The band that helped create the Dunedin Sound make the NZ Music Hall of Fame
The band that helped create the Dunedin Sound finally enter the music industry tent.
When the Clean are inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame during the Silver Scroll awards in Dunedin on September 28, there will be more than a few music bigwigs heaving a sigh of relief.
At 10 years old, the Music Hall of Fame is still in its infancy and has been playing catch-up with its overseas big brothers and sisters since Jordan Luck and Johnny Devlin became its first inductees in 2007.
We’ve got a long way to go. Australia opened its Aria Hall of Fame with Slim Dusty, AC/DC and Dame Joan Sutherland in 1988, the Brit Awards launched their “outstanding contribution to music” award with John Lennon in 1982 and the US’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s first inductees were in 1986. The US Country Music Hall of Fame was created in 1961.
So, while we’re still trying to work through the backlog of great Kiwi musicians in time to get our current crop inducted before Lorde hits her 70th birthday, it doesn’t help to have our legends turning the Hall of Fame down – something the Clean have done twice in the past five years, with bassist Robert Scott saying they weren’t prepared to forgive an industry that had “shunned and dismissed” them in the past.
Again, this year, Salmonella Dub ditched their chance for a seat at the top table – apparently because of a row over their desire to have Wellington 70s and 80s post-punksters Beat Rhythm Fashion play at their induction and because they were still too young for a legacy award.
But try as they might to get the right mix in New Zealand’s Hall of Fame – last year’s choices of Moana Maniapoto and Bic Runga went some way to redress a particularly male skew – the inductors still have to deal with the power of the snub.
After all, when Madonna says she’d refuse lifetime achievement awards, when Sinéad O’Connor, Jay-Z and Kanye boycott the Grammys, or when Johnny Lydon and Ozzy Osbourne stick a middle finger up to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it tends to generate more publicity than if they
had accepted.
There’s no doubt the Clean are worthy recipients – all the more so for having original member Peter Gutteridge, who died in 2014, included in the induction – but perhaps, in the end, the music bigwigs can be thankful that even the most artistic of refuseniks can be won round with a little pride.
When Blur refused the Brit Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, it went to Robbie Williams – something that played on Damon Albarn’s mind when interviewed by NME after they decided to accept the same award two years later.
“The reality is none of us are irreplaceable and if we didn’t accept it, somebody else would get it. I tend to take a rather pragmatic view of these things.”
Try as they might to get the right mix, the Hall of Fame inductors still have to deal with the power of the snub.