Entertainment For Lively Minds
What's your favourite artist or band's worst track?
Posted by tkdmart on 7 October 2011 - 1:52pm.
Let's compile a 'Worst Of The Best' playlist.
It's going to be down to personal taste, so there is no correct answer. If you disagree with someone else's choice, celebrate by posting your own top act's biggest clanger.
I give you 'Abilene' by Yes.
Penned by the mighty Steve Howe, It was the B side of 'Don't Kill The Whale', and starts with a horse solo.
Come on bloggers... Let's dredge!
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One that immediately springs to mind
is Big Black Dog from Emmylou Harris's latest album Hard Bargain.
Emmy, you love your dog, so maybe you could have done a little better than this pile of what the dog leaves behind.
Should never sing
about your kids or your pets.
Nobody else really cares.
Definitely not pets
'Delilah' by Queen, from Innuendo. I know dear Fred was dying and desperate to sing till the last, but honestly it's a pretty awful song.
Whereas...
The title track of that last album "innuendo" was just about the best song they ever recorded IMHO.
The glorious exception being...
..."Lester", by Neil Finn. The only track about a dog that I can stand.
Apart from "Dog" by Dada, but then that's not really about a dog...
Dog by Dada...
is a great song. Thought I was the only one that remembered that.
I saw them live...
...in the Ulster Hall, supporting Crowded House. 1994, probably. How time flies. Where are they now?
For those who never tire of The Beatles
How about Martha, My Dear? I, for one, quite enjoy its jauntiness.
As for the lyrics...
Martha my dear,
though I spend my days in conversation,
please remember me.
Martha my love,
don't forget me,
Martha my dear.
Hold your head up,
you silly girl,
look what you've done.
When you find yourself in the thick of it,
help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly girl.
Take a good look around you,
Take a good look, you're bound to see
that you and me
were meant to be
for each other, silly girl.
Hold your hand out,
you silly girl,
see what you've done.
When you find yourself in the thick of it,
help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly girl.
Martha my dear,
you have always been my inspiration,
please be good to me.
Martha my love,
don't forget me,
Martha my dear.
...they bring an unusual perspective to the relationship between a man and his best friend!!
The Jam
The Planners Dream Goes Wrong. I hate hate hate hate this song. Don't much care for any song that uses steel drums*, but it's also Weller's vocal. Really winds me up. Only song in the entire Jam catalogue that I cannot listen to.
*Northern Lites by Super Furry Animals may be the only track with steel drums on it that I can actually like.
Would you have liked it any better
if it was a Style Council track?
I quite like TPDGW myself, but since I only have Sound Affects and The Gift (and a handful of singles), perhaps I'm not qualified to like it.
No, would have been the same
The Jam or The Style Council, the track just winds me up. Plus steel drums almost always equals naff to my ears.
not on "Just Wanna See His Face"
on Exile on Main Street they don't
Or on...
...Love The One You're With by Stephen Stills
While not quite having a 'top act' as such...
...I do love R.E.M., and you'd have to go a long way to find a song more embarrassing than "I'm Gonna DJ".
Gah. It really does put me in mind of your uncle coming into your room and going "Hey! What's that sick beat? Is that some dubstep? Phat, man. Phat. Wicked. Hey, fancy a doobie?" Makes me cringe.
Heh
I heard that for the first time yesterday and I really enjoyed it.
It's them in their channelling Iggy during the 90s state of mind though, which I find really funny.
Even Richard Thompson has his off days
Modern Woman anyone?
Ditto Billy Joel
He has a stinker called Modern Woman too. 1986 synthesiser-stabs ahoy...
Err.....
Like it's a bad thing - She sounds ideal to me!
Brooooce
I loves ya Boss but "Pony Boy" off Human Touch really tried my patience....I never EVER EVER want to hear him sing "Giddy Up, Whoa" again.
Seconded on that one
Almost as bad is I Wanna Marry You from The River.
That's
a great song!
Not at all fond of Reno
But you can play "which verse is worse" with it :
This one :
""Two hundred dollars straight in
Two-fifty up the ass" she smiled and said
She unbuckled my belt, pulled back her hair
And sat in front of me on the bed"
or this one :
"She slipped me out of her mouth
"You're ready," she said
She took off her bra and panties
Wet her fingers, slipped it inside her
And crawled over me on the bed"
Love You To...
... off Revolver - rubbish lyrics and hardly any tune.
My fave song...
...off my fave Beatles album.
The Killing feckin' Moon by EatB
if I never heard that dirge again it'll be too soon.
Really?
over exposure is one thing, but would you choose it over everything on the grey album, or anything from that band without Peter, then without Les, that calls itself Echo And The Bunnymen?
Brother James
and I have debated the merits of various Bunnymen albums in the past.
I assure you, he will not be swayed.
Unswayed.
Feck! I even ken some Elecrafixion tunes that give it a run for its money.
Pet Shop Boys: The Night I Fell In Love
A rare stinker from 2002's Release, this mid-paced story about a schoolboy groupie shagging Eminem is just excruciating. When I think about the amazing stuff that PSB hide away on b-sides, it makes it all the worse that this made the album.
So Hard
I thought that was PSB-by-numbers. It sounded like they needed a hit single and they wrote one.
Au contraire
It's PSB in exelcis, and has one of the great Tennant lyrics:
"We've both given up smoking, 'cause it's fatal/so whose matches are those".
You couldn't wish for a more eloquent summary of betrayal.
A couple
Being for the benefit of Mr Kite - HJH
I'll Keep Mine Hidden - The Smiths
Beatles
have so many -
Drive my Car
What goes on
Michelle
When I'm 64
Your Mother Should Know
Ob-la-di ob-la-da
Wild honey pie
Martha my dear
Rocky Racoon
Are probably my least favourite. There are others.
3/4
3 from Rubber Soul, 4 from the White Album. Are the albums ok?
But, I'll add to the White Album list - Revolution #9.
Ok once, as an art piece - eternally irritating thereafter.
The fabs
Revolution #9 & Michelle. (Dont much like yesterday either)
Thanks !
I must have blotted "yesterday" out. It sucks big time, as our American cousins have it.
Put it with mine
Endorse this list 100%
The Beatles' natural charm
and willingmess to experiment is part of their genius and renders all of this list redundant in the context of this thread. As far as I'm concerned there's something to value in all of them, including Love You To mentioned higher above.
Their one real stinker is Run For Your Life which is mean-spirited and downright nasty in its mysogyny. It has no element of experimentation, is musically straight-forward and overall has no charm whatsoever. One to be loathed.
Of course.
no other groups had natural charm and and willingness to experiment.
(or sold as many magazines, or cradled a heritage industry).
I'm not getting into a Beatles fight, but to excuse to human gift of error and flaw is surely contrary to the concept of aesthetics and criticism.
I'm not saying all their tracks are equally wondrerful
just that the previous nominations are not as bad as Run For Your Life. After all, the orginial post calls for your favourite band's worst track (singular).
I quite like & hear at least some merit in the others, even the Ringo song.
What goes on
is a stinker - even by Ringo's wayward standards.
What Goes On
I'd agree that the Ringo song is a weak track, tho Run for Your Life is the worst, for all the reasons cited. But I love all the others on your list. To each his/her own, I guess.
What Goes On Goes On
I love What Goes On. I agree Ringo's delivery lacks his usual 'charm', but just focus on the guitar playing - George and John, locked together. And the harmonies are pretty strong and infectious. The Rubber Soul song I skip is 'The Word' - tedious 'drug' song (but it's probably a better magazine name than 'What Goes On')
Take This Brother may it serve you well
I LOVE Revolution Number 9. I really do.
I love the fact that for a brief period in 1968 The Beatles did so many drugs they predicted what Cabaret Voltaire would do in Sheffield ten years later. It's great because it's actually a really good sound collage, and it's made all the more exciting because it's got Lennon, George Harrison and Yoko on it....The Watusi...The Twist...Eldorado...
It's what separates the HJHs from the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Who. None of those bands had the brass neck to put something like this on an album.
It's a cacophony, and yet if you listen to it rather than skipping it, it's strangely 'Beatle-y' with all the loops of string parts, tape loops and Beatle voices. It sort of shouldn't exist..but it does..so why not embrace it and try and get yr head round it?
'Drive My Car'...
Whaaaaat?!
Drive My Car
I have to ask...why!!!!???
Surely for
"Beep beep, beep beep, yeah!"
THAT'S THE BEST BIT!
Or the worst
depending on how you look at it.
And I look at it your way
Awful. Was AMAZED when Macca selected that to play at the X Factor final a year or two ago.
Your Mother Should Know is a
Your Mother Should Know is a masterpiece is pisstaking Macca. The Beatles in full on "fuck you - we're the best band in the world, we'll do what we want" pomp.
I don't know
I think Macca just really likes that sort of music. Along with all the other sorts - his curiosity and versatility is one of the pillars of the Fabs music albeit in the end it was one of the things that drove the others (and the critics) mad. You can read too much into things sometimes.
I think he likes that kind of thing too
Also possible astute conservative audience sector alienation avoidance trad style musical corrective?
Neil Young - Piece of Crap
self explanatory.
Better
than the whole of Everbody's rockin'
Never heard it
couldn't get past the sleeve.
And the whole toy-throwing-out-of-pram nature of the whole project.
You're lucky
Wish I wasn't such a completist - got it cheap, but it was still too much. Unlike Trans it doesn't even have 1 good song to save it.
Such a shame
Sleeps With Angels is a beautiful album and it means a heck of a lot to me. In my top 3 Neil Young albums most definitely but Piece Of Crap really puts a dampener on it.
In this day and age though at least I can edit on iTunes.
Stone Roses - Tightrope
Yes it's Second Coming time again.
This is a tuneless dirge. Awful cliched rawwwk lyrics.
Radiohead - We Suck Young Blood
Crikey on a bikey it's shit.
Yep.
But let's not forget 'Good Morning Mr Magpie'.
Thom sounds like a parody of himslf on this track, as though he wrote it on auto-pilot. The lyrics are cringey. What amazes me is how it made it onto an album.
One for sorrow
two for joy. I likes it a lot. It took a while to win me over but now I think it may be my favourite from King Of Limbs. That may not be saying much for some but I consider it an interesting, spiky groove.
I quite like the "spiky groove",
it's the corny, Radiohead-lite lyrics I can't stand.
I'm all about the words, me.
I can't say I really know the lyrics
I'm all about the music me (mostly).
King Leer by Morrissey
"Your boyfriend he
Went down on one knee
Well could it be
He's only got one knee?"
Err, will this do?
I love this song
and my Moz vote would go for "The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils" which should be renamed "The Audience Is Afraid Of The Music".
"Sorrow Will Come In The End" is pretty atrocious too. We're *all" sorry now, Stephen. Just MAKE IT STOP. (Which he did, for about six years...)
Agreed on that one too.
Kill Uncle is where Moz lost me forever...
Although
I Keep Mine Hidden is cited above as The Smiths nadir, the vote usually goes to Golden Lights. In defence, but not apology, I Keep Mine Hidden is little more than a demo and Golden Lights was superior in it's original mix before Morrissey insisted on it's remixing.
I still have a soft spot for Kill Uncle, it's nowhere near his best work, but knocks the last two albums into a hatful of hollow.
The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils? One of my favourites i'm afraid.
"How should we follow up the last one Moz? You've stolen both critical and commercial success from the arms of meagre sales and derision (even though the album before that was equally fabulous..fuckin' NME (i digress))"
"How about an eight tracker with four ten minute numbers, everything turned up to eleven, fake scars, more homo-erotic-boxers?"
"you're the boss"
"Yes, yes i am. Now which one of you will sit this album out?"
Oh no...
How can you hate a song with the lyric:
"I tried to surprise you
With vodka
Or Tizer"
Must admit, though, Kill Uncle was, as a whole, a bit pants
Led Zep
a rare faux pas (in my book)
Drum intro
sampled by De La Soul for The Magic Number. So it wasn't a complete waste of time.
D'yer Mak'er surely
The worst attempt at a reggae track I've ever heard. Bonzo was never so clumsy.
Elvis Costello
Deep Dark Truthful mirror - the line:'A butterfly drinks a turtles tears, but how do you know he really needs it?" is fucking awful.You lost the plot on this one Declan.
great bit
of arranging from one Mr. Toussaint on it though
I like that line
EC explained that he cribbed it from a nature documentary where, yes, a butterfly was drinking a turtle's tears. I thought the line represented the notion of "how do we identify the sources of those things that will sustain us in life"
Discuss. Show your working out.
I remember
him doing it on that brilliant Saturday night sessions tv show, can't remember the name of it, that was on RTE when I was in school. Made me check out more of his stuff. I think it was the same place I heard "Little Palaces" as well. Anyone remember the show I'm talking about? That Spike album is pretty ropey though, the production very much of it's time.
The Session
He was on it in 1987 and previewed some Spike stuff.
Good old YouTube...
nice work
Doc
EC
I liked everything EC did up to that dreadful album with Bert Bacherach which I loathed with a passion. I've not really bothered since though I enjoy him when I hear him. That phase of being a big ballad singer was the pits. That version of "She".....**shudders**
Not just *that* version.
What a fucking awful song. But yeah, his version does lay a freshly minted turd on the top of the shit pie that is that bloody horrible, mawkish, syrupy vomit festival.
Don't you like that one Bob
;)
Don't you like that one Bob?
;)
When on earth are people going to face the fact ..
..that "Costello" is really just a nob? An awful whining delivery, in the belief that music can be shoehorned beneath a political viewpoint. A few good songs in the 80's thanks to the talents of other musicians does not a career make.
I disagree with you about 95%
but you're a brave man.
Very few EC songs are at all political. But if you don't like his voice you'll never get past that. See also Dylan, Neil Young, Radiohead, Mozzer...
If there was an instrumental version of This Year's Model - and I'm saying there should be - you might get something out of his music.
A brave man eh?
There are certain artists that have been very careful to play their cards right. So that critically they are lauded and seen as "credible" because of this. But does this cowardice make them artists that people are really going to still be listening to 50 or 100 years from now?
I wouldn't put any of the people you site above with the exception of Mozzer, into that category by the way, most of them are far too honest and committed to MUSIC.
I think the "Costello" has a little talent here and there sure. But that little doesn't justify the accolades he receives by any means.
The lovely Kate: 'The Painter's Link'.
Sorry, but I always skip that one. I've no issue with old Rolfie but it's the high cheese factor that I find uncomfortable.
That said, I wouldn't change a thing about Kate & it's one of her very few clangers.
No doubt it'll soon be explained to me just how crucial that particular song is to the whole of 'Ariel'.
I apologise for my thickosity in advance!
No, I'm with you on that one
It's a fantastic sequence - but nearly (but not quite) spoiled by bloody Rolf Harris.
But I would argue that 'Violin' off the otherwise sublime Never Forever is far, far worse and when I hear it with all its squawky 'jiggling along with the fiddly, diddly dee' bollox, I suddenly understand all those people who regard Kate as a winsome Minnie Mouse voiced joke. I have to go and put 'Hounds of Love' on just to remind myself that even Homer slept (as my old French teacher put it).
But then I can't stand 'In the Warm Room', 'Coffee Homeground', 'Ran Tan Waltz', 'Heads We're Dancing', 'Big Stripey Lie', 'Walk Straight Down the Middle', 'Top of the City' (either version) 'Why Should I Love You' 'Pi' or 'Lyra' either!
Between a Man and a Woman
is her worst one in my book. No melody, and the lyrics are just one big whine. It's just a dull song, and you don't expect dull from Kate.
I agree with most of whitehorse's list too, apart from Ran Tan Waltz, which I think is brilliant.
Mahavishnu Orchestra ...
...yes, I speak of the hallowed Mk 1 (1971-73) version. I can get delirious about everything except this doom-fest 'Sanctuary'. Some diehards regard it as their peak but I just don't see it myself...
The last gasp of the Mk 2 version recorded several duds on the final LP, 'Inner Worlds' in 1976. But that barely counts as an MO album...
disagree and strongly disagree Mr. H
I love Sanctuary and apart from Ralphe's tune, Inner Worlds is outstanding!
ex longhair, G7
Ralphe's tune?!?
...but surely, Blastmaster, 'Planetary Citizen' is one of the highlights of an otherwise incoherent, half-baked slab of swansongery? Okay, 'Way of the Pilgrim', 'Lotus Feet' and 'In My Life' aspire to the greatness of yore - and 'Planetary Citizen' is a decent slice of funk (if not exactly core MO stuff) - but the rest? From memory, dreadful... even Walter Kolosky, MO biographer in chief, can't bear to listen to the atonal shrieking of one of the tracks (the one where John just noodles around using a dreadful electronic gadget)...
Anyway, let The Massive decide: it's Planetary Citizen! And you thought the Mahavishnu Orchestra couldn't groove? Pshaw!
Miles Out
Ah, you're thinking of 'Miles Out' Colin, that's the track with the mental guitar synthesizer. Give the album another go 'All In the Family' and both 'Inner Worlds' are really very good.
be afeared...
To be honest...
...it's not one I listen to very often. But I'll stick it on sometime soon (I think its the only one I don't have on CD, and it's telling that it's the only original MO LP NOT included in the current 5CD cheap box set in mini-LP format). I have bootleg CD of this last-gap 4 piece version of the MO live in Belgium in 1976. Boy, it's dreadful. It's as if they didn't care any more, just a lot of self-indulgent drivel with nothing to engage an audience and bits of back catalogue messed around with to the point of annoying the loyal fan.
On the other hand, the 40 1972-73 concert recordings currently available on wolfgangsvault.com are mind-blowingly fabulous!
says it better than I can
plus it's got that 'Hammond' sound I love
Perhaps if 'Inner Worlds' had been released as...
...anything OTHER than a 'Mahavishnu Orchestra' album, I might not be so damning of it (though I'd still not return often to it). The Mk1 MO was the greatest band of all time; the Mk2 MO made two amazing albums and sounded like no-one else, yet clearly had 'evolved' from MO Mk1; and then we have MO Mk3 - 'Inner Worlds'. It's just a rag-bag - part Michael Walden cosmic soul LP, part John McL experimental LP, a dash of Ralphe Armstrong's Harlem funk... However one views the merits of its contents, it is not in any way a cohesive record - surely you'd agree on that, Blastmeister?
And if you ever met Ralphe Armstrong you say to him, on the basis of 'Planetary Citizen', "Can't Stand Your Funk"...?*
(*CSYF being the MO's only UK single - a 2 minute slab of pristine funk in 7/8, with not a fusion solo in sight! And no, it wasn't a hit.)
Nay, nay, Mr. Wilkes!
You surely cannot compare the Mahavishnu Orchestra of Apocalypse with a similar combo on Visions of the Emerald Beyond?
Behave man!
Oh, but I do, I do!
....I think all will become clear and cohere when we finally hear some of soundman/live recording maestro Dinky Dawson's 1975 MO tour recordings posted on wolfgangsvault.com - it's only a matter of time! Thus far there's so little evidence of the 'Visions' band live. And you must concede that the full version of 1974 Montreux concert [not just the 50 mins released by Eagle Vision] - the 'Apocalypse' LP played in full and more than double the length of said album - adds massively to one's appreciation of that set of material? I suspect it's only the glossy production of 'Visions...' that's upsetting your full appreciation of it!
Anyway, let's hear some 1974 MO at Montreux...
Quite an amusing skirmish..
from James and Colin on Inner Worlds, of all things. Well, 35 years on my turntable and almost definitely not "outstanding" but a "rag-bag"??? Quite an enjoyable album though and Armstrong with his Mowtownish bass and Goldberg with his wide palette of mid-seventies synths etc are just fine by me. Can't quite forgive Walden for River Of My Heart, fuckin horrible.
Questing spirit that he is, McLaughlin was off on his next tangent (Shakti) soon after and on and on. Yes indeed, the original Mahavishnu was astonishing, but Colin, seriously man, it couldn't go on forever and we wouldn't have wanted it to.
Gone and made me play it now..
just have to say the forward motion on All In The Family, with its surging Hammond and glistening marimba, is astonishing still.
No, you're right Declan...
...the MO was something that clearly couldn't go on for long: the brilliance (hence egos/artistic drive) of the 5 individuals in the Mk 1 band, let alone their personality quirks and the fierce work schedule they followed - jetting around the globe non-stop for 2 1/2 years - meant that a fractious split was all but inevitable. It needn't have happened so quickly, but it happened and there it is...
The partial reunions on 1978's 'Electric Guitarist' were in retrospect a nice way to go out. It's a real shame Jan Hammer can't bury the hatchet with John after all these years, though. Still, none of my business. I'm just grateful for all the live material on wolfgangsvault, most of it fortuitously recorded by Dinky Dawson. Posterity - and music - have a lot to thank him for!
But I do still think 'Inner Worlds' is a rag-bag - it just doesn't hang together at all, and even with the better tracks (apart from In My Life and Lotus Feet) the recording sound doesn't help - Walden's drums sound faccid, John's guitar just doesn't seem to have any 'power' - just a nasty trebly quality. 'Miles Out' is a shrieking, unloveable mess and yet 'Phenomenon Compulsion', his mad duet with Billy Cobham on 'Electric Guitarist' two years later is a masterpiece - and they might be thought of as coming from more or less the same place/same idea.
I can imagine that 'All In The Family' would have sounded great with the tighter, shinier 'Visions...' production sound in 1975 but it just sounds like a tinny Santana jam on 'Inner Worlds'.
(Watch out for the, er, Adolph Hitler appearance at the end of this frankly incongruous Bugs Bunny video setting...)
Hmm..
shrieking, eh? It's actually pretty straightforward ring modulator on that track, even if it's pompously called systems frequency shifter, matter of taste, I do think it's okay. In My Life certainly crap. Now the tinny Santana bit I cannot agree with, more par for the course for the myriad jazzrock stuff of the time, lots of stereo trickery, some (he said gingerly) of which is still enjoyable. And I'm listening on vinyl and the sound is decidedly not thin.
Doesn't hang together: give you that one, it's very..ahem..varied.
The Bugs clip unfortunately "not available in your territory".
We might have to...
...agree to disagree on this one, Dec! I WILL dig out my vinyl in the next couple of weeks and give it a fair hearing, but I fear it'll never really feel part of the Mahavishnu legacy to me and there's something about the production sound of it (and to be fair of a lot of rock based LPs in 1976 especially) that I don't like much. 'Way Of The Pilgrim' I always thought was the standout - and I do like Walden's 'In My Life', but there's no way on earth it should be on an MO LP...
Love it
This thread is great. I think the MO deserve a thread in their own right actually. I've only got the first album which I love, but I am inspired to get the rest now. That Amazon Classics offer looks good. And I have it from the source that J Mc is Kate Mossman's favourite guitarist!
Perhaps...
...I should start one sometime... But then sometimes the best discussions of a topic can happen in the middle of another discussion, can't they? I foresee you, me and a load of tumbleweeds when/if I start the MO thread... (which won't be till next week - off to Paris via Caravan for several days soon)
Oh yes!
See you at the bar! I'll wear my Word badge!
One or two
The Stones - Sing This All Together (See What Happens)
Jethro Tull - Watching You Watching Me
Black Sabbath - Am I Going Insane?
Deep Purple - Mary Long
John Martyn - Eibhli Ghail Chiuin Ni Chearbhail
Beatles - Revolution #9
Genesis - Wot Gorilla
ugh!
Spot The Clunker
These are pretty much guaranteed the use of the 'skip' button:
- Stiff Little Fingers: Closed Groove
- Jam: Music For The Last Couple
- Who: Cobwebs & Strange
Hey bloody Jude
If never hear it again it will be too soon.
who's it by?
?
The Sweary Beatles
They also recorded Piss Off Eleanor Rigby, which clearly was their carreer nadir.
Ringo
later continued the trend with Fuck Off Boogaloo :-)
And
Being For The Benefit of Mister Shite
Knob-La-Di Knob-La-Da
The Bollocks of John And Yoko
and not forgetting...
... And I Love Her Cunt.
See what you've done now
The Continuing Story of Bunga-Bungalow Bill
Ticket to Moustache Ride
I've Just Seen a Facial
When I'm 69
Maxwell's Silver Hammerhead
... now wash your hands.
Don't forget
their classics :
What the fuck goes on ?
and it's "sequel"
Let it Fuckin' Be will you (just for a minute)
"She & My Monkey"
Afterall, everybody's got SOMETHING to hide...
A small list
Depeche Mode. Pipeline - one synth riff, ping pong balls, a bad lyric and far far too long.
OMD - Locomotion. Steel drums! Forced jollity! Party atmosphere! Get stuffed. I want grey, downbeat songs about power stations.
New Order - Thieves Like Us with the vocal. Without the vocal, it's great.
The Mode;
Worse than the majority of the post - Wilder LPs?
I think not, as a sonic exercise (pretention meter straining) it pretty much sums up where they were heading in that Gareth Jones/Munich/Emulator phase, which, retrospectively, i now hold dearest.
The 5.1 mix on the remasters is fantastic, honest.
I love the lyrics of Thieves Like Us too. Barney does profundity via the strangest means.
Some stinkers post-Wilder to be sure
Macro, Darkest Star, Hole to Feed, Goodnight Lovers. I considered all of these but Pipeline remains the most tedious to these ears.
I have posted before about TLU. Barney strolls in, pissed, and makes it up. "And it cuts your LIFE like a broken KNIFE!". Jesus Christ.
We disagree.
As we as prone to.
As a fan of Barney's impromptu intoxicated musings, i can only venture that,for me, they are a perfect antidote to the honed bookish words of his predescessor.
I love them both.
Thieves Like Us?!
You, my friend, have clearly never heard NO's cover of Vietnam on the War Child 'Hope' album. That is very clearly their worst song. It's utter gash from soup to nuts.
I'll try to explain
In my opinion, the fact that TLU is such a great underlying track makes it worse than just an all-round bad song.
With Thieves Like Us they had something so good, but then they turned it into something so very bad. Barney's singing and lyrics are frequently great, but that time I think they messed up.
Well...
After reading your posts, I went back to TLU and played it this morning for the first time in ages. It sounded bloody ace to me!
But as the OP said, this thread can only ever be about opinions. Nothing I say is going to make you like TLU and nothing you say will convince me that Vietnam is not the worst track NO ever recorded. Cheers.
You're right, of course
There is no right or wrong when it comes to opinions about music. One thing about this blog is that it provides a release. Absolutely no-one I *actually* know gives a rats bumhole about New Order songs. I would say about 90% of the people I know have absolutely no idea who or what New Order is. So it's nice to vent sometimes.
I have a friend who collects decorative spoons. Of course, he is ridiculed mercilessly - but I bet he's on some blog somewhere saying roughly the same sort of things.
Gricers
I saw some train-spotters at Stafford station the other day getting RIDICULOUSLY excited when a freight loco chugged its way slowly past them. Oh how I snorted derisively...
... Today I was exchanging excited emails with a friend about the NO Western Works bootleg and the Radiohead TKOL remixes that are out now.
I'm not sure if one activity is really any sadder than the other.
Thieves Like Us is quite a shout
There are plenty to choose from on the last two albums (esp "Rock The Shack" with Bobby Gillespie). Even if you go all pedantic and refuse to acknowledge anything post Republic cos it's not classic line up New Order it's still a surprise choice.
I would pick "Pimper's Paradise" by The Wailers, which particularly narks me as it spoils the otherwise excellent side two of the "Uprising" lp.
That Wilco Track
on A Ghost Is Born that sounds like a fridge for, like, 10 minutes.
Agree with you
on that. When I first heard it I played it in its entirety thinking something was going to happen. Nothing did. Wreckls an otherwise great album.
Incubus
By Fish era Marillion. Every b side better.
Biggest crime - Bridge Over Troubled Water. A steaming pile of poo on an otherwise spotless record.
Richard Thompson...
Fast Food off 'Mirror Blue'. It ain't The Great Valerio.
Joni Mitchell
bloody Blue
that, but also anything else of hers murdered by Judy bloody Collins
Wow
I love Blue. It's a perfect song on a perfect album.
It's the song
that makes the album less than perfect for me.
Actually, come to think of it, Blue is probably my least favoured Joni album.
What, worse than
Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm?
crikey.
That's rioting talk!
I'm astounded, Helena! Not that you don't care much for Blue (which I adore, though not as much as several of her subsequent albums), but that you'd place it at the bottom of the heap. Unless, that is, you stopped listening after 1979, in which you'd have missed out on a series of records ranging from the OK (Night Ride Home) through the ropy with one great song (Wild Things Run Fast) to the atrocious (Shine, Travelogue).
And I think the song Blue is exquisite. There's a live version I've seen on telly once that almost had me in tears.
Nope
...didn't stop in '79.
Oh, I'm not saying the album is all bad; there are some great tracks (All I Want, My Old Man, A Case of You...) but bundled together as a collection just doesn't do it for me. I find her voice irritating much of the time and the whole thing a bit fey and self-indulgent - the title track being the worst.
She does the songs better with some distance from the time
And I like Shine!
I fear we may have to disagree about...
..."Judy bloody Collins"! :-)
Joni's music isn't quite my thing (I listened to Blue for the first time round at my old English teacher's place in the summer, after several bottles of wine, and for an apparently iconic album it just wasn't that great...)
That said, Judy generally makes Joni's songs at least palatable to my ears - like this one:
La la la la la
...not listening. That's one of my most favourite Joni tracks, but I'd rather not hear it sung in monotone. Everything that woman touches has the heart sucked out of it; plus she sings so far back, it makes my throat ache just listening.
I was really pleased to catch an interview with her on R4 a while back. She was intensely self-absorbed and irritating which cheered me enormously. It's so annoying when an artist you don't like turns out to be a lovely person...
Still, it'd be a boring blog if we all shared the same taste.
Ha! very good...
...let's celebrate this spirit of diversity with Joni doing a tribute to Cleo Laine:
You've clearly never heard
Turbulent Indigo, on which Seal also performs *I rest my case*
Well, you *say* that...
I can't stand the album - but, strangely perhaps, that song, How Do You Stop?, on which Seal's dulcet tones are heard, is my favourite on the album. And of course it's a cover.
The Laughing Gnome
[ducks]
Are you
from Lincolnshire? :-)
Controversial
Much as I love Teenage Fanclub, Verisimilitude does my box in.
At gigs (and they almost always play it) it's my cue to get to the bar. Ray McGinley has tons of better songs!
Absolutely agree. I hate "Verisimilitude". Geddit???!!!!!!
It's a sixth form song. "Ooh. I learned a new word in English today!" The only weak spot on Grand Prix.
Agreed
It's a proper smug smart-arse of a song.
Agree. Songwriting by numbers.
which so often pays big divvies for TFC, but this should have been a b-side. "To me you sound so inane" he sings - you said it, pal.
Blimey....
...I am Mr Contrary today: I LOVE that song.
Rainy Day
Women. Great title, terrible song. He should have called it Everybody Must Get Stoned and put it out under a false name so they could have been loads of legendary rumours about whether it really was Dylan or a parody by Jerry Samuels or whoever. In the meantime he could have put the title Rainy Day Women to better use, could even have used it as the title for Just Like A Woman so it would have sounded less like a whinge.
Rainy Day Women. Great title, terrible song.
Sorry Mr fade, I completely disagree, I think it is a great song (from possibly his best album), but it has a dreadful title.
A wonderfully atmospheric song.
Love it.
Can't stand it either.
It's the one Dylan song I left off when transferring my albums to itunes.
Jimmy Webb
Amongst all the beauty is the dross of What Does A Woman See In A Man and Sugarbird. Most of you will have been fortunate enough not to hear these two.
Five Years Time
by Noah & the Whale is very annoying. Album's 2 and 3 are great though.
Everything
by Noah & the Whale is very annoying.
Todd Rundgren
"Dogfight Giggle"; it defines 'stoned pissing about in the studio'. However, paradoxically, I've always loved "A treatise on Cosmic Fire". Call me inconsistent.
As a big Todd fan
I don't like loads of his stuff!
Does anyone except me like
"A Cappella" by Todd Rundgren?
Not sure...
I haven't heard the whole album; but I can say that Lost Horizon is an absolute stunner. And one of my favourite singers, Mathilde Santing did a knockout cover of it on her album Under The Blue Roof. Search it out, it's well worth it!
Miracle at the Bazaar...
...is something like unlistenable on an otherwise great album.
Blue Orpheus, Pretending to Care (though schmaltzy, it's still fab), and Hodja. So many styles, and a great concept for an album.
My question to anyone who knows the background: did he really use NO instruments and only synthesized vocal parts for all the instruments? On some songs it's clear, like the aforementioned Blue Orpheus. But NO instruments at all? (That's waht I always tell people, anyway, so I'd hate to be made out a liar.)
Not saying this to be 'out
Not saying this to be 'out there' or confrontational in any way but Meat is Murder by the Smiths really grinds my gears - I really hate that song.
My favourite band are the National & I am a fan of everything they have done...with the exception of Available from Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers! It does not belong on that album as it sounds like a crap b-side. However, it is quite a nifty song live.
Agree with you on The Smiths...
Makes me want to turn off the stereo and head off for a f**kin' enormous kebab.
Simply replace the word "murder" with "tasty"
and you've got yourself a winner.
"The flesh you so fancifully fry / It is tasty"
You can do this yourself with Audacity. It's probably best if you can sing like Morrissey.
I don't know about you...
...but I've never fried flesh all that fancifully, as far as I know. I'm doing lamb tonight, so I might do it in costume, or maybe try for an elaborate meat sculpture.
Meat is always best cooked
while tittering, and preferably using some kind of brightly coloured novelty spatula.
I love Meat is Murder
Even though I'm a ferocious carnivore. I love the haunting piano and seasick rhythm.
As much as
i shy away from confrontation (due to the reality of subjectivity and having too many Beatles fans on my case for years), you are beyond wrong concerning aforementioned song.
And all of the demonstrative carnivore gags are substandard.
Find another way to wynd the old man up...
How can it be wrong to state a preference?
Jethro Tull
"Hot Mango Flush" from J-Tull.com - so terrible that there isn't even a Youtube link for it. Instead, here are the lyrics in all their ghastliness; imagine Ian Anderson reciting them in a half-singing half-speaking voice and you may get the idea:
Hot mango flush.
Ladies with ice cream hair -
Gyroscopic pink neon beams -
Everybody’s happy about something.
The crowd moves like a flock of startings: they
Switch direction as one.
Jive on the jukebox - jack and joker
Split the night air with whoop and holler.
Faint aroma - wood smoke, old fish,
Diesel harbour, roadside mongrel,
Painted man with buttons barely
Holding, bursting belly bulging.
Doe-eyed ragamuffin mumbling -
Scolded for some vague infraction.
Stole a penny candy-coloured
Sweetheart kiss down at the market.
Down at the market all the world
Seems to simmer:
Hot mango flush.
But the thing is, Ruff...
...if we limit it to the JT golden era of 1968-75 surely the very worst thing they committed to tape was - perversely - their biggest US hit single: yes, I speak of the execrable 'Bungle In The Jungle' - a hit single so dire it was played live on one tour only (at the time), not mimed to on any TV show and left in obscurity ever since. Except for this chap on youtube who's cobbled together a fake video for it:
nice bass line
and "c'mere Shep" whistle
Oh God yes
I quite forgot about B in the J! I must admit, it really is a little too easy to pick any song at random off 'J-Tull.com' (lest we forget, an album so bad that they haven't recorded another one since)...
B In The J
I like Bungle. I think Warchild generally is great considering at the time it was considered to be a cautious return to form. I don't know J-Tull at all but you've out me off anyway. That track Colin posted recently in the 80s thread was fucking dreadful.
have to agree
I like Bungle too. Warchild is a great album. But then again I was one of the very few people in the world who loved 'Passion Play' - a magnificent album - very thought provoking for those who wanted their thoughts provoked.
As Usual
"Blue Jean"
Frankly, most of Tonight while you're at it.
Hmmmm
...if we are considering The Dame in this context, surely 'most of Never Let Me Down' would be more apposite?
Agreed, that one ain't much cop either
but Tonight was the first album I felt that he didn't have any sense of direction as to what he was trying to achieve and seemed aimed at some kind of global MTV audience he'd reached with Let's Dance. Sort of focus group Bowie.
I really don't like
Modern Love - remember it coming on at the Students' Union in Manchester when it was released and I was surprised they seemed to be playing something by Elton John.
One of the better efforts
Tonight is a ropy album, but I like Blue Jean, Loving The Alien and Dancing With The Big Boys. They're the only songs that sound as if they weren't made to a tight deadline. I actually prefer the album to Let's Dance, which apart from the singles and Criminal World, is very poor.
Marvin Gaye
Third World Girl
Frankly, pretty much all of Midnight Love while you're at it.
Seamus...
...Does anyone want to listen to the Floyd accompanied by Steve Marriott's dog?
"Mr Lacey" by Fairport Convention scars an otherwise perfect album, especially the electric drill solo. The eponymous hero sounds like an interesting chap, though
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lacey
How's about, guys and gals
XTC - That Wave. Hate, hate, HATE it.
And not strictly a favourite, but Queen - Flash, and that's just picking the suckiest from the Greatest Hits too. Otherwise fairly entertaining.
Leonard Cohen
I've said it before, "Hallelujah", made much worse by the fact that it's the only song of his that has had really widespread public attention although, thankfully, very few people realise it's actually his.
Really clunky, painful rhymes, a filler song on a really dated album.
Manic Street Preachers
Wattsville Blues - from Know Your Enemy. Letting Wire loose on a vocal is bad enough. Letting Wire loose on a vocal of a terrible, terrible song from their worst album is just mind numbingly bad. Pick a few from that album actually. Miss Europa Disco Dancer, Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My People....oh dear oh dear oh dear.
The Stone Roses - Daybreak. Worse than Tightrope, a groove that lost a tune, a lyric and a vocal.
Any sickly sweet song extolling the virtue of the author's kids should also be left in the reject pile as mentioned above - Kate Bush's "Bertie", Weller's "Sweet Pea, My Sweet Pea", Lennon's "Beautiful Boy". One exception for The Band's "Tears of Rage" which I can utterly relate to.
MSP
I was trying to think of bad songs from "Know Your Enemy" and "Lifeblood" but I've never really managed to listen to either album properly all the way through. Wattsville Blues is quite shit though.
Mine would be either "Damn Dog" from Generation Terrorists (which is a cover, I think, but naff all the same) or "Tourettes" from Gold Against the Soul, which is proper filler with a bit of swearing in it.
Lifeblood
Listened to it again the other night.
It's the sound of a band who had lost their confidence and now unsure of what they were doing, hence trying to be more experimental. Sometimes succeeding, sometime failing but it is interesting. Far better than KYE by a distance.
You're bang on about Tourette's. Never really got on with Gold Against the Soul. Something very artificial about it all. Like Give Em Enough Rope. Liked Damn Dog though. Nice throwaway cover.
Inspired by your post above Six Dog
it's in the car - I listened to about half of it last night. Better than I remember. Cheers!
Lifeblood
Worth having for Richard Nixon and I Live To Fall Asleep.
The Ugliest Album in the World
The worst Dylan song has to be 'the Ugliest Girl in the World', although to be fair it could be almost anything off 'Down in the Groove'. At least Knocked out Loaded has 'Brownsville Girl'
Love Dylan, love Cash
but Girl From The North Country is an utter abomination of a duet.
Agreed
They both seem to be singing different melodies at different time signatures. Awful.
And at certain key points...
...different lyrics, too.
Girl From The North Country was added to Nashville Skyline at the last minute to pad it out because the running time was only around 25mins.
Even with that track included the album still clocks at under half an hour.
Genesis
They have committed several crimes, but none worse than ROBBERY, ASSAULT AND BATTERY.
I beg to differ
Have you heard Wot Gorilla?!
And what's worse - its inclusion was in place of a half dozen or so decent songs Steve Hackett then put on his solo album.
And then they were shite.
Costello is a genius but....
He's written some stinkers too. The whole of North for one, much of Mighty Like a Rose, but the worst has to be his theme tune for the unfunny 80's 'comedy' Party Party. Written out of history, you won't find it on any Costello best of, even though it was a single and a minor hit.
Q magazine, 1994
he said PP was the worst thing he'd ever done. He's suppressed it.
It's nothing spectacular
but I've heard worse records than this with his name on them.
unfunny 80's 'comedy' Party Party.
UNFUNNY !!!! outside now. Party Party is very funny in a Sitcom kinda way. The song sucks but the film is great.
First 8 minutes
Sorry Michael
Shiny Happy People
It's bad, very bad...You know it and so do REM. Although worked on Sesame Street.
Len Price Three
The Len Price three album "Pictures" doesn't have a duff track on the whole album. Just goes to show what a great band they are. Playing at the Half moon Putney on friday night (14th) too. Only six quid. You can come and see how great they are. And I mean no duff tracks!
The Cure
Primary
There are other tracks worse, post-Wish, but this is a 'Greatest Hits' track and on one of their best albums, Faith.
In the late nineties...
....readers of The Amazing Pudding voted Pink Floyd's "Dogs of War" from Momentary Lapse of Reason as worst live track, a slightly different question but I can't say I disagree with them.
"My Ding a Ling."
Chuck Berry is one of the originators. Chuck Berry is rock n' roll. Chuck Berry is a legend. "My Ding a Ling" is utter rubbish.
And his biggest bloody hit.
You can see how Hitler got elected.
"Guten Abend Nuremburg!
Hier ist mein neu lieder, "Mein Ding-A-Ling". Und nachste, "Johannes B. Gute".
und "Roll Ueber Beethoven"
.
Rodders..and others
Rod Stewart did a cover of Free's 'Alright Now' which is so horrible I never bought another Rod album.
There are others "Yellow Submarine" gets in the way of The Beatles finest.
It's that feeling that a band or artist has let you down, you fly the flag for them and they record something like 'My ding-a-ling' or I just called to say I love You' or as already mentioned 'Shiny Happy People'.
Funny they all sold so well.
Slade
The Hokey Cokey - Dreadful.
No worst track
It has to be said that my favourite group -the Who - NEVER made a bad track. Every one is at least good and most are brilliant. Nothing more needs to be said.
Except for:
"My name is Ivor
I'm an engine driver"
But I'll say it anyway...
Cobwebs & Strange? Boris The Spider?
Early Morning Cold Taxi?
Uncle Ernie? (Isn't child abuse hilairious!)
Then there was
Fiddle About.
Nice.
Entwistle wrote it "just for research purposes", apparently.
The Killing Moon
EatB, hate it hate it hate it!
pish album too and they never recovered IMO
The gift that keeps on giving
Mother's Lament, the WTF final track on Cream's Disraeli Gears.
Not so much a continuation of the groundbreaking psychedelic heavy rock we'd come to expect from the supergroup trio. More like Chas & Dave after too many cans of Eight Ace.
It must have seemed simply hilarious at the time.
Worst song by great band
"Peoria" from 'Earthbound' by King Crimson, Matter of fact the whole recording is pretty shite. Only saved by the vocals on 21st Century Schizoid man, a song by Crimso I never warmed to. Retro? Who, me? There are other useless recordings--I just picked this one.
Cars hiss by my window
by The Doors. 'with a sonic boom.....boom' Depresses the hell out of me.