it is the moral failings implied but even more for me is <b>that I don’t want to go to Dubai.</b> I recognize that I am not a particularly moral person, if for example I was offered a trip to Belize I would take it — despite the appalling<a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/belize/"> human rights record</a>. All I ask from the moralizers is — if you are not a paragon yourself please stop your whining. Obviously this falls into some errors associated with <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-comic-misanthrope-in-a-moral-age-60ddd0f8bf28">misanthropy</a>, but that’s the way that particular cookie crumbles; and that cookie crumbles really quick when discussing art and criticism.</p><p id="29a6">If you are docking someone points for moral worth in the context of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you’re wrong — unless you can show instances of impressionable teenage rockers looking at them and going “I will not model myself on Queen, because of <b><i>MORALITY!!</i></b>” And just to repeat again, Chuck Berry was the guy he put at number 1, and Chuck Berry videotaped women in the toilets of his restaurant because he evidently suffered from coprophilia, so Coprophilia (love of feces) is ok and Chrometophile (love of money) is bad.</p><p id="0ba4">So — in conclusion<b> they don’t get docked 30 points for morality</b>!</p><p id="095b">To get back to the aesthetic rules we discussed before on knowing what is to your taste and not etc. etc. There was no mention of morality there — aside from that I also think there is some clear indication that Queen is not to Mr. Wyman’s taste and he isn’t able to realize “I dislike this group so much I cannot evaluate them fairly”. Which is a real downside in someone supposed to be a critic.</p><p id="bae1">And here’s where we can see Wyman being quite a sneaky little jerk, which is something of a plus in a critic and journalist at most times. but here just seems small. When he puts Queen at 237 and then says they were docked 30 points, that means without docking for 30 points it puts them at #207, that’s still <b>45 places</b> after the act from which he said from this point on we’re dealing with acts that should have been left out in favor of other acts. And who was at #142? Gene Vincent — whose notable song is generally considered to be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDU9FP5_B2M">Be-Bop-a-lula</a> although personally I prefer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CTso1tx4Bs">Race with the Devil</a>. Personally I do not think Gene Vincent can be said to outrank Queen, even in the influence department, I say even because generally artists who come first have greater influence by having come first but I don’t think any later act took anything from Gene Vincent that they didn’t take from any of his higher ranked contemporaries.</p><h2 id="930c">Why Critics dislike Queen</h2><p id="508a">Queen’s main problem as a band was either that they were fantastic or they sort of sucked and were cheesy jokes. The songs in which they were fantastic were sort of cheesy jokes that transcended their cheesiness and jocularity by the force of the sincerity with which they attacked the ridiculous concept — remember the earlier article “<a href="https://readmedium.com/sincerity-beats-absurdity-to-death-595e8b50dfb6">Sincerity Beats Absurdity to Death</a>”</p><p id="ff9c">It is the absurdity of Queen that was the cause of almost every review of their albums and songs when they were a going concern rating them on the left hand side of the third star out of five. Critics have an over-tendency to seriousness that blinds them to a lot of value.</p><p id="d29a">There are two Big Dumb Action Movie Rock and Roll acts in the list — Van Halen and Queen. Van Halen has a really cool chase scene somewhere in the middle and some tight fight choreography, but Queen has the crazy plot about smuggling diamonds inside coked up chimpanzees, and a fight scene on the side of a volcano that erupted in the middle of London, and probably an introspective moment when Freddie Mercury communicates with the spirit of his Sensei before pulverizing the bad guy with a sonic blast from his mouth. Queen, as Wyman notes, is a little too much.</p><p id="0aea">Being too much sounds like a bad thing. It’s a common saying that the sign of a great painter is that they add to the painting until there is nothing more to add, that the great artists stop before they add too much. Which is true, but in this case adding too much means adding things that obscure rather than clarify the vision — Queen piled it on but managed to remain extremely clear, at least in their best songs.</p><p id="6e5b">The sniff of too much Wyman imagines for Queen seems more like the too much of a prude than anything else, and really he imagines it coming from Leni Riefenstahl which in context would mean it was too much fascist when we all know she would have complained too much gay. And just to note for all his moral pretensions it seems contemptible to imply<i> too much fascist </i>of a gay man. I’m not saying that to chastise as I don’t care about morality, just to note that perhaps Wyman should stop whipping that moral high horse quite so much, it’s bordering on animal cruelty.</p><h2 id="c455">But the Queen action movie sounds like crap!</h2><p id="9741">No it doesn’t — it sounds like a super-hero movie. Which until Iron Man in 2008 nobody had really figured out how to do and have it be NOT crap. News for you all — Queen figured out how to do it in the 70s, only with music, and that’s really why they deserve to be in the Hall (argument by quip is the best form of critical argument).</p><p id="7f3d">In fact Queen did the soundtrack to Flash Gordon, a crappy action Superhero movie, and as usual half of their songs were not that great. But I think the title song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmrHTdXgK4">Flash</a> is itself pretty great. Aside from the movie being made before people (working at Marvel at least) knew how to make Super-hero movies I would ask — who among the Hall of Fame could make a credible Superhero soundtrack like Queen? These are the Hall of Fame members I would put out there to make the Flash Soundtrack</p><ol><li>Queen</li><li>Bowie</li><li>Prince</li><li>Van Halen</li></ol><p id="076f">Prince is the one that seems like he could come closest to making Queen’s version, because he could have sincerely believed in the ridiculous stuff he was singing. I would really like to hear Bowie’s version. It would be more ironic and cold, and probably most of the songs would be great. Bowie would have done a great Ming the Merciless theme.</p><h2 id="5921">Enough with the word salad — how do they rank?!?</h2><p id="98d4">So where should Queen be in the rankings? I am actually quite willing to put Queen in place of Vincent, although my feeling is that is probably especially low, I might be persuaded on the basis of awesome and absurd monster hits and the influence they have had to put them at 99 or 100.</p><p id="b69c">Let’s see the area around there:</p><p id="fb28">97. AC/DC</p><p id="fa64">98. The Cars</p><p id="5733">99. The Police</p><p id="635c">100. Carl Perkins</p><p id="84e3">Oh yeah, now I see it. <b><i>Queen definitely shares the 97 spot with AC/DC</i></b>, who are actually also a big dumb action movie so I was wrong when I said there were only two, but AC/DC has a little bit more sleaze and R rated nudity, and is closer to hyper-violent crime story thriller territory than the other two.</p><p id="9d39"><b>IG Agent 19</b>: Wait, is AC/DC definitely more sleazy than Queen?</p><p id="ebff"><b>IG Agent 9</b>: Yes, Queen’s sleaziness is at its heart romantic, AC/DC doesn’t have a romantic bone in its body — or at least not since Bon Scott died (who probably had a small romantic finger bone or something)</p><p id="d0d5">Closing question for this section: <i>Could AC/DC have done Flash?</i> <b>Don’t make me laugh!!</b></p><p id="2780">Closing statement — we have now placed Queen at a shared place with AC/DC, let the whining commence!</p><h1 id="708a">On Sharing a Spot</h1><p id="8c7f">Hey remember the article<a href="https://readmedium.com/sincerity-beats-absurdity-to-death-595e8b50dfb6"> Sincerity Beats Absurdity To Death!</a> Well, you should probably go read it because I’m gonna keep linking it until someone does. Anyway here is a quote from the article:</p><blockquote id="8178"><p>as I like to say once you get to the top there is no greatest, there are a number of greats up there orbiting each other, individual but informing each other through that individuality.</p></blockquote><p id="59a1">Now I really mean that, and I think it is an essential quality of a critic to realize that at some poin
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t our human tendency to rank fails, is not able to capture every possible condition or requirement. If you ask me my 10 favorite songs at any point there will be variance, even though there is some underlying unity.</p><p id="5325">And if it is true that there is no absolute top it implies that there is no absolute middle or bottom, there are works or artists that hover at those positions as well.</p><p id="2b61">So let’s talk about the bottom spot on the list.</p><h2 id="8d50">240. Stevie Nicks (2019)</h2><blockquote id="2b0b"><p>Fleetwood Mac was inducted way back in 1998, so Nicks was already in the hall, which she deserved to be. Her solo career, which is what this induction is supposed to honor, includes not much else beyond one-and-a-half glossy hits (“Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back”) and a dulcet duet with Don Henley. You can even throw in the pre–Fleetwood Mac <i>Buckingham Nicks</i> album, which I still have on LP (it was never released on CD), to which she contributes a few markedly awesome songs, like “Long Distance Winner.” But there’s nothing remotely in Nicks’s solo career that warrants induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. Nicks has always been close to hall insider Jimmy Iovine, which undoubtedly helped her become the first female two-time inductee, even though at the time there were several other female artists in the hall who had had much more consequential and venturesome solo careers than Nicks, most notably Tina Turner (who is finally being inducted as a solo act in 2022) and Diana Ross. I had originally had Nicks’ position higher in the list, but upon consideration it seems pretty objectively obvious to me that her oeuvre (again, her non–Fleetwood Mac solo work only) is the most inconsequential of all the acts thus far inducted.</p></blockquote><p id="505a">First off, in his various actual point of this listicle analysis of how the Hall votes etc. Wyman never really pointed out the obvious fact that induction of an individual who was also inducted as part of a group really isn’t just about the individual by themselves, even if it should be.</p><p id="00bf">Seocndly Wyman mentions her dulcet duet with Henley, <b>WTF</b>, but not her duet with Tom Petty which was one of the songs she played at her induction, with Harry Styles, from the same album where she had Edge of Seventeen as a hit.</p>
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</figure></iframe></div></div></figure><p id="d9f8">I mention this song for a couple reasons</p><ol><li>The song peaked at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Draggin%27_My_Heart_Around"><b>№3 on the American Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks</b>,</a> (Nicks’s biggest solo hit and the Heartbreakers biggest hit as well). Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers are at position #124</li><li>As you can see above she did the duet with Harry Styles of this song for her induction, here’s an article about them <a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-styles-and-stevie-nicks-friendship-timeline">https://www.insider.com/harry-styles-and-stevie-nicks-friendship-timeline</a> — Now it seems to me that Styles is someone that was inspired by Nicks, and obviously not just in her Fleetwood Mac time either. I mean that is an important person to have inspired in the current culture it seems to me.</li></ol><p id="5c7b">Also when Wyman says “But there’s nothing remotely in Nicks’s solo career that warrants induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist.” I’m just going to put it out there that in my experience there was a certain type of introspective, poetic and musically inclined girl in the 80s and 90s who would probably like to kick Mr. Wyman’s balls up about his throat for that statement. I mean just really, I can think of them now and get sort of misty-eyed and nostalgic for friends I used to have and their Stevie Nicks love. And I don’t actually like Nicks that much either, just I think her solo career ranks higher than last (even if we don’t count Fleetwood Mac, which I’m absolutely sure most people do no matter what the rules say)</p><p id="21fd">She was an influence on the kinds of girls that probably went on to take part in Lillith Fair (Nicks did a duet there with Sheryl Crow for the final Lillith fair concert), Nicks is reputedly also a large influence on Florence Welch, of Florence + The Machine. Maybe that influence came from Fleetwood Mac, but I think it mainly came from her video imagery as a solo star, because that was a generation very much driven and inspired by videos.</p><p id="048e">But aside from all that, there’s another reason that she cannot be at the last place, and Wyman articulates it best:</p><h2 id="023d">238. Bon Jovi — David Bryan, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Alec John Such, Hugh McDonald, and Tico Torres (2018)</h2><blockquote id="70f0"><p>The guys in Bon Jovi aren’t in a rock band. Bon Jovi are the guys in the <i>movie</i> about the rock band. All the members are good at their job; but however effectively they have postured toothless outlawry (“Wanted Dead or Alive,” as if), pouty naughtiness, and dangerous hairstyles, they have produced only one passable chorus in a 30-year-plus history, and <i>that’s with songwriting help from Desmond Child</i>. (If you like “Living on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name,” or “Bad Medicine,” you like Child, not Bon Jovi. As with Aerosmith, Child should be being inducted into the hall with the band.) The outside songwriting help frees up the band to concentrate on things like hairdos, and marketing. Leader Jon Bon Jovi spent a decade trying to make himself a film star; the irony is that he was much better acting in the part he already had. Of late he’s been testing the waters in Nashville, following in the footsteps of Darius Rucker. In ten years he’s going to be purveying annuities on Fox News commercials. “Hi — I’m Jon Bon Jovi. And I want to tell you about an exciting new opportunity ….”</p></blockquote><blockquote id="014a"><p>Bon Jovi was never a favorite of <i>Rolling Stone–</i>style critics; in <i>Sticky Fingers</i>, Hagan writes:</p></blockquote><p id="25f9" type="7">[Wenner] especially disliked Jon Bon Jovi, who Wenner said campaigned unsuccessfully to get himself inducted into the hall of fame by enlisting billionaire investor Ron Perelman for muscle. “I don’t think he’s that important,” said Wenner. “What does Bon Jovi mean in the history of music? Nothing.”</p><blockquote id="6501"><p>Who can disagree with that? When I asked Wenner about those words, he made an interesting point: “I don’t think Bon Jovi is an unimportant band. It’s not my taste, I don’t think they are very influential or highly original, which are my criteria for the hall of fame, but I think over the years now, the generations are changing, and commercial success seems to be a more relevant element to some people.” It’s plain now that Bon Jovi’s 2018 induction, however comical it seemed at the time, was a watershed moment in the hall’s history, when it finally broke free of its creators’ prejudices, but also their protection, too. Foreigner, Huey Lewis & the News, Nickelback, Train, Matchbox 20, Mumford & Sons… — each generation’s shitty band will eventually get in. Hence Def Leppard a few years later.</p></blockquote><p id="d54a">from any reasonable critical standpoint Stevie Nicks cannot be lower than Bon Jovi, if it says that Nicks produced only 1 and a half sultry hits that is still better quality than Bon Jovi evidently produced, the whole entry about Bon Jovi is just that they produced a bunch of crap, someone who produces just 1 good piece of art beats out someone who produces all crap, even if it was two decades of crap. <b>Be sensible Wyman!</b></p><p id="c39e">But beside all that let’s just repeat — she had <b>Stop draggin my heart around</b>, the top selling hit of the band Wyman put at 124!!</p><p id="ca8e">Most of the things that Wyman is wrong about on the listicle can be assumed to be lapses in taste or poor judgement, but this placing Stevie Nicks last seems just laughably to be an error, like a tired man unable to remember his name when checking into a hotel, something banal, incorrect, and too boring to be truly absurd or pathetic.</p><p id="fbf4">If I were to place her, and ignore her Fleetwood Mac contributions (which supposedly we should even though, as I have said, this is not what really happens) then I guess I would move her to 231, the spot currently held by Kiss, a band I think she has some rights to push down (but really pretty much everyone has the rights to push Kiss down). This also moves down three bands that I said I could not fairly judge, but hey, Wyman already put them pretty low.</p><p id="8004">I think however if we could fully gauge her influence on those 80s and 90s girls we might move her up another 20–30 spots above #231.</p><h1 id="6f44">WHOA, this article is getting long</h1><p id="ff1f">There are a lot of opinions in Wyman’s article to cover, most of them are matters of personal opinion whereas some of them are wrong, but this is the internet and I’m not sure going on too much longer about this matter here will be worthwhile, especially as we have the third part of this series where we show some better ways to rank large lists of artists like this.</p><p id="f578">That said I will make a couple of parting assessments.</p><p id="7e97">A lot of the early rockers should be moved a lot lower, because i don’t think they actually really influenced anyone all that much. For example Bobby Darin, Del Shannon etc. should with Gene Vincent be placed a lot lower on the list. I think the main influences on the generation that came after were Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Fats Domino, Jackie Wilson, and the Everly Brothers. All the rest, including Ricky Nelson, Carl Perkins, and maybe even Eddie Cochran were not that influential in themselves, the next generation were taught from the main influencers, and the second rank just sort of underlined some of the lessons. There is undoubtedly some racial difference in how important some acts were, I doubt many Black artists found the Everly Brothers an influence. This only applies to the rockers of course, a lot of the blues guys were very influential on the British Groups, especially the Stones who went and sought them out.</p><p id="cf28">So that said — which will make a nice entry to the next article — we will exit stage left here. The next article will show a better way to order and rank large lists of artists, after that we might make another article correcting some of the more egregious critical errors of Wyman’s list.</p><p id="4965">This article was written by IG Agents 19 and 9.</p><p id="5aa5">Other articles in this series are</p><div id="005a" class="link-block">
<a href="https://readmedium.com/reinventing-the-music-listicle-part-i-73007e21cbec">
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<h2>Reinventing the Music Listicle — Part I</h2>
<div><h3>Everybody hates listicles. Who’s everybody you say — well, in descending order:</h3></div>
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<h2>Reinventing the Music Listicle —part 3 — The Top 15</h2>
<div><h3>We’ve written before regarding why Bill Wyman (author, not ex-Rolling Stone) is wrong, wrong, wrong in his listicle All…</h3></div>
<div><p>medium.com</p></div>
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</div><p id="874f">Please refer to Illuminati Ganga Music Resources for more fine articles relevant to this one</p><div id="638f" class="link-block">
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<h2>Music Resources from Illuminati Ganga</h2>
<div><h3>As you know Illuminati Ganga periodically writes small articles regarding important or interesting music, criticism…</h3></div>
<div><p>medium.com</p></div>
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