Cowboy Confessional

People watchful for signs of the Apocalypse saw one this morning as news broke that both ABBA and The Stooges will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

To steal yet another line from Mojo Nixon, “What could be less rock and roll than ABBA. The Archies?”

For people fortunate enough to sleep through the 1970s, ABBA was a pop quartet that recorded more mindless and soul sucking AM/FM static than all of disco combined. Devoid of anything aside from a beat and antiseptic vocals, ABBA none the less sold millions of records, proving again that musical mediocrity will always be profitable (hence disco and its inner city sibling, rap).

For the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct this unfortunate Swedish export violates the Hall’s very name and essence. But as Mojo reminded us, its all about the money.

Until Iggy pops ABBA one.

At the same time ABBA strolls into the Hall, Iggy Pop, band front man and source of his own solo insanity, will be inducted with the other Stooges. Unlike ABBA’s homogenized harmonies, The Stooges and Iggy slammed danced in from the other direction, taking the soul of rock and roll to utterly new gritty lows (and I say that in the good sense of low). Instigators of punk and very heavy rock, Iggy and The Stooges are the anti-ABBA.

The universe as we know it may cease to exist on induction night as these two opposing forces collide. Like good and evil, matter and anti-matter, music and whatever it was that stuff was that ABBA recorded – they may cancel one another and all matter out of existence.

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