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I will post this here, too... some of you guys don't troll the ol' message boards...
NEW IMPROVED ADDED CONTENT AT BOTTOM!
The Biggest Musical Disappointments of 2004
A note about making the disappointments list: this does not insinuate that the records completely suck (except for that last one, there) or that I hate the bands involved. These are largely just records that didn’t do for me what I hoped that they would do. Maybe I expected too much, or maybe the artist is not the home run hitter for me that they are for others. Either way, I don’t expect to be listening to these records in their entirety again, and here are the reasons…
Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
Note to my pal Jim: Just because it rocks live don’t make it a good record. Wilco is one of those bands that I will always feel the need to give a listen to. Anything remotely connected to Uncle Tupelo is going to at least get me to prick up my ears for a moment. Wilco has been fairly reliable, and in fact, moving in an interesting direction. Being There is one of my all time favorite records. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a gem, if a bit over-hyped due to the label drop and all. So I listened with great interest to A Ghost is Born. Um. Jeff. Buddy. What’s the deal with the washing machine on track 10. I mean, what if I were listening to it through my Discman at the laundromat? I would have just wondered what the 10 minute silence was in the middle of the song. I know, I know, I just don’t “get it”. Right. I also tend to turn off Sonic Youth (who I love) when they start emulating the white noise between channels on the TV. You may blame me, I blame Jim O’Rourke. Regardless of the good to great songs at the beginning and end of this record, I guarantee that I will never listen to it all the way through again. So I guess it fails the “Lou Reed Test”.
Eminem - Encore
Okay, first off, I like the guy. I know, he’s sexist, and racist, and probably has anger management issues; but he writes a killer rhyme, and I can dance to it… if I danced. Until now. In the first place, this record sounds musically like every other record the guy has done. There’s nothing really new here. Outside of “Mosh” and “Just Lose It”, there is nothing I’d go back to here. Even those songs pick ridiculously easy targets (Dubya and Michael Jackson). In addition, the need to record belches and farts just doesn’t, as a 37 year old guy, entertain me, though the kids may feel differently. Still to paraphrase one of my favorite writers, Robert Christgau, “Sometimes the kids don’t know a damn thing”.
Brian Wilson - Gettin’ In Over My Head
I always want my favorite crazy guy to adorn us with a masterpiece. I listen to every record the guy puts out looking to find some glimmer of Pet Sounds. This has required me to listen to some crap records, let me tell you. A few of his records have some very listenable stuff on them, and I really like some of them, but none of them are brilliant. None of them make you go, WOW, that guy wrote “Wouldn’t It Be Good”. This is, I guess, one of those. It has some tuneful stuff, and it sounds like he is having a good time. So explain to me, Brian, the need to put Lady Elton John, and THE FUCKING LEAST TALENTED BEATLE on the damn thing. Record sales, right? How’d that go for you?
I can’t even hum one of the songs in my head. ‘Nuff said.
Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill
Okay, I’ll admit it. I never really got the attraction. I thought Either/Or was good and I thought XO was damn near brilliant. Other than that, I gave passing listens to the guy, and nothing offended me, but nothing really made me care, either. Of course the poor schmuck dies, and he turns into Jim fucking Morrison. I should note here that I hate the Doors. That said, I listened with interest to the new record. I find posthumous releases interesting, because no matter what the label hacks say, one is never really going to know if the record (or film) was really finished. Now, not being a fan, I can’t say for sure, but this record sounds to me as if the label hacks had their way in the studio with this album. It just sounds oh-so-produced. Some of the songs are really good, and I never want to pull the thing out of the disc player and throw it, it just sounds very unreal to me. However, the guy died and everyone decided it had to be the record of the year. I call it the “Jeff Buckley Syndrome”. Don’t believe the hype.
Donnas - Gold Medal
When I discuss this with friends, I am often accused of preferring the Donnas when they were a novelty act. This may, in fact, be true. I actually think that I liked them better as punk-rockers with the same first name.. I really enjoyed the first couple of records. Sure they were derivative and not terribly imaginative, but they rawked, and the Donnas were pretty. Somewhere along the line the ladies learned to play their instruments and they morphed into a seventies hard rock act. I have to tell you, I didn’t love most of the hard rock acts of the seventies, so I’m not gonna love this. I find this MUCH more derivative and unimaginative than Ramonsey sounding punk-rock and that is saying something. The distance between the Donnas and Vixen at this point is less than 100 yards.
Interpol - Antics
This was a weird one for me. Turn On the Bright Lights was one of my favorite records of 2002. Hell, it was probably in my top 5. I used to only make these lists with my brother to stimulate drunken conversation, so there is no way to be sure. The sulking continues on Antics, but to a less entertaining degree. There is really good stuff on here, but none of it grabs me, and honestly, I don’t understand why it would take 2 years to make an album that largely sounds like b-sides of the first one. I guess maybe the reality set in for me that they really do sound like a band that no longer exists without using the influences to create anything new. Of all of the albums on this list, I probably liked this one the best. It almost made the top 50. In the end it missed because I realized that when I reach for Interpol, it’ll be for the last record, not this one. Pity that.
R.E.M. - Around the Sun
Open note to Stipe/Mills/Buck. You write an average of one good song every two years now. Is there any way you can coerce Bill Berry into returning? Because you suck without him. “Leaving New York” is beautiful, the rest of this album is dreck. Just like “Imitation of Life” and Reveal. Just like “Why Not Smile” and Up. Suck suck suck. Peter, are you saving all of your riffs for Minus 5 records? You make me sad.
And one that just outright sucks:
Gene Simmons - Asshole
I mean, you should just KNOW, right? You look at the uber-offensive cover with old, ugly, unmasked, Gene on the cover, and you just laugh and put it down, right? Not me, pal. See, I have this unhealthy obsession with KISS. It goes back to the days when I was a pop-rock eating, Battle of the Planets watching pre-teen. Go ahead, regale me with how awful and unimportant to music they are. I will only counter with the facts that to this day, “Strutter” still kicks ass, and that they were VERY important to me. Now then, to the task at hand. GOD THIS IS AN AWFUL RECORD. I would rather listen to the Chipmunks sing hymns, or Kenny G play the Stones, or have an STD test than listen to this crap. Rarely is something so bad that it is almost comical, but here we have it. HE COVERS FUCKING PRODIGY. AAAAAAAGH. I will almost give him the titular cut, which kinda rocks, and is kind of funny. STILL he ruins it with his sub grade school rhyming, to wit: “But you’ve got a personality/Just like a bucket full of pee” AND this gem, “One day you’ll shut your trap/’Cause you’re the cream of the crap”
Excellent.
Now for those of you thinking… holy crap, this guy hates everything, well that just isn’t true. This was the first of a couple of lists to get finished. Its always more fun to hate than to praise. In the near future I will post a list of FIFTY WHOLE RECORDS that I liked in 2004. Prepare your delete buttons.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there it is... I have a couple of others coming soon... have the kids this weekend, so after 9 will be good for the writing. A couple of things for some of you:
You. Yes YOU. Be careful out there when you're all rock star-ed out drinking... I worry, like the old guy I am. It would be a horrible thing for a person of your talent and beauty to fade away.
To Jacki: Don't get discouraged. You made this move to see what would happen... being homesick is normal. It'll get better. Trust me... Roanoke will always be here. Always.
Christine: Why for you never call me? I miss you. Oh, and for the record, I could out-shitty your life! GUESS WHAT? I talked to Joe! FINALLY! For details, you'll just have to call me! :)
To the kids of SCP: If you want something to happen YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. Don't wait for the old fucks to dictate your life... throw a house party, be subversive, make a difference... waiting for clubs to open is a really long, arduous process... you all have talent! Use it.
Oh, and stop bickering with each other over stuff that won't matter a year from now... you are all friends, you all love each other... smooch and make up.
To Sage and Ariel: I. LIVE. RIGHT. OVER. HERE. Let's do better this year... I miss you guys!
To Lauren: I miss you. Hope Richmond is treating you well!
To you who insist on killing yourselves with the hard drugs: That's it. I'm done. I told YOU on the phone and I'm telling the rest of you here... I have no place in my life for idiots who can't take the chances they have been given and make something of themselves. "But my life sucks, I'm so sad, no one understands me..." Get a helmet, fuckers.
And to all of you... I hope the new year holds everything that you wish for it to... keep your eyes open... shit's about to happen. Promise.
NEW IMPROVED ADDED CONTENT AT BOTTOM!
The Biggest Musical Disappointments of 2004
A note about making the disappointments list: this does not insinuate that the records completely suck (except for that last one, there) or that I hate the bands involved. These are largely just records that didn’t do for me what I hoped that they would do. Maybe I expected too much, or maybe the artist is not the home run hitter for me that they are for others. Either way, I don’t expect to be listening to these records in their entirety again, and here are the reasons…
Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
Note to my pal Jim: Just because it rocks live don’t make it a good record. Wilco is one of those bands that I will always feel the need to give a listen to. Anything remotely connected to Uncle Tupelo is going to at least get me to prick up my ears for a moment. Wilco has been fairly reliable, and in fact, moving in an interesting direction. Being There is one of my all time favorite records. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a gem, if a bit over-hyped due to the label drop and all. So I listened with great interest to A Ghost is Born. Um. Jeff. Buddy. What’s the deal with the washing machine on track 10. I mean, what if I were listening to it through my Discman at the laundromat? I would have just wondered what the 10 minute silence was in the middle of the song. I know, I know, I just don’t “get it”. Right. I also tend to turn off Sonic Youth (who I love) when they start emulating the white noise between channels on the TV. You may blame me, I blame Jim O’Rourke. Regardless of the good to great songs at the beginning and end of this record, I guarantee that I will never listen to it all the way through again. So I guess it fails the “Lou Reed Test”.
Eminem - Encore
Okay, first off, I like the guy. I know, he’s sexist, and racist, and probably has anger management issues; but he writes a killer rhyme, and I can dance to it… if I danced. Until now. In the first place, this record sounds musically like every other record the guy has done. There’s nothing really new here. Outside of “Mosh” and “Just Lose It”, there is nothing I’d go back to here. Even those songs pick ridiculously easy targets (Dubya and Michael Jackson). In addition, the need to record belches and farts just doesn’t, as a 37 year old guy, entertain me, though the kids may feel differently. Still to paraphrase one of my favorite writers, Robert Christgau, “Sometimes the kids don’t know a damn thing”.
Brian Wilson - Gettin’ In Over My Head
I always want my favorite crazy guy to adorn us with a masterpiece. I listen to every record the guy puts out looking to find some glimmer of Pet Sounds. This has required me to listen to some crap records, let me tell you. A few of his records have some very listenable stuff on them, and I really like some of them, but none of them are brilliant. None of them make you go, WOW, that guy wrote “Wouldn’t It Be Good”. This is, I guess, one of those. It has some tuneful stuff, and it sounds like he is having a good time. So explain to me, Brian, the need to put Lady Elton John, and THE FUCKING LEAST TALENTED BEATLE on the damn thing. Record sales, right? How’d that go for you?
I can’t even hum one of the songs in my head. ‘Nuff said.
Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill
Okay, I’ll admit it. I never really got the attraction. I thought Either/Or was good and I thought XO was damn near brilliant. Other than that, I gave passing listens to the guy, and nothing offended me, but nothing really made me care, either. Of course the poor schmuck dies, and he turns into Jim fucking Morrison. I should note here that I hate the Doors. That said, I listened with interest to the new record. I find posthumous releases interesting, because no matter what the label hacks say, one is never really going to know if the record (or film) was really finished. Now, not being a fan, I can’t say for sure, but this record sounds to me as if the label hacks had their way in the studio with this album. It just sounds oh-so-produced. Some of the songs are really good, and I never want to pull the thing out of the disc player and throw it, it just sounds very unreal to me. However, the guy died and everyone decided it had to be the record of the year. I call it the “Jeff Buckley Syndrome”. Don’t believe the hype.
Donnas - Gold Medal
When I discuss this with friends, I am often accused of preferring the Donnas when they were a novelty act. This may, in fact, be true. I actually think that I liked them better as punk-rockers with the same first name.. I really enjoyed the first couple of records. Sure they were derivative and not terribly imaginative, but they rawked, and the Donnas were pretty. Somewhere along the line the ladies learned to play their instruments and they morphed into a seventies hard rock act. I have to tell you, I didn’t love most of the hard rock acts of the seventies, so I’m not gonna love this. I find this MUCH more derivative and unimaginative than Ramonsey sounding punk-rock and that is saying something. The distance between the Donnas and Vixen at this point is less than 100 yards.
Interpol - Antics
This was a weird one for me. Turn On the Bright Lights was one of my favorite records of 2002. Hell, it was probably in my top 5. I used to only make these lists with my brother to stimulate drunken conversation, so there is no way to be sure. The sulking continues on Antics, but to a less entertaining degree. There is really good stuff on here, but none of it grabs me, and honestly, I don’t understand why it would take 2 years to make an album that largely sounds like b-sides of the first one. I guess maybe the reality set in for me that they really do sound like a band that no longer exists without using the influences to create anything new. Of all of the albums on this list, I probably liked this one the best. It almost made the top 50. In the end it missed because I realized that when I reach for Interpol, it’ll be for the last record, not this one. Pity that.
R.E.M. - Around the Sun
Open note to Stipe/Mills/Buck. You write an average of one good song every two years now. Is there any way you can coerce Bill Berry into returning? Because you suck without him. “Leaving New York” is beautiful, the rest of this album is dreck. Just like “Imitation of Life” and Reveal. Just like “Why Not Smile” and Up. Suck suck suck. Peter, are you saving all of your riffs for Minus 5 records? You make me sad.
And one that just outright sucks:
Gene Simmons - Asshole
I mean, you should just KNOW, right? You look at the uber-offensive cover with old, ugly, unmasked, Gene on the cover, and you just laugh and put it down, right? Not me, pal. See, I have this unhealthy obsession with KISS. It goes back to the days when I was a pop-rock eating, Battle of the Planets watching pre-teen. Go ahead, regale me with how awful and unimportant to music they are. I will only counter with the facts that to this day, “Strutter” still kicks ass, and that they were VERY important to me. Now then, to the task at hand. GOD THIS IS AN AWFUL RECORD. I would rather listen to the Chipmunks sing hymns, or Kenny G play the Stones, or have an STD test than listen to this crap. Rarely is something so bad that it is almost comical, but here we have it. HE COVERS FUCKING PRODIGY. AAAAAAAGH. I will almost give him the titular cut, which kinda rocks, and is kind of funny. STILL he ruins it with his sub grade school rhyming, to wit: “But you’ve got a personality/Just like a bucket full of pee” AND this gem, “One day you’ll shut your trap/’Cause you’re the cream of the crap”
Excellent.
Now for those of you thinking… holy crap, this guy hates everything, well that just isn’t true. This was the first of a couple of lists to get finished. Its always more fun to hate than to praise. In the near future I will post a list of FIFTY WHOLE RECORDS that I liked in 2004. Prepare your delete buttons.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there it is... I have a couple of others coming soon... have the kids this weekend, so after 9 will be good for the writing. A couple of things for some of you:
You. Yes YOU. Be careful out there when you're all rock star-ed out drinking... I worry, like the old guy I am. It would be a horrible thing for a person of your talent and beauty to fade away.
To Jacki: Don't get discouraged. You made this move to see what would happen... being homesick is normal. It'll get better. Trust me... Roanoke will always be here. Always.
Christine: Why for you never call me? I miss you. Oh, and for the record, I could out-shitty your life! GUESS WHAT? I talked to Joe! FINALLY! For details, you'll just have to call me! :)
To the kids of SCP: If you want something to happen YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. Don't wait for the old fucks to dictate your life... throw a house party, be subversive, make a difference... waiting for clubs to open is a really long, arduous process... you all have talent! Use it.
Oh, and stop bickering with each other over stuff that won't matter a year from now... you are all friends, you all love each other... smooch and make up.
To Sage and Ariel: I. LIVE. RIGHT. OVER. HERE. Let's do better this year... I miss you guys!
To Lauren: I miss you. Hope Richmond is treating you well!
To you who insist on killing yourselves with the hard drugs: That's it. I'm done. I told YOU on the phone and I'm telling the rest of you here... I have no place in my life for idiots who can't take the chances they have been given and make something of themselves. "But my life sucks, I'm so sad, no one understands me..." Get a helmet, fuckers.
And to all of you... I hope the new year holds everything that you wish for it to... keep your eyes open... shit's about to happen. Promise.