{"id":1280,"date":"2008-03-10T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-11T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-01-01T23:35:35","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T23:35:35","slug":"induction-speech-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/induction-speech-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"Eddie Money Lauds Steve Miller&#8217;s Self-Referential Descent into Pleasant, Critical Irrelevance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/frankenslade\/moneyshot.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"362\" height=\"249\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">Eddie Money inducts Steve Miller<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Following is a transcript of Eddie Money&#8217;s induction speech for Steve Miller.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In three simple, self-referential steps, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steve_Miller_(musician)\" title=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steve_Miller_(musician)\" target=\"_blank\">Steve Miller<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s early promise as a riff-heavy, Chuck Berry-quoting, San Francisco hippie cum Chicago blues-rocker would descend into pleasant, critical irrelevance.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/x4AQ984SyJ0&amp;feature?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>The promise and partial lifetime achievement of Steve Miller that we celebrate with his entry into the Rock Town Hall Rock and Roll Foyer of Fame were established by <strong>&#8220;Living in the U.S.A.&#8221;<\/strong>, that bluesy, groovy tune with the danceable rebel charm of early <strong>Sly and the Family Stone<\/strong> hits. Other early recordings of note would include &#8220;Gangster of Love&#8221;; &#8220;Space Cowboy&#8221;, which refers back to his first single and tipped his hand as an incurable craftsman of no particular point of view; and &#8220;My Dark Hour&#8221;, which the studio-savvy Miller (whose godfather was <strong>Les Paul<\/strong>) cut on the fly one night with only <strong>Paul McCartney<\/strong> on drums, bass, backing vocals! Miller&#8217;s start was the stuff of cult worship and overpaying for used copies of hard-to-find albums!<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LXxDP8jaVqw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With his 1973 album, <em>The Joker<\/em>, Miller shifted gears, essentially telling us that his cult hero promise was only a dream &#8211; or a joke, actually. The title track lists his series of early personae as Miller and band playfully execute a pop-soul groove Townspeople of my age grew up loving. Had Miller&#8217;s career (and life) ended a few years and a few more pop-soul singles later, the rock nerd discoveries of his  bluesy, hippie nuggets would have retained their full value. The Foyer of Fame likely would have been too small to contain his legacy, much like the aggrandized legacy of <strong>Marc Bolan<\/strong> and <strong>T. Rex<\/strong>. Instead, Miller lived and thrived as a major pop-rock star into the early &#8217;80s, when he put the final nail in his own critical coffin with the hit song <strong>&#8220;Abracadabra&#8221;<\/strong> and its accompanying terrible MTV video.<\/p>\n<p>With this Partial Lifetime Achievement Award, the Foyer of Fame wishes to acknowledge and respect Miller&#8217;s early promise and the promised, albeit unfulfilled, ecstasy that his pre-fame career offered rock nerds. You may be a joker, Steve, but you coulda been a contender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eddie Money inducts Steve Miller Following is a transcript of Eddie Money&#8217;s induction speech for Steve Miller. In three simple, self-referential steps, Steve Miller&#8216;s early promise as a riff-heavy, Chuck Berry-quoting, San Francisco hippie cum Chicago blues-rocker would descend into pleasant, critical irrelevance. The promise and partial lifetime achievement of Steve Miller that we celebrate <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/induction-speech-miller\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[79],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}