The Hall of Fame picks this year’s rock and roll stars

Its Oasis ‘snub’ unlikely to cause the over-exposed Gallagher brothers much concern

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland

Oasis’ reunion tour is months away from its first date in Cardiff on 4 July, but the slavish coverage keeps kicking up a gear.

I forget what a genuine cultural phenomenon they are here in the UK, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, and then Liam will generate some digital column inches just by blowing his nose on social media.

As a case in point, over the last four days the NME’s found room for five stories about the Britpop band – they filmed something in a pub, the Gallagher brothers were spotted together, and so on. They’ve even been the subject of that modern day journalistic standby, ‘fans react to…’ – a particularly lazy use of social media.

The thing the fans were reacting to/posting about on social media? The Manchester band’s omission from this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee list.

The BBC’s headline writers put a particular spin on it with ‘Rock & Roll Hall of Fame picks Outkast but not Oasis’. I can certainly appreciate the alliteration, but suspect Noel Gallagher, who’s spent a fair bit of time since 2008 walking-back his antipathy for hip-hop at Glastonbury, might secretly appreciate the set-up against the ATLiens.

So, no Oasis, who like fellow Mancunians Joy Division/New Order (apparently a single entity now) were nominated only to fail to get enough votes from the great and the good of the music world.

The Hall of Fame did find room for The White Stripes, the first of what the NME labelled in 2003 the "new garage rock revolution", to join its hallowed ranks. In that they beat out The Strokes, who one imagines could be the next garage rock revolutionaries to make the grade once the requisite 25 years have passed since their first release. Odds are unfortunately probably somewhat longer on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, TV On The Radio or LCD Soundsystem being shortlisted once their own time has been served.

The nebulous alt rock descriptor that makes up roughly one third of this newsletter’s focus was also represented by the Hall of Fame inclusion of Soundgarden, who will join Nirvana and Pearl Jam to represent the Seattle generation, leaving just Alice in Chains as the last of the grunge heavy hitters yet to make an appearance at the Hall.

You can read more about all this year’s inductees here. The full list looks like:

Performers

Bad Company

Chubby Checker

Joe Cocker

Cyndi Lauper

Outkast

Soundgarden

The White Stripes

Musical influence award

Salt-N-Pepa

Warren Zevon

Musical excellence award

Thom Bell

Nicky Hopkins

Carol Kaye

Ahmet Ertegun award

Lenny Waronker

And speaking of rampant commercialism, I recently pushed the button on offering paid-for subscriptions to Fire Red Sky. Thank you to everyone’s that’s signed up already it’s hugely appreciated and I’m looking forward to sending you exclusive new articles and playlists.

For existing free subscribers there won’t be too many changes – assuming I’ve pressed the right buttons. However, the full article archive has gone behind Substack’s wall of exclusivity, including my articles on Hüsker Dü (here and here), Sonic Youth, Steve Albini, Green Day and Dinosaur Jr.