Thursday, August 13, 2009

Most Overrated Albums

First of all...RIP Les Paul. The man invented multi-track recording and one of the best sounding guitars in history. He played live every monday night in NYC. He was 94.He will be missed by anyone who knows what rock and roll is.

Les Paul is not to blame for any of the albums on this list. He only came up with the technology all of those years ago for some of these pompous musicians to lay this ca-ca down to tape.

Most of the albums on this list came from a thread in progress on one of my favorite websites: The Velvet Rope, where I have lurked for many years. This is not a personal list because Coldplay would take up 4 places and thats boring blogging. They are listed in the order they were found on the thread...not in decending levels of suckitude.

My comments/additions will come after the list.

1)Beastie Boys- Ill Communication
2)Radiohead-Hail to the Thief
3)Raconteurs-Consolers of the Lonely
4)Janes Addiction-Ritual De Lo Habitual
5)Nirvana-Nevermind
6)TV On the Radio- Return to Cookie Mountain
7)Wilco-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
8)Hotel California-The Eagles
9)Hole-Live Through This
10)Kings Of Leon-Only By The Night
11)Fleet Foxes
12)Vampire Weekend
13)Television-Marquee Moon
14)REM-Automatic For The People
15)Anything By The Hold Steady
16)Bob Dylan-Love and Theft
17)The Strokes-first album
18)The Sex Pistols-Never Mind The Bollocks
19)Sonic Youth-Daydream Nation
20)My Bloody Valentine-Loveless
21)Captain Beefheart-Trout Mask Replica
22)Anything by Ryan Adams

Here's some of my takes on that list:
1)Beastie Boys- Not one of their strongest albums...but Liscensed to Ill is much worse, and made every tight baseball cap wearin' idiot turn into a drooling pit monster.
2)Radiohead-HTTT- My least fav Radiohead album makes the best coldplay album(oxymoron) sound like The Wiggles.
3)Janes Addiction-As I've gotten older I now see what a tool Dave Navarro was besides being an average player...but Three Days from RDLH is a masterpiece.

4)Nirvana-Nevermind : frankly sir,you are a fucking idiot. Changed millions of lives and sent every spandex wearing light metal fuckwad back to the gas stations. Oh Yeah, the songs are colossal,too.
5)TV On The Radio- Worked alongside the bass player in NYC. Never had the heart to tell him that it was unlistenable, even if David Bowie loves 'em.

6)Wilco-YHF: This was my REAL intro to Wilco while in NYC in 2001-2002 and was just what I needed to bridge the gap between classic rock and indie. Impenetrable,IMO.

7)Hole-Live Through This- I did, and it hurt. Like a brain bunion.

8)Vampire Weekend- Currently topping my list of WORST BAND OF ALL TIME. I want to hang these smarmy suckwads by their izod sweaters or stab them with vinyl shards of their own Graceland lps.

9)Fleet Foxes- This is what happens when all of those hipster mag writers don't listen to the first two My Morning Jacket Albums..they hype a sound that already happened and everyone adjusts their glasses in unison in a Brooklyn cafe and calls it brilliant. Faerie Music for down and out Faeries. Pawn -your -guitar- and buy- a mandolin- music.

10)Kings of Leon-OBTN: Lets face it. The Followills know that their first two records are brilliant restless rockers with taut rough songs on them. But it's pick up truck music. Write something like Sex on Fire with its dumbed down U2 tones and Calebs scratchy voice attached, and the panties come off much quicker, the cheerleaders cry and the money rolls in.

11)REM- Automatic for the People: More like Automatic for the Exits for me. Why buy anything after Lifes Rich Pageant? I liked it better when I couldn't understand Stipe's struggling with his sexuality lyrics.

12)Bob Dylan-Love and Theft-I give up on the critics who laud this album: I think it won album of the year. I'm beginning to think Bob gargles with sand before his vocal takes because he knows how horrid it sounds. He 's just testing the Dylan lemmings to see how low he can go with his "masterpieces".

13)Anything by Ryan Adams: Yes, finally I agree. Prolific can also mean rushed,bland as christian folk and not worthy of any hype level past a local battle of the bands winner.

14)The Strokes- Faux sloppy and forgetful. The second coming of nothing in 2002.

I would like to add:

1)Anything by Pavement: The attitude of Vampire Weekend from decades past. Wordy,Nerdy and mindnumbingly dull.
2) Surprisingly: The Mars Volta. I started listening to At The Drive In Again. And realised there were several other guys in that band who probably couldn't take the pretentious prattling on of Cedric and Omar. Christ guys, even Mastodon can take it down a notch. More rock, less talk.
3) The Pixies- Never had it, never will.
4)The Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Can't get that hipster stink off no matter how many reverbs you unplug, Nick.
5)Willie Nelson- I'm sorry, crucify me. I've heard better voices from people doing sign language.

Lets hear it!


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13 comments:

  1. How bout:

    Fleetwood Mac...Tusk
    Guns and Roses...Use your Illusion
    Tom Petty...Full Moon Fever
    Bruce Springsteen...Born In the USA
    U2...Rattle and Hum

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  2. Hotel California??? That is one of the greatest LP's IMO.

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  3. Clegger, Good call on the GnR..but nothing could really top Appetite...Tusk has Sara which is a great song, but there's a lot of Lindsey noodling on there..must have been the latenight studio blow. Born in the USA....hmmm you no likey Glory Days?....Tom Petty has been phoning it in since Hard Promises...I'm pretty sure the entire verse and chorus to Won't Back Down was written during the exhale of a kind bud hit.

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  4. Sandy7:29 PM

    You must not have ever listened to Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, Love is Hell, Heartbreaker, Easy Tiger, Demoliton, Rock'n Roll, Any Whiskeytown, or Gold to saywhat you did about Ryan Adams. Granted the last album wasn't his best, but most of the albums I just listed are terrific. Your loss.

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  5. Sandy..Welcome! Ryan is Talented for sure.you mustn't get me wrong..I have Cold Roses,Easy Tiger, Rock N'Roll and have heard the rest. I just wish he would slow down, hone it down to maybe an album every two or three years or so...he has too much filler.

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  6. Hahahaha...the Pavement comment nearly killed me. I realize that music tickles everyone in different ways, so I won't offer up anything too offensive (plus, I'm swimming to the bottom of a large amount of beer right now)

    The template for an excellent listening experience was perfected between 1965 and 1971 (this applies solely to rock/pop) Everything after has been a variant of what went down back then. There are exceptions, but I find that much of what's popular now is extremely boring, auto-tuned, soulless crap.

    Yep, no alarms and no surprises.

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  7. I've been thinking about this recently, in terms of most over-rated bands/performers of all time. In the Classic rock sense, I gotta say anything solo by Rod Stewart, Queen (sorry, a few good songs don't make up for the boat load of horrible ones) and anything and everything by Aerosmith after the Rock album (their only good one. Toys is ok, the preceeding ones have few good songs, the following ones don't)

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  8. The Beach Boys 'Pet Sounds' is my "I don't get why folks think it's such a big deal" album.
    Yeah, yeah, i'm a musician too, and i understand studio technique and everything, but that still doesn't make it enjoyable for me to listen to.
    I'm sorry- I've tried it-- on many an occasion, and i can still say i don't get it... Or like it.

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  9. How about Van Morrison's Astral Weeks? Critics love it, I dont get it.

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  10. Totally agree on the Van Morrison and Beach Boys comments. Never able to get into either. How about every Van Halen album after the first two, except for 1984? Talk about FILLER.

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  11. Ok let me respond in order of who I missed

    Folks at the Ripple Effect: Your Aerosmith comments are dead on.....Love Rocks..my fav Aerosmith release....but....Queen- News of the World and Queen- Sheer Heart Attack and even A Day at the Races are all spectacular. Bad Fred Mercury is still better than most anything released after his death.

    Folks at R and R History- Pet Sounds is indeed an acquired taste..Mr. Wilson went insane trying to keep up with Lennon and Macca..they never needed a sandbox in their living room to set the mood.

    Dan-Astral Weeks is a brilliant listen if you know the story behind it. Van found some fantastic backing jazz musicians who basically improvised the whole album behind Van's simple guitar. They barely knew each other and had very little time and just went for it. Not really song, per se but stories of a certain time in Van's youth.

    Isorski- Don't you go trashin' Women and Children First or Fair Warning! LOL. Ever heard Unchained, So This is Love,Take Your Whiskey Home, And the Cradle Will Rock,Mean Streets, Dirty Movies,Hear About it Later...and so on and so on? I still have the pics I ripped out of stolen Creem mags and stuck in my locker. 1984 IS IN Fact, filler.

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  12. RE: KOL - OBTN - You picked up on that too. :| Yeah. Fuckers. There're decent songs on the album, but the sellouts muddy the the whole thing. They fucking rock live, but now we have to see them with trendy yuppy and college pukes. Ahh, the game.

    Peace.

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  13. Never like the Pixies much, but Trompe le Monde was a damned good album. REM: Life's Rich Pageant was great, but Document and Green were just as good, IMO. Automatic is way overrated. Mixed feelings about Pavement, the guy had a knack for good melodies but his lyrics annoy the hell out of me.

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