Putting the boot in...
Congratulations to Dorian Lynsky for his review of Primal Scream's new album, Beautiful Future. Particularly unfond of Mr Gillespie as think he is a talent-free plagiarist who can't sing for the proverbial Callard and Bowser.
I particularly liked the phrase '(they)...sound exactly like a shambling corpse that doesn't realise it's dead' (as clearly did the sub who decided to feature it in BIG TYPE).
It put me in mind of other favourite denouncements such as Nicky Wire's claim that Slowdive were 'worse than Hitler'...
Sad I know but I do love a good bad review - when I used to be a Q reader - many many moons ago now - I would always scan for the 1 star ones first - it's the musical equivalent of rubber-necking, I suppose.
Any other favourite/memorable roastings people can recall?
- More from Carwash Casteneda.
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Almost a big a hatchet job as...
Quantick's Morrissey "review". Nasty for the sake of being nasty.
Not a massive fan of the Scream but thought they do the Stones/Aerosmith schtick better than anyone else out there. Country Girl is one of the better pop songs so far this century.
I thought...
...the review of the litigeous one was on the money - the reviewer equivalent of pointing out the king actually has no clothes on.
Don't hate on ver Scream
Just don't
Don't know the....
reviewer but love this one about Starship.. "“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” a song bad enough to appear on the soundtrack of the diabolical Andrew McCarthy “comedy” Mannequin. And its sequel!"
Steve Sutherland's
classic Melody Maker 'Dogshit/Diamonds' review of a Kingmaker/Suede gig has always stuck in my mind. As a polemical and thinly veiled analogy for the "dogshit' NME versuse the "Diamonds" MM it would have gone down a lot better had he not been appointed editor of the very paper he was slagging off a short time later.
Kingmaker were dogshit though.
Greil Marcus's
"What is this shit?", to start his review in Rolling Stone of Bob Dylan's Self Portrait will probably remain the most memorable.
I too a good bad review
A favourite is one someone (perhaps Andy Gill) did of a Rachel Stevens album some years back in a newspaper, along the lines of 'is this the worst album ever made?'.
Nothing she didn't deserve. I don't think she's worked since.
I know it's a fictional review
of a fictional album by a fictional band, but the phrase "Shit sandwich" never fails to make me laugh.
Primal Scream
are a terrific live band. At the RFH last week their gig with the MC5 went down a storm, and I enjoyed it immensely.
I really don't care that they rip off the Stones/Faces etc. Rocks, Jailbreak, Dolls, Country Girl, are better than anything the Stones have recorded in a very long time.
Sting
There was a review by Allan Jones in MM of a Sting album whose last sentence was "What a cunt this man is." Or it may have been wanker, can't remember.
was it NME or MM
who had the other wonderful line "Oh Sting, where is thy death?"
REO Speedwagon
Their Live! Live! Live! album's review in Guitar World (in full):
'You could have fooled me! me! me!'
Keith Moon
I do rememeber someone once writing that Moony "couldn't tell a paradiddle from a paranormal experience"
!
best yet
Today's Guardian
Peter Bradshaw's controlled demolition of the film version of Mamma Mia had me spurting coffee like a water pistol on four separate occasions this morning. The last of them, right at the end, was a geyser of Old Glory proportions.
Highly recommended to start anyone's last day of a long week.
niiiiiiiice..
this film clearly needed a damn good thrashing from someone (i have been unlucky enough to witness a couple of clips and ads... yikes) - and pleased to see it's been so thoughtfully and thoroughly administered - good work peter.. thanks archie..