The 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony is sure to feature moving tributes to the artists that defined generations of music and culture. It will however be void of anyone playing actual music.
According to Vulture, the November 7 ceremony will have a runtime of just under two hours. This runs short in comparison to the usual five-hour song and dance extravaganza. President and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, Joel Peresman, tells the publication that event organizers scrapped live musical performances. His explanation can be viewed as a bit curt. “There were so many events that were starting to happen with people doing performances on their iPhones and then they got a little bit more sophisticated,” the official said.
“We thought that was kind of boring to try to go through the hoops of having artists performing with no audience, or doing it with just family or friends. It didn’t make any creative sense.”
WATCH MORE: Meet the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees
But of course! Why spend extra time and effort to coordinate live musical acts when you can just run tape of people talking for two hours? That’s what you hear most people say in the front row of concerts, most of the time; “I wish these guys would drop the instruments and just talk about music.”
Peresman also blames travel and coronavirus restrictions for the lack of performances at this year’s event. “Nobody was working, and everybody was off the road and at home hunkered down. It wasn’t as easy [as it would have been if] they were already in tour mode,” he explained.
“Everybody was quarantined. There were too many lockdown factors. We realized it wasn’t going to be manageable.”
Instead of the traditional live broadcast scheduled for May, the long awaited show will be taped and aired on HBO and streaming on HBO Max November 7. The 2020 class of inductees include quite the variety of artists; Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, The Notorious B.I.G., T.Rex, and Ahmet Ertegun Award honorees – Jon Landau and Irving Azoff.
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