De-ductive reasoning

It's good to have some innocence and exuberance when honoring rock heroes, emotions that surely will be in evidence at the hall's annual induction dinner Monday in New York City. But the Hall of Fame balloting suffers from an almost childish, "gee whiz" enthusiasm that results in many marginal artists being toasted rather than just the truly great.

Comparison point: The Baseball Hall of Fame has inducted more than 200 players in seven decades -- about three a year. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is past 150 -- at about seven a year. At this rate, the rock hall will have nearly 500 members by the time it turns 70.

To find that many acts, the hall is going to end up enshrining such limited artists as Duane Eddy, Brenda Lee and the Rascals.

Oops, they're already in.

Who's next? Meat Loaf and Mariah Carey?

There are several ways for voters to assess an act's Hall of Fame worthiness, from creativity and influence (the right way) to simply counting the number of gold records (wrong).

Unlike baseball, you can't accurately measure musicians just by statistics. But it is interesting to turn to the Rolling Stone Album Guide, whose ratings are more reliable than the magazine's because the guide's editors have the luxury of looking at the old albums with a historical perspective. The most striking thing about the book's evaluation of the Hall of Fame inductees' recordings is that more than one-fourth lack a five-star album or even a five-star "best of" collection.

The point isn't that the guide should set the standard for membership, but it is useful in suggesting which artists might warrant a second look when assessing who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

After taking that second look, I'm ready to nominate the first class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Rejects -- artists who should be de-ducted from the hall.

It may seem cruel to downgrade these artists, but the real injustice is putting second- (or third-) tier artists into the hall while leaving out far more deserving figures such as Gram Parsons, one of the major influences on the Americana movement, and the Stooges, one of the most tenacious bands in rock history.

Here are my first five Hall of Fame de-ductees, two of whom, it turns out, are scheduled to be inducted Monday.

The Flamingos