Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Induction 2007

I tevo'd the 2007 Rock N Roll Induction ceremony, and just sat down to look at it last night. Among the inductees were Patti Smith, REM, Van Halen, James Brown and The Ronettes.
I thought the ceremony was good, but thank good for the fast forward button, because it was 4 hours long!!!!
Velvet Revolver inducted Van Halen, and then got up to perform a Van Halen song. It was AWFUL!!!!!! In the past I have really enjoyed Velvet Revolver, but for this performance, Scott Weiland was god awful. His voice sounded flat, and he danced around like a really white James Brown. Awful.
I spied Chris Martin (from Coldplay) in the audience, and thought that he might induct REM, but much to my surprise and glee, it was none other than Eddie Vedder (purrrr). He gave a wonderful speech that was light and funny. As a budding teenager, I LOVED REM. They were big in my music world. I never did see them live, though.....Anyways, at some point, I became disenchanted with REM, and sort of just stopped listening to them. I never loaded them into the ipod.....I went and grabbed all of REM CDS and brought them into work with me to listen today to do an REM Marathon. Good stuff.
REM performed and they sounded great. Peter Buck really is an accomplished guitar player, more than I have realized before. Patti Smith sat in with them, as well as Eddie Vedder and they all rocked out. It was awesome (though I didn't need to see Smith hump Michael Stipe and had to look away at one point...).
I saved the program so I could go back and watch again, because they showed some amazing footage of past Hall of Fame Inductions, including Prince shred a sick solo on While My Guitar Gentley Weeps - probably the best version of that song that I've ever heard. Watching the show just confirmed how important music is to me, in my life, and how glad I am that I have started that ball rolling with my kiddles already.