Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament recently hosted a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame special on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio. He played songs from bands that deserve to be in, and unfortunately 90’s icons Rage Against The Machine didn’t make the cut, along with others.
Playlist:
Roxy Music – Editions Of You
Devo – Uncontrollable Urge
MC5 – Shakin’ Street
Radiohead – The National Anthem
The Cure – Fascination Street
Todd Rundgren – I Saw The Light
Rage Against The Machine – How I Could Just Kill A Man
John Prine – Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian
Def Leppard – High ‘N’ Dry (Saturday Night)
On a new Pearl Jam Radio on SiriusXM broadcast, Jeff Ament criticized the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for ‘snubbing’ Rage Against The Machine. Rage Against The Machine were nominated last year and this year for the Hall of Fame, but were shut out both years. Alternative Nation transcribed Ament’s comments.
“Another first ballot snub, our cohorts from Los Angeles, Rage Against The Machine. Of course we have a lot of history with those guys, Brad was in a band with Ed years ago. We jammed with Brad a little bit when we were mixing our first record. We’ve been friends with those guys all the way through. Timmy and I are super tight bass bros.
He is one of the few guys kind of from my era, we do tech talk when we get together, it’s super fun. He loves bass, maybe even more than I do. One of the heaviest shows that I ever saw was around 1995, the crowd was part of the band, jumping the whole show, and so dynamic and original.”
Ament believes that Radiohead were disrespected last year when they were not inducted first ballot into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Radiohead will be inducted though into the class of 2019 next year alongside Def Leppard, The Cure, Janet Jackson, Stevie Nicks, Roxy Music, and The Zombies.
“Okay, let’s just talk about how the hell Radiohead did not get in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year on the first ballot. That is insane to me. It leads me to believe that maybe some of those people are still smoking whatever they were smoking back in the 60’s, like the real deal stuff. I don’t know if Radiohead is going show up, I think there was some talk that they might not show up. I think I heard that maybe Colin was just going to show up and play bass, which would be great to. Here is a great bass heavy song by Radiohead, it is called the National Anthem.”
When Pearl Jam were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, Jeff Ament wore a shirt featuring bands that should be inducted including Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana drummer Chad Channing, Faith No More, The Black Crowes, Oasis, Jane’s Addiction, Dinosaur Jr., PJ Harvey, and Mudhoney.
Ament recently explained how he had planned to throw shirts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame big wigs to help protest to get these legendary artists in, but ended up deciding against it.
“Two years ago, when our band got nominated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was that there were 100 bands that probably should have been in before us, so as I kept in the spirit of my friends who were creating this criteria for the best American bands were, I decided to make a t-shirt. As I designed the t-shirt, I thought maybe I could make it look like a sort of a black tie scenario, and I’ll include the names of all of the bands.
The original idea was I brought 40 t-shirts that were wrapped up, and I found out where all of the Hall of Fame powers to be were seated. During the show, I was actually going to throw shirts at all these people to remind them of the 100 plus bands that should be in. As I looked around, I noticed that there was a lot of fancy glassware on the table and I thought I could make a huge mess, and I didn’t want that to be the story for the night, was that I wrecked hundreds of thousands of dollars of dresses and fancy suits. So, I still have a box of these shirts, and it’s not my favorite bands necessarily, it’s bands that I think are some of the great rock and roll bands of all time.”
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