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New York, New York I've got to be the only person, worldwide, who watched Harry Carson's induction to the NFL Hall of Fame and thought of Al Kooper and Wayne Kramer. Don't get me wrong. I thought plenty about Carson, my favorite player on the smash-mouth Giants of the 1980s. But Carson's induction brought Kooper and Kramer to mind relentlessly because, like them, he was asked to wait an unconscionably long time before being inducted – and like them, until he was selected, Carson maintained that he found the whole procedure so ludicrous that he didn't want to be inducted. Like Carson, Kooper and Kramer have impeccable credentials for induction, yet Al's never been on a ballot and Wayne's band, the MC5, has only made it that far a couple of times. Kooper led Blood Sweat and Tears for its only listenable album, played in a seminal New York City folk-rock group, the Blues Project, and created the Super Sessions project with Michael Bloomfield and Stephen Stills that helped inspire the jam band concept. He also discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd, produced the band's most important records, and served as a sideman on three of the greatest records ever made: The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland and, oh yeah, Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," to which he contributed the greatest B3 organ riff ever heard.  Al Kooper followed in the footsteps of the legend Dylan to become one himself. Kramer's guitar playing with the Five cut a narrower furrow just as deep. Echoes of his style – Chuck Berry meets Pete Townshend with a Marshall head set with the volume knob cranked two notches past its limit – resound in contemporary bands like the White Stripes and Mooney Suzuki, not to mention such Hall of Famers as the Clash and Sex Pistols. If Kramer didn't invent punk, he and his band perfected it long before Malcolm McLaren laid eyes on Johnny Rotten. In recent years, Kramer has made a fabulous series of solo discs, with his slash and burn guitar chops tamed only for his occasional forays into post-beatnik story-telling in a Motor City Bukowski vein. I think that, like Carson, were they to be inducted to the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, both Kooper and Kramer would greet it as the honor it is. But one of the things that makes the Rock Hall unique is that you can't be sure of it. There have been some significant snubs: David Bowie didn't show up for the induction ceremony the year he made it; Rod Stewart also found it necessary to wash his hair on his big night. Last year, the Sex Pistols, being the Sex Pistols, got more mileage out of Rotten's nasty letter spurning their inclusion in the Hall than they would have received if Sid Vicious' ghost had turned up to accept in person. I didn't take Roger Clemens very seriously when he said that he wouldn't show up at Cooperstown if his plaque showed him as a member of the Red Sox rather than the Yankees, but Kooper and Kramer are perhaps made of sterner stuff. And who knows what would happen if the nominating committee and the voters had the smarts to include Motorhead? As Arlo Guthrie remarked when he stepped to the stage in the Waldorf-Astoria Ballroom to accept an Early Influence award for his father, Woody, "If my dad was alive, I don't know where he'd be tonight, but it wouldn't be here." The family of another Early Influence inductee, Mahalia Jackson, demanded that her commitment to singing gospel, no pop songs, not be defiled by her representation by placing her among so many devotees of lust and mammon. To its credit, the Hall ignored them. Continued on next page...
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