LINK: List of All Inductees/Honorees
HONOREE
Casey Kasem is one of those people that were kind of dyed into the wool when it came to rock music for those of us of a certain age. His voice is instantly recognizable and if you listened to the radio very much, it was impossible to miss at least part of his American Top 40 Countdown every week.
Kasem hosted the American Top 40 Countdown for 18 years before moving on to doing a similar show called Casey's Top 40, which lasted another 9 years. He revived the American Top 40 Countdown in 1998 and there were spin-offs of that which included country music. He also created the American Video Awards in 1983 and hosted it until it stopped being produced in 1987.
His journey in radio started in high school, covering the sports teams and he took that up a level when he went to Wayne University and did voice work for children's programming. In 1952, Kasem was drafted into the US Army and went to Korea where he worked as an announcer for Armed Forces Radio. He took his turns as a disc jockey in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, as well as Cleveland, Ohio. Kasem also worked at radio stations in California. He did quite a bit of voice over work, including his most famous role as "Shaggy" on the Scooby Doo cartoon show.
Casey Kasem had a passion for broadcasting and was the most recognizable voice on radio for a generation. He is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame, has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and was the first recipient of the Radio Hall of Fame's Lifetime Achievement Award.
INDUCTEE
The Beatles
What can I write about The Beatles that hasn't been written already? Anyone that loves music knows the great songs and anyone that is a hardcore music fan already knows how they changed the game. Pop and rock music started to be thought of as an artistic endeavor. Musicians were free to experiment by crossing genres, using different mic techniques, exploring the studio, expanding the roster of instruments and as important as anything The Beatles paved the way for artists to use their own songs and be a big part of the production process. Album covers got colorful. Wearing long hair became a staple. The topics that songs could be about became a little more overt, but they also maintained the ability to hide song meanings and be about nothing at all but phrasing and cadence.
At any rate, the very band I could talk about most is one that I don't really feel like I have to talk about at all. They have stood the test of time in many ways and they were the right guys at the right time to push the envelope and allow others to take it to the next level.
