Albums You'd Toss Into the Sea

[Eric]

While I'm in the music mode, my list of the six worst albums I am embarrassed to admit I actually bought for full price when they appeared, God knows why.

Have a Marijuana - David Peel and the Lower East Side

This guy was a New York City street performer. I wasn't ever really a hippie, just an amazing simulation of one. So why I bought an album with such a title, when I was never really into drugs of any sort, who knows. The music was kind of sing song. Lots of tambourine here. Sample lyrics

Here comes the cop
He's dressed in blue
He's after me
He's after you

Best of the Beatles - Pete Best

Pete Best and his so-called band demonstrated why the Beatles kicked him out. This stuff wasn't even fit to be filler on an early sixties album and in an era when rock classics were sharing vinyl space with stuff like "Bald Headed Woman" because albums were being cranked out every few months, that's saying something. Not being a musician, I can't point to what's wrong. Everything here sounds like some random sketches for songs, all of which seem to drag on interminably, remarkably devoid of either melody or beat. Apparently Best didn't even have the sense to realize how grotesque this was and have the record company turn it over to some competent studio musicians.

Sid Vicious Live (or something)

Are you a sadistic enough bastard so you really want to hear a pathetic, strung out, soon to be O'D'ing junkie slurring his words, and trying to tune a guitar (and hey, by this time it was too late for him to learn to play anyhow) ? Luckily the recording itself is atrocious. Must've been a bootleg because I can't find it on the web (no longer have it) Whoever exposed this to public view ought to be ashamed. According to the book by Nancy Spungeon's mother, Sid was actually a likeable lad, except when he was stabbing her daughter to death in the Chelsea Hotel. At least Dee Dee Ramone left us with "Chinese Rock" before heroin got him.


Wild Life -Paul McCartney and Wings

In the sixties I loved the Beatles. And in the sixties they were geniuses. I figured I had a whole lifetime of great new stuff to listen to from those guys. The solo albums from each were all excellent in their own way (discounting Ringo's initial foray into oldies for his Mum, as his real first album - although it was certainly amusing to hear him try to croon stuff like "Stardust") But before long they were perpetrating stuff like this Wings abortion. Utterly flaccid. I swear, Paul must've given Pete Best another chance. And it is terrible about Linda dying prematurely and all, but still, as a professional musician...

Life With the Lions, Unfinished Music #2 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Hoo Boy. Just in case you want to put your ear to Yoko's pregnant abdomen and hear the happy gurgle of the fetus sloshing around in there. When you tire of that you can listen to John screwing with his tape recorder, which would probably be a hoot if you were both roaring drunk. I bought this because, maybe there was a song buried in there someplace. I guess the laugh was on me. At least with Two Virgins you got to gawk at famous naughty bits. Mind you, I am probably alone in all the world in considering Yoko to be be smart, talented and good looking.


Tears Forever -The Dallas Reunion Tapes '84 -- ? and the Mysterians

If you want to hear some guys who never could play a lick to begin with and apparently haven't practiced for twenty years, get back together to play 96 Tears for an hour and a half, this is the ticket.

(ROIR tapes, which put this out, had an interesting selling point -- they claimed their tapes were some sort of super, metallic veriety that cost more, blank, for the average consumer, than what the ROIR recordings sold for. So, they argued, why not buy the tape and listen to one of their obscure bands because if you didn't like the music you could erase it and you'd have got yourself a fancy blank tape at a bargain price. I priced those tapes once, and it was true, it was cheaper to buy them with music on from ROIR. But having to listen to ? was a heavy price in itself.)


Eric

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ah-hahah! I am going to have to think long and hard on this one, and really remember 5 albums that I despise. It will probably be made up of discs that I was somehow "forced" to listen to under some circumstance (for example, when I was a freshman at SU my girlfriend had three different room-mates, one of which would play the same Lenny Kravitz album over and over again from like 11:00pm -- 3:00am while we were trying to sleep on the other side of the room. Actually sleep, too, I should add; I wasn't so bold to try to give anybody a pop with a person on the other side of the split dorm. I feel I should note that.)

I'll think about this on the way into work. Additionally, in the other thread, since there are only a few of us who kick it around here there's not an overwhelming number of responses and I feel I can read and enjoy everyone's post. Cool.