I just had a long conversation with someone who didn’t remember he’d met me.

I’m not good with names, but I’m great with faces. I remember conversations. And it’s always so creepy, especially with girls…do I let on that we have history or do I just play…dumb.

Happens all the time. I run into an old schoolmate, someone I shared dinner with, and they’ve got no idea what transpired.

I used to explain the connection. But that never worked, it never brought us closer together. I told the story, they’d nod their head, and then we’d be further apart than before.

And after tonight’s encounter a song started to go through my brain, the Records’ “I Don’t Remember Your Name.”

There I was in the middle of a crowd
At a party I didn’t want to go to

This actually happened. In the heart of the San Fernando Valley. It was the night I met my ex-wife. We’d been at a party at the house of Martha Davis of the Motels, and we stopped by at this other party to see our friend Jeff who never arrived. And when I whipped up all my gumption to speak with a woman who instantly rejected me, the Searchers’ version of “Hearts In Her Eyes” played on the stereo.

The Searchers never could come back. Even though the album got a good review.

But the original, on the Records’ “Crashes”…I played that incessantly in the interim between breaking up with my law school girlfriend and cohabiting with the woman who ultimately became my wife.

This was a different era. There was no YouTube, you had to buy it to hear it. And when I found the well-reviewed “Crashes” in the promo bin of my favorite store in Westwood, I bought it, and fell in love with it.

“Hearts In Her Eyes” was the opener. But the follow-up, “Girl In Golden Disc” was better.

Save your heart
All for the girl in the golden disc

That’s what all we music nerds have in common, unrequited love. We see a girl and we become fixated. It happens just that fast. They become ours. And they don’t even know it.

And then there was “Hearts Will Be Broken”:

I’m in no doubt
From your plans I’ve been excluded

Does this still happen anymore? In this hyper-connected world where every kid in the class is invited to the birthday party? Some of us are born to be included, others fear being left out. Gets to the point where we believe we’re behind a glass wall, wherein we can see them but they can’t see us, we’re observers, we just can’t participate. And no one seems to know but us.

I don’t remember your name
I think it’s best that I level with you
I don’t remember your name
I know the face, won’t you give me a clue
I don’t remember your name
And I’ll opine you don’t remember mine

But we never say this. We just fumble along.

And songs play in our head. Especially ones that radiate intelligence, that only we seem to know.

And we wander the universe looking for people to get the references. And when we find them, they become our best friends. At least it was this way back before everybody was a winner, when records were not merely hits or stiffs, when music was more about sitting alone in your home dreaming as opposed to bumping butts in the club.

Spotify playlist

P.S. You should play these tracks. You’re going to be stunned by the thin vocals. But if you give them a shot, the lyrics and the changes will enrapture you.

P.P.S. The Records actually had a hit. Entitled “Starry Eyes.” A breezy composition that ran up the chart in the pub rock/power pop era of 1978 England.

Who’s got the time?

Beyonce may have delivered a video album that’s got the media and the punters bloviating, but very little of the discussion is about the music, because it’s become secondary to the game.

That’s what music is today. I’m surprised Parker Brothers doesn’t have a label.

Actually, there are multiple games involved.

The game of the executive is to get paid. So when you scratch your head and question short-term thinking, know that you literally have not walked a mile in their shoes. It’s about the contract, not the music. Since most of these companies are owned by the public, not individuals. Come on, who in their right mind would start a record label? Only a delusional young fart, wet behind the ears and too stupid to go to business school. Starting a record label today is akin to going into competition with automakers, in Europe, where sales have tanked.

So the game of the indie label is to bitch.

That’s the story of the year. Not Ylvis’s Fox video or Katy Perry or Lady Gaga, but how Spotify has become the whipping boy. They’re screeching from their smart phones, beginning Kickstarter campaigns, utilizing all the new technology to complain that the old business model wherein you sold ten tracks for more than ten bucks has been eviscerated. I’m actually chuckling as I write this. Yes, you want to go back to the old days when it was expensive to record and concert tickets were five bucks. Good luck with that.

And then there’s the audience. Which is looking for cool. And is overloaded and has no time to waste listening to anything that’s not superior.

Anybody trumpeting the sales of Beyonce’s album has missed the point. The rules have changed. Forever. Now it’s whether someone has LISTENED to your album!

Come on, how many CDs did you buy before Napster that went unplayed except for the hit.

I’ll give you two. I own them. That Alicia Keys debut, with the irresistible “Fallin'”. The rest of that album was garbage, I know, I played it. Ditto on Britney Spears’s debut. Other than “…Baby One More Time” I can’t even name another track. But since those albums sold millions, we were told music was burgeoning, that all was right in the world, even though most of what was sold went unheard.

This isn’t about piracy, this is about a correction.

The bundle’s been broken. People only want what they want. Make ten incredible tracks and they want all of ’em, but if you’ve only got one, that’s all they need.

That’s the game the audience is playing.

And the media is all about the horse race, just like in politics. It doesn’t matter what the music sounds like, just whether the act won, i.e. sold a ton. Actually, the two fields are not that different. You’ve got to be good-looking, with a ton of money and spinmeisters. Yup, the same way you’ve ignored politics is the same way people are ignoring music, because it’s not about music anymore.

Come on. Art is about inspiration. How much inspiration is there in records made by committee? It’s all formula, all the time.

And there are those trumpeting the diversity of hip-hop, and the cred of indie rockers, but they don’t realize that most of us are not paying attention. Because these genres have become caricatures of what they once were.

But you can’t speak this truth in the music business, oh no, because that’s undercutting the game!

Wherein we all make a lot of money, party all night and slap each other on the back. And if you don’t agree, you’re part of the problem.

And the problem, once again, is not piracy, but indifference.

There, I said it. We’ve got a whole system that most people just don’t pay attention to. Music is like curling at the Winter Olympics. People drive by once a year to watch the Grammys, they buy a track or two, but really they’ve got better things to do with their time.

So how do we solve this problem?

1. Admit that everybody can’t be rich and famous. Just because you made it, that doesn’t mean we’re interested.

2. Acknowledge that the audience only cares about great. Microsoft can’t sell Windows phones and we’re telling people Selena Gomez is worth paying attention to. We’re wasting bandwidth, and people only have so much.

3. Forget the trappings. The fashion, the money, the lifestyle, they’re obscuring the essence. The Beatles put out an album with a blank cover, the music spoke for itself, today it’s all about imaging and promotion and the music comes last.

4. Forget about radio. It’s calcified. It’s beholden to advertisers. It doesn’t serve the public. Only Top Forty gets any real traction, and any music in new genres is ignored. Music discovery must move online. The so-called “curation.” Labels don’t want this. They like radio, because they control it, it’s a closed shop. But if you want to gain power in today’s musical world, be the person who tells people what to listen to. And don’t give them tons of choice, because people don’t have tons of time, they just get overwhelmed. Just a few tracks please.

5. Stop bitching about streaming. If you’re fighting piracy and streaming you’re embracing the CD and decrying smartphones. Streaming is the best thing that ever happened to the music business. Because it delivers what the audience wants, everything at its fingertips. If that means some people make less, I want you to bring back record stores, expensive CDs, vinyl… Yup, the old game is through, even if you’re playing your LPs, you’re no different from a Civil War reenactor. Please get your head out of your butt and look forward.

6. Know that trumpeting sales figures and marketing success takes away from the music. Yup, you there at home, please name one track from the new Beyonce album that’s all over the news. But you can name “Royals.”

It’s as if the music business has turned into Procter & Gamble, a marketing machine purveying unexciting wares, only in the case of music, none of it’s necessary.

Yes, that’s the truth. We don’t need music. We need food and water. We like music.

But only the best music.

So the rich will get richer and the poor will bitch.

At least at this point the public is eating the popcorn and rendering an opinion. But if we keep focusing on rote tunes sold by orchestrated campaigns we risk people tuning out.

Yup, the game is better that the music.

You think everybody cares.

But they don’t.

When your arms are empty, got nowhere to go
Come on out and catch a show
There’ll be saints and sinners
You’ll see losers and winners
All kinds of people you might want to know
Once you get it, you can’t forget it
The W.S. Walcott medicine show

That’s the way it used to be. Concerts were not an event, but a show. Sure, you sometimes planned in advance, but other times your phone would ring and you’d hear the question…DO YOU WANNA GO?

And scalpers existed, but you could get a ticket. And if you really cared, you could work your way down front. This was long before the era of luxury boxes and gestapo security.

And hard drives and perfection.

It wasn’t about getting it right, like in the video, there was no dancing involved, the show was always a little bit different, which was one of the reasons you went, to be there the night…

The Band played with a horn section.

Yes, they just released an extended version of the Band’s legendary “Rock Of Ages” shows.

Can’t say that I was ever as enamored as the press, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t own the original double album and know every lick, it’s just that it’s hard to improve on that second album, with “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).”

Oh, that’s on this package too. But the original is so INTIMATE! You think you’re listening to a lone man in a one room shack telling his tale. It’s eerie, and when the album hit the runout groove, the silence was positively creepy.

But the best song on “Rock Of Ages” and this package didn’t appear on any studio album, it’s “Don’t Do It.”

It’s the GROOVE!

You know I tried to do my best
‘Cause I tried to do my best
Don’t do it
Don’t you break my heart

That was the best thing about being at the show, everything else fell away. If your girl had left you, if you didn’t have the cash for next month’s rent, there was a multi-hour respite when all that didn’t matter.

Then there’s Richard Manuel’s vocal on “Across The Great Divide.”

Levon gets all the kudos. Rick Danko has almost been completely forgotten, Richard Manuel has.

That’s the life of a musician. You can put in your thirty years, but you get neither a gold watch nor a pension. You end up just as you started, with your joy and your despair. And when the despair eclipses the joy…

You know rockers die young.

And you can hear all the pain in Richard’s vocal on this live track.

Sure the hits are here. But the Band was never about the hits. Rather, it was… a band.

And that’s what you hear in this package. A rollicking enterprise rolling down the track. Back when we used to want to know everybody at the show, instead of making sure we were separate from those less wealthy, privileged and connected.

In days of yore, this new package would go unheard. But now, with Spotify, you can check the whole thing out!

(And don’t argue with me about payments, if no one buys something, you don’t make any money, and music is best when it’s heard…LISTEN!)

Rhinofy-Live At The Academy Of Music 1971

Hallelujah, they finally get it right.

I’m not saying Yes doesn’t belong inside, and Deep Purple for the riff to “Smoke On The Water” alone, but it’s been years since there was no controversy and everyone agreed.

Except for maybe Kiss.

But the point is there’s no hip-hop, no jazz, no Madonna, no questionables like Patti Smith, everyone is deserving and it’s about time.

NIRVANA

No questions asked. An automatic.

Let this be a lesson to the industry, that we should focus on individuals as opposed to money and commitments. If so, Kurt Cobain would be alive today.

Just try going on the road. Playing to an adoring throng and then getting in the bus with the same dudes you’ve known since high school, trying to come down to do it all over again. It takes drugs. And if you’re doing drugs it’s just a matter of time until you die.

Kurt was pushed too hard. And felt so alone. That’s the conundrum of stardom, oftentimes you’re the only one left inside, the world spins around you and you’re frequently oblivious.

I know nothing about his death you don’t, but I will say this guy had an ability to fuse melody and punk in a way that the public just could not resist. Add in the ability to emote with his voice and you have possibly the last rock superstar.

Not that Krist and Dave didn’t help. But there are only a few true superstars, and Kurt Cobain was one of them.

Come as you are. Please. Don’t dress up. Don’t make a deal with a fashion house. Don’t do endorsements. Keep it punk.

That’s why we believed in Nirvana. Because Kurt believed in rock and roll. Too bad he won’t be at the induction ceremony.

CAT STEVENS

And where do the children play?

He wrote “The First Cut Is The Deepest” before anybody knew who he was.

Ditto “Trouble,” featured in the classic “Harold and Maude.”

And if you didn’t play “Tea For The Tillerman” incessantly, you weren’t alive. Back when rock was a state of mind more than a sound. Yes, Cat Stevens was truly rock and roll.

As for becoming a Muslim… Story is he committed himself to God after nearly drowning. Near-death experiences will change you. And at least he’s still alive.

The albums got worse as time went on. But there were so many hits, such a sound, that this guy would be successful in any era.

He might not have found that “Hard Headed Woman,” but we were enraptured by his search.

The hit was “Wild World,” but “Sad Lisa” was so seventies, so great, when you didn’t have to boast and play to the last row, but could be intimate, to the point where we were all leaning in.

But my favorite track on “Tea For The Tillerman” is the closer, the title cut, only a bit longer than a minute, you had no choice but to drop the needle on the LP and listen to it again.

PETER GABRIEL

The road less taken.

He quit Genesis just when the band was getting traction.

And the third solo album is the best, with “Biko,” but he’s never done anything you can shrug your shoulders at and say NEXT!

Too much talent, it’s too bad he’s not still making new, original music. But the problem is the audience is not ready for it. But Gabriel has got a hard core of fans possibly exceeding those of any other act on this list, in intensity if not numbers. Proving you can shoot high instead of dumbing it down.

Wanna tip? Listen to “Secret World Live,” one of the top ten live albums ever, one which no one seems to know about. Especially the extended versions of “Secret World” and “In Your Eyes.”

But it all comes down to “Solsbury Hill.”

I was feeling part of the scenery

Alienation. It’s the essence of rock and roll. If these people could fit in, play on the football team, date a cheerleader, we’d never have this exquisite greatness.

I walked right out of the machinery

That’s what we all did. We weren’t best friends with our parents, they were clueless, we were forging our own path.

My heart going boom, boom, boom

Do you feel alive? Too many are somnambulant. But the best music wakes us up.

Hey,’ he said ‘Grab your things
I’ve come to take you home’

Here we go! Pack up your old kit bag. We’re gonna go down the rabbit hole of rock and roll. To the Fillmore, to Woodstock, to the arena, to the stadium, not every once in a while, but all the time, because rock and roll was the most important thing in our lives, superior to our automobiles, more important than technology.

We’re going home.

Just put on the record and…LISTEN!

LINDA RONSTADT

Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream

The waiting truly is the hardest part. The fact that Linda Ronstadt wasn’t inducted upon initial eligibility is a travesty. That she had to get sick for these moribund men to vote her in… These same men who jerked off to her, who didn’t even need a picture, who could just close their eyes, because she was just that ubiquitous, everyone knew the cute style icon the men wanted to impress and the girls wanted to befriend. Linda Ronstadt was the seventies’ biggest female rock star. Hell, only Zeppelin and the Eagles were in her league. But men hate letting the women inside. Then again, Linda never begged. She snorted cocaine and screwed the desirable people just like the guys. Which is why she was always an insider and the idiots on this committee are not. Because musicians comprise a club, and the fans are not included, not the critics, only the writers, players and singers. They’re who we want to be. And inside the inner sanctum…it’s all jokes and references and life in a lane so fast only the strong survive.

If I were Linda Ronstadt I’d give the R&RHOF the middle finger and refuse to show up.

But she will.

And I know she won’t be conciliatory. I know she’ll tell it like it is. She’s not afraid to be three dimensional, to speak her truth, which is why she’s a star and you’re not.

HALL & OATES

You’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far
‘Cause you know it don’t matter anyway
You can rely on the old man’s money
You can rely on the old man’s money
It’s a bitch girl, but it’s gone too far

To hear this sound emanating from the radio was…enough to make you drive immediately to buy the album, “Bigger Than Both Of Us,” which it truly was. Hall & Oates went from obscurity to superstardom. Even better, after falling all the way back down, even having to play clubs, they came all the way back, with the infectious “You Make My Dreams” and so much more…

It was the “Royals” of yesteryear. You only had to hear a few notes.

What I want you’ve got
Though it might be hard to handle

Yes, it was hard for the wannabes of the twenty first century to admit how much talent the band actually had, how good a voice Daryl Hall possessed. This isn’t yacht rock, unless the term represents something so good it rains down money to the point where you can buy one!

Hall & Oates are so good.

Come on, who had that many hits.

And now they’ve got this victory lap. This inclusion. Just when they’d given up on it.

Because the sound has been burgeoning, become deafening. Hell, who wouldn’t want to be invited to Daryl’s house?

KISS

Induct Bill Aucoin. Come on, if you’re including Brian Epstein and my buddy Andrew Loog Oldham, without whom there’d be no Beatles or Stones, Aucoin deserves to be in too, for without him there’d be no Kiss.

Which might be okay.

But still, even I will admit I liked “Rock And Roll All Nite.” It was a band for those who missed the sixties. And despite Gene Simmons being the number one blowhard in music, the guy with no sense of humor about himself, they had a string of hits.

My favorite?

LICK IT UP!

Don’t wanna wait ’til you know me better

This is the ESSENCE of Motley Crue, which played Kiss’s role in the MTV eighties. Come on, let’s throw off our inhibitions, take off our clothes in this pre-AIDs era and have some fun!

You gotta live like you’re on vacation

Before the baby boomers, life was boring. A sentence. But rock and roll said NO MAS! Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy. Except a ticket to the show. Where the amps are big and powerful and the songs are known by heart and you’re amongst your brethren and there’s nowhere you’d rather be.

So…LICK IT UP!

Come on. Life is short. Discover what you’re into, and go full bore, to the max. This is what all of the above inductees did. They didn’t play it safe, have a fall back position, they just went for greatness.

And we followed them.

P.S. The E Street Band. My only point is if we’re gonna induct them, how about the rest of the backup bands? This is b.s., evidence that the R&RHOF is east coast-centric, driven by Jann Wenner and Jon Landau and the holier than thou who think we’re listening.

We are not. You don’t have to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame to mean something to people. You just have to reach deep down inside and throw your innermost feelings down on wax. Do it right, and it’s life itself.

That’s rock and roll.

Rock ain’t money… Unless you’re peeling off hundreds to pay hotel damages.

Rock ain’t awards… If you need a Grammy to justify your existence, you lead a sorry little life.

Rock is about ATTITUDE! And SOUND!

Are you willing to do it your way? Not worried about what anybody says? Whether it be Simon Cowell or Doug Morris or Dr. Luke? Are you willing to piss all over the powers-that-be, stand up and lead?

Then you’re ready to rock and roll.

And I’ve only got one message for you. Go straight down to Guitar Center, buy that Les Paul or Stratocaster, and plug it into that Marshall or Fender and TURN IT UP!

Drive your parents crazy.

It’s not about tattoos.

It’s not about clothing.

It’s about what’s inside!

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.

But if you do…we wanna party with you all night and every day.

You show us everything you’ve got
You keep on dancing and the room gets hot
You drive us wild, we’ll drive you crazy

Yes, there’s no rock and roll without an audience.

You keep on shouting, you keep on shouting

I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day

I certainly do. And so do you.

And there’s no better place to start than with the above inductees. If you’re not happy with these acts, if you don’t want to listen to their music, I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU!