This is the question Mike Conklin asks at L Magazine:

Right around the mid-80s, or 25 years ago, or the exact amount of time that needs to have passed since a band's debut in order for them to be eligible for induction, when hair-metal came along and ruined everything, it simply became cooler for rock bands to exist below the radar of the mainstream. With the exceptions of a period of a few years in the early 90s, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and then again a decade later with the White Stripes and Radiohead, all the best rock bands have been, for lack of a better term, indie rock bands.

Are the Replacements going to be inducted? Sonic Youth? Husker Du? Joy Division? The Go Betweens? Pavement? Guided By Voices? If they're not, it's bullshit: for people who actually still really, truly care about rock and roll, these are the bands that have carried on in the tradition the Hall of Fame has always held dear. But if they are inducted, the Hall of Fame will surely lose the massive cultural appeal it so obviously strives for, considering barely any of those bands have sold as many copies of all their records put together as most current inductees have of even their least successful record.

While a good question on its face, a little historical digging says we can prolong answering this one for a while yet.

Conklin points out that the induction nominees for next year include "LL Cool J, along with ABBA and Donna Summer," none of whom (perhaps excepting ABBA) fit even the broadest definition of Rock and Roll.

Besides the fact that we haven't run out of mainstream rock acts to induct (Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd didn't make it in until 2006. Buddy Guy and Leonard Cohen? 2005 and 2008, respectively), the admission of non-rock and rollers is not new: Isaac Hayes and Chet Atkins were inducted in 2002; Curtis Mayfield in 1999; Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1996; Bob Marley in 1994; The Four Tops in 1990. Sam Cooke in 1986.

Per Conklin's observation, many of those bands existed as alternatives to rock and roll. But existing outside the system? That's rock and roll in nature, if not in expression.

Perhaps Jann Wenner could be convinced to go in for "The American Music Hall of Fame"; that would certainly preserve the institution's broad appeal and more accurately reflect its curatorial instincts. But really, it's been inducting whoever and whatever it wanted for as long as its been around. Why sweat it?

At this rate, we won't have to worry about Husker Du for another two decades, at least.

Elvis Presley: live at Madison Square Garden, taken on June 11, 1972.
Photo credit: Copyright George Kalinsky, taken from the exhibition Live From Madison Square Garden: From the Lens of George Kalinsky. Courtesy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As approximately 62 of you know, I've been spinning a Friday Soul mix via the old Twitter account. Man is it groovy! I'm even linking to videos. The playlist so far:

1. Otis Redding, "Shake" (live at Monterey Pop, 1967)
2. Raphael Saadiq, "Let's Take a Walk"
3. Laura Nyro, "And When I Die"
4. James Brown, "Super Bad"
5. Buddy Guy, "Feels Like Rain"
6. Mofro, "Ho Cake"
7. James Cotton, Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter, "Got My Mojo Workin'" (hey, we're branching out)
8. The Impressions, "Long Long Winter"
9. Rod Stewart, "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher"
10. Bettye LaVette, "You Don't Know Me At All"
11. Van Morrison, "I've Been Working"
12. Curtis Mayfield, "People Get Ready" (some live version from, I think, 1974)

Eclectic, see, yet accessible. But it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings! (No Aretha jokes, if ye please.) Just point the browser of your choice in this direction, make like a lemming, and follow along. Suggestions are appreciated. As are witty remarks concerning my inclusion of Rod Stewart...or the fact that a number of these tracks don't necessarily qualify as soul.

Below the jump: the remainder of the mix, updated incrementally.

13. JJ Grey, "The Sun Is Shining Down"
14. Al Green, "Get Back" (yep, that one)
15. The Acoustics, "I'm Gonna Stay In A Hurry"
16. Jackie Wilson & Count Basie, "In the Midnight Hour"
17. Sam Cooke, "Somebody Have Mercy" (live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963)

Photo by niecieden, Creative Commons attribution license

***

Raphael Saadiq and Dr. John are both on tour at present, peddling different brands of regressively delightful music to packed, loyal audiences. The Doctor (Mac Rebennack, to get technical) and Saadiq (né Wiggins) wear their influences on their sleeves and dress in full-on vintage: Rebennack in voodoo regalia, Saadiq in a chickadee-yellow suit and oversize horn-rims.

The distinction, of course, is that Saadiq's throwback pose is provisional; the Doctor's is dynastic.

Headliner John Legend has been filling houses for Saadiq during the pair's national tour that closed two days ago. That's fine, if it means more people listening to Saadiq—but mainly it means sitting through most of Evolver after the livelier performer (with the better band) has already left the stage. Legend struts and takes his cheese seriously; Saadiq dances and seems to acknowledge that the salvation/procreation dyad of contemporary R&B is about as synthetic as a modern soulman who channels Curtis Mayfield.

Dr. John dances too, in a sense—if that's what you call the frenzied Dixie wobblings that ensued whenever the sexua-(nearly septua-)genarian stood up for a break from the ivories. "Pull ya pants up...ooh, that's just unnecessary," drummer Herman Ernest III chided as Dr. John demonstrated an unusual two-step for the audience. "I know: it's hard with the prosthetics." These moments were special, but also left the band lacking the dirty-ass center of its sound—Dr. John's swampy piano, without which the group regressed into a generic species of funk. The high point of the set was the funereal, "Ballad of a Thin Man"-type take on "When the Saints Go Marchin' In"—as fine a eulogy for the Doctor's Katrina-ravaged home as anything on City That Care Forgot, the critically admired disc behind which the Lower 911 is touring.

Saadiq's recent Katrina tribute—"Big Easy," which gets a nice treatment from the Rebirth Brass Band on the album—shined on Tuesday night, courtesy of some beautiful, warbly trumpet. But Saadiq reserves his grooviest arrangements for a more playful subcategory of the fuck anthem than anything in the Legend songbook—such that when he tells a girl that he "want[s] some sex" and proposes a walk outside, it's not background music, nor some cosmic event: it just is what it is.

...and what it is has a hell of a lot more to do with Dr. John singing "Makin' Whoopee" than with Legend on "Take Me Away."

Photograph by Brian Reed

Photograph by Brian Reed