THE worst album.... EVER!!!

[JSngry]

Just like, you know, I'm not really crazy about Stan Kenton, but you'd not have "West Coast Jazz" (or at least "West Coast Jazz" in the form it took) without him.

"Like" is not the issue. Something happened, a lot of people were caught up in/by it, it had long-lasting repercussions, and it created a lot of good music as well as a lot of dreck. That deserves objective notice and acknowledgment (and even respect, of a non-valedictory type) quite apart from personal tastes.

[Big Al]

yes, over a comic strip.

i think you were too young to appreciate bloom's social and political appeal.

think of it as a more bizarre, and imo more entertaining, version of doonesbury.

On the contrary. When Bloom County started out, it was funny, refreshing, and yes bizarre.

Then Opus came along and the focus moved away from an ensemble-based strip to a character-driven strip. Breathed's attempt to satirize the Garfield trend with Bill the Cat was a funny one-time gag (literally and figuratively) that should've quit while it was ahead, a lot like your typical SNL skit.

All of that was merely annoying, providing the occasional chuckle, until the day when Breathed decided he wanted to be a poor-man's Garry Trudeau. Bill the Cat became an institution, Opus became a merchandising bonanza (I had my Opus doll, just like everyone else), Steve Dallas became..... whatever the hell that was, it was anything but funny. Shit, even the drawn-in cameo of Trudeau in the comic's dungeon was ass-kissing at its worst.

Then, when that wasn't bad enough, he beat Rosie O'Donnell to the Trump-bashing by having Bill the Cat become Trump. That was not only unfunny, it was stupid. It immediately guaranteed that Bloom County's timelessness would forever be.... er, trumped by planting itself firmly in the mire of the 80's.

All of this at the expense of interesting characters like Milo, the old Steve Dallas, Binkley, Milo's grandpa, Quiche Lorraine, the guy in the wheelchair (the "Starchair Enterpoop") and Bobbi, his teacher girlfriend.

Don't think for a second I underestimate this comic's place in history. I just think it's undeserved. It's certainly not the timeless classic everyone wants it to be. Unlike Calvin & Hobbes which was funny from day one all the way to the end, or The Far Side which never failed to satisfy, or hell even Doonesbury which allowed its characters to grow while commenting on the political and social issues of each era through which its gone, Bloom County will forever be looked at as a relic of the 80's.

[Big Al]

Sounds like the playlist at any given hour on the local classic rock station sans the obligatory Floyd tune.

If FM had come out after The Wall, you can bet there'd be a Floyd song on FM.

[JSngry]

Something else - what changed rock from an AM to an FM music was the psychedelic/etc bands of the late 60s, but what kept it an FM music to this day was in great measure the sound of so much L.A. Rock, which again, and do not underestimate this, was a direct offshoot of the production of Abbey Road.

[Shawn]

Jim's remark about Abbey Road is dead-on, in the 70's the recording studio became an instrument of it's own. It's understandable why jazz fans would be against that, but if you accept it as it's own entity it's pretty fascinating period of time. Bands like Queen for instance took the Beatles innovations and ran with them, even if you hate the group you have to give albums like A Night At The Opera credit for the sheer genius of the production.

I still think one of the best "recordings" I've ever heard is Supertramp's Breakfast In America album, that thing SOUNDS great even if the music isn't your cup of tea.

[Jim Alfredson]

Well, Stevie Wonder proved in the 70s that you can make great sounding records that still have soul...

...until you hit the 1980s, that is. For some reason, that decade brought out the worst in just about everyone.

[JSngry]

Exactly, Shawn, and maybe those who weren't around at the time don't really have a grasp of it, but with each succeeding Steely Dan album, there was at least as much discussion about the production/recording techniques (and rumors about how anal they were getting - rumors of things like taking 8 hours just to get a bass drum sound were commonplace) as there was the music.

At least as much.

[Big Al]

Ok wise guys, laff all you want, but if you think you'd have the beloved Steely Dan (or at least Steely Dan in the form they took) w/o Linda Ronstadt, think again.

First of all, I respect your logic and your reasoning, and I think I know where you're coming from (i.e. the ONLY reason I like Foreigner's Double Vision is simply because it was one of the first rock records I ever bought. I tried listening to it with the attitude of not having heard the record before. My reaction, naturally, was one of revulsion. This record truly, TRULY, sucks, as do most (aw hell, I'm on a roll, let's just make it ALL) Foreigner records); in other words, I get the part about things being a product of their time.

But that ignores the fact that, especially in Ronstadt's case on these two tracks (which are both live, BTW), the performances are absolutely, mind-bogglingly BAD. It's as if they spent all this time and money on production values but completely forgot about the song itself! I'll grant you that Abbey Road had a shitload to do with that, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. Shawn is dead-on about Queen in this respect: the songs may be shit, but DAMN do they sound nice! For my money, the radio can't play "Fat Bottomed Girls" enough for my taste; sure it's a stupid song, but that drum sound totally KICKS ASS!!!

In other words, I dig that it's totally subjective, but in Ronstadt's case, it would've been nice if she'd maybe dug just a little deeper than the surface of the songs she was butchering.

Edited November 12, 2008 by Big Al

[Aggie87]

Well, Stevie Wonder proved in the 70s that you can make great sounding records that still have soul...

...until you hit the 1980s, that is. For some reason, that decade brought out the worst in just about everyone.

Yep.

[JSngry]

Well, Stevie Wonder proved in the 70s that you can make great sounding records that still have soul...

...until you hit the 1980s, that is. For some reason, that decade brought out the worst in just about everyone.

Those classic 70s albums really don't sound as "great" by today's standards as you might think, in just pure "recording quality" terms. At least I don't think so. But I'll take'em anyway.

As for the 80s, hey, two words - early digital. Recording, keyboards, drum machines, everything. It sounded cheap & garish as hell, but everybody went with it, and nobody noticed, because it was the 80s, and cheapness and garishness was the order of the day (and read as much or as little political implication into that as you wish... )

[Big Al]

All I can say is, if you think that the music discussed here is the worst album ever, you have not heard enough third rate punk rock, or current teen pop. Compared to many of the songs in those genres, the songs mentioned at the beginning of this thread are musical masterpieces.

Oh yeah, there's far worse music out there. But as an ALBUM, well... it's like the Stones Sucking in the Seventies: it's as if someone went out of their way to make a truly hideous album. If EVERYTHING on this album was lousy, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But the fact that a great tune like "FM (No Static at All)" is then followed by Seger's "Night Moves;" or, as I said before, including Queen's "We Will Rock You" but NOT including "We Are the Champions;" it winds up being a record that was built to inconvenience the listener as much as possible!

I gotta hand it to whoever put this together. Something this awful takes more thought than one might imagine.

[Shawn]

Yeah, early digital...ARGH!!!!

I bet if you pulled out the master tapes to Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality they would SMELL like weed.

[Man with the Golden Arm]

bwaaahaha Al!

Unfortunately I've had to live with, most recently, the worst album of all time ... AND it's a two CD set.

the thing just makes me want to freeking scream every time it's played ... AND it was in my wife's nightstand player for seemingly an eternity so I got to enjoy daily Bono and some bombastic cellos right smack into the uncaffeinated synapses. googoogafugginchew

[JSngry]

...in Ronstadt's case, it would've been nice if she'd maybe dug just a little deeper than the surface of the songs she was butchering.

Dude, she never has, not in any of her various incarnations, and she probably never will. That's just who she is and what she does. But the people who like/liked her don't seem to notice, so hey...

And I still maintain that, quite apart form any subjective reading of her various recordings, historically she did play a major role in formulating a major part of 70s Rock, and for that, credit is due, quite apart form whether or not she was "good" (or not) at what she did. Go back and look at who was playing on her early/mid 70s records and see how many of those players went on to other things. From what I understand, Peter Asher & her pretty much worked together on formulating that sound, but it was her who was the "talent scout" & "conceptualist". Others were getting there before her, and certainly others did it better before and after her. But as a "catalyst" in the popular realm/industry impact, the person whose success triggered a "boom" that carried with and momentum "heard 'round the world", hey, that would be her.

Don't get me wrong - I am not a fan, not even remotely (I kinda like the early Stone Poneys things, but not really all that much). But a wholesale dis of her is just too easy/cheap, I think, and not in line with the reality of her career. It may be more "musicological" than "musical", this respect that I pay her, but hell, with pop music, where does one end and the other really begin?

[JSngry]

bwaaahaha Al!

Unfortunately I've had to live with, most recently, the worst album of all time ... AND it's a two CD set.

WTF is THAT???

[Aggie87]

bwaaahaha Al!

Unfortunately I've had to live with, most recently, the worst album of all time ... AND it's a two CD set.

WTF is THAT???

Watch the movie. Once.

[JSngry]

bwaaahaha Al!

Unfortunately I've had to live with, most recently, the worst album of all time ... AND it's a two CD set.

WTF is THAT???

Watch the movie. Once.

That sounds like a dare...

[JSngry]

I gotta hand it to whoever put this together. Something this awful takes more thought than one might imagine.

Speaking of which, ahve you ever seen the movie, Al? As Irecall it (which is very loosely) the soundtrack is perfect for the plot, which, yeah, pretty much implies everything you think it does.

[Hot Ptah]

bwaaahaha Al!

Unfortunately I've had to live with, most recently, the worst album of all time ... AND it's a two CD set.

WTF is THAT???

Watch the movie. Once.

That sounds like a dare...

I saw the trailer often as I took my daughter and her friends to other films. It looked like a "historical recreation" of the late 1960s, with Beatles songs done by others as the soundtrack--but all of the characters, who were supposed to be living in the late 1960s, look like young fashion models of today. It did NOT appear to be a gritty, realistic look at the turbulence of that era, to put it mildly.

Did the trailer provide an accurate window into the film?

[A Lark Ascending]

Strange, but the production values that I started to notice around 1976 were one of the things that turned me away from pop/rock almost totally at that time. Everything sounded like it had been recorded in an aircraft hanger - boomy drums, an immense, multilayered sound, a simple beat right up front.

When it comes to how rock records sound my heart lies very much in the early 70s - the loose, freewheeling feel of so much of my favourite music of that time. A record like 'Sticky Fingers' might still be obviously that of a 'beat group' but it slipped and slid in a way stadium rock could never emulate (and who slipped and slid better than Little Feet?).

Give me Free over Bad Company any day!

Of course, that perspective is totally a result of cutting my teeth on music between 70 and 76. If I was five years younger I'd have probably found loud, boomy drums exciting.

[AllenLowe]

"until you hit the 1980s, that is. For some reason, that decade brought out the worst in just about everyone. "

actually, I did some of my best work in the '80s -

this thread IS about me, right? I was afraid to read the first post -

[DukeCity]

This discussion made me think of Yacht Rock.

The Linda Ronstadt talk made me fondly recall a gig I did a few years ago, backing her up as part of the orchestra. Big outdoor thing (Memorial Day? 4th of July?), and she had a full orchestra with a rhythm section from L.A. and Bob Florence as conductor/pianist.

We launch into a show of standards from her Nelson Riddle albums and everything is fine. Until the crowd turned on her. We were playing in Bernalillo, New Mexico for a HEAVILY Hispanic crowd, and they wanted to hear stuff from some Mariachi albums she had done. She heard a couple of folks in the audience shouting about it and said "I'm sorry, we don't have those arrangements here today. We hope you'll enjoy this next tune..."

Then the crowd starts chanting, "Mariachi! Mariachi!". We slogged through a couple more tunes and then LR said "Thank you. Goodnight!", slinked offstage and into the waiting limo to beat a hasty retreat.

[Aggie87]

I saw the trailer often as I took my daughter and her friends to other films. It looked like a "historical recreation" of the late 1960s, with Beatles songs done by others as the soundtrack--but all of the characters, who were supposed to be living in the late 1960s, look like young fashion models of today. It did NOT appear to be a gritty, realistic look at the turbulence of that era, to put it mildly.

Did the trailer provide an accurate window into the film?

I don't know about the trailer, but the movie is a very visual/trippy looking musical fantasy set in the 60's.

[Shawn]

Strange, but the production values that I started to notice around 1976 were one of the things that turned me away from pop/rock almost totally at that time. Everything sounded like it had been recorded in an aircraft hanger - boomy drums, an immense, multilayered sound, a simple beat right up front.

When it comes to how rock records sound my heart lies very much in the early 70s - the loose, freewheeling feel of so much of my favourite music of that time. A record like 'Sticky Fingers' might still be obviously that of a 'beat group' but it slipped and slid in a way stadium rock could never emulate (and who slipped and slid better than Little Feet?).

Give me Free over Bad Company any day!

Of course, that perspective is totally a result of cutting my teeth on music between 70 and 76. If I was five years younger I'd have probably found loud, boomy drums exciting.

It sounds like you might be talking about both production and stylistic changes at the same time. My favorite era would also fall between 1967 - 1976 or so, but there are still alot of good sounding records that came out between say 1976 & 1981...I think the slide in quality started around there.

You can probably blame the "massive drum sound" on the success of live albums in the mid-70's like Frampton Comes Alive, Kiss Alive, Live & Dangerous, etc. I think engineers started to try and emulate the "stadium sound" on their studio recordings.

[Big Al]

bwaaahaha Al!

Unfortunately I've had to live with, most recently, the worst album of all time ... AND it's a two CD set.

WTF is THAT???

Watch the movie. Once.

That sounds like a dare...

Or a threat.