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I've decided that, apart from maybe Rundgren, I want Toni Basil in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame more than any of the current nominees. She was a featured dancer in Elvis movies as well as leading the female bikini squads in Beach Blanket movies. She would go on to choreograph some of those films too, as well as Head, American Graffitti, The Rose, Peggy Sue Got Married, That Thing You Do, etc.
As an actress, she had featured roles in Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. Those are probably the two most rock 'n' roll movies ever, apart from musicals and concert films. You do those two films and you just drop the mic. Or the camera. Or something.
In the video era, she pretty much invented David Byrne's Stop Makin' Sense-era act, as well as choreographing for Devo, Bowie (including the massively scaled Glass Spider tour, having done the Diamond Dogs tour 15 years earlier), Bette Midler, etc.
She had three hit songs in a long recording career, she has a Hip Hop International Living Legend Award on her mantle, she was one of the originators of locking (true story!), she regularly choreographed Shindig!, and if that weren't enough, she choreographed the great T.A.M.I. Show, mixing jazz dancing, party dancing, and go-go dancing in one massive background salad of swiveling as Chuck Berry, The Stones, and (of course) James Brown made history in the foreground.
And she's still shaking it full speed today at 76.
Really, I just wanted to create a brief moment where all the top threads in the NBF were named after Jackson Browne songs.
[YOUTUBE]GwLEuLnaNaE[/YOUTUBE]
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