What is the Best "Worst" Album in Your Collection?
Sunday, January 16, 2011 at 12:01AM
The other day I came across the "worst" album in my collection that I still love, and that album is the self-titled album by Heavy Bones. The album is so contrived, and the band seems like it was simply put together by Warner Brothers to make "the perfect 80s album." It is full of clichés, cheesy lyrics and vain, failed attempts to appear introspective. All that aside, I dig this album. I sing along to the songs and thoroughly enjoy it. I can not explain it, but there is just something about this CD...regardless of the fact that every single person I have ever played it for has absolutely hated it.
So what are the other favorite "bad" albums out there that people actually like? What do you rock-out to secretly, for fear that your friends would not talk to you if they found out?
Reader Comments (27)
I would probably say my favorite worst album is White Tiger's self-titled release. Mark St. John was a KISS guitarist for a short while, playing on the Animalize record, and was the first axeman to release an album post-KISS (Vinnie Vincent and Frehley's Comet both came out after White Tiger).
Speaking of Vinnie Vincent... :)
I think Ozzy's Ultimate Sin gets tossed around when topics like this get brought up. I love the album to death and will defend it till I die!
The Real Pick Though Quiet Riot 3
For me it would be 21 Guns.
Full of fillers and unremarkable songs, uncreative lyrics and bad rhymes. Bobby Dall´s bass have a five note range and absolutelly no rhythm, while CC deVille guitar delivers 300 notes per second. A total mess.
but a mess I still like in some way.
Ho, man, the brutal fact is virtually the entire genre of Glam Metal is mediocre if you compare it to Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk.
But, to me, I love it more than SERIOUS music like that because it just plain frickin' ROCKS OUT more!
And any Metallic like stuff that takes itself too seriously fails horribly (more on this shortly).
So, I'm going to run down my collection to highlight what I think are wonderful examples of Glam/Hair/Sleaze/AOR Metal Mediocrity, though I will omit ultra rarities I'm still in search of original or mint copies of.
Because the list is long, I'm going to mention a few I don't think are Mediocre Metal, since there are fewer of those. I'm sure I'll miss some but here goes or we'll be commenting all night...
But first, let me refute Kenny O! Hericane Alice is hardly Mediocre! It's a frickin' Masterpiece. Maybe some of the words might be a bit mediocre, plenty of them aren't and the music is actually quite different from most of the stuff I will list...
But, to be sure, Kenny O knows his stuff, no doubt and has tipped me off about plenty of Mediocrity on this site, so I'm sure he'll see a lot of it in my list. Go figure, Kenny O, you know your stuff so well, you think something so utterly excellent as Mediocre, hahaha!!! One of my fave albums of all time!
And, to everyone else, you are nailing it! I've got all of those albums and you are right, they are brilliantly Mediocre and I love 'em! A lot of them are some of my fave albums of all time, particularly Ocatavio's selection, Poison's "Look What The Cat Dragged In", which has to be near the top of the list of Mediocre Metal Masterpieces. One of my fave albums ever!
Oh, and "Wildboys", Bumblefootboy! Phew! Not only is that the epitome of Glam Metal Mediocrity, it's bloody awful, too! I don't know how you can listen to it, which is one of the criteria Brian C. has laid out for us.
But you'll see some albums that I regard as totally Mediocre below that are actually a band and their entire catalogue that I don't listen to anymore at all as I either (1) fried 'em out or (2) don't need to because The Metal Sheep are too busy lionizing them and playin' 'em to death, I don't need to... 21 Guns among them, Bluejay Art, one of the ones I thought of last night, but cannot listen to anymore and haven't in 3 years.
Actually, just to clarify a few more listed above... Heavy Bones... It's only half listenable and I fried that out 3 years ago, as well, right after I bought it. There's far better Mediocrity out there, Bri, but if you can still listen to that crap, Slash's Top Hats off to ya!
And c'mon JT... Vinnie Vincent Invasion mediocre? Hardly! KILLER! That's what it is...
Some others I have high regard for are comin' right up now and it should be said, though I don't view 'em as mediocre, I find some of 'em boring now, simply because I fried 'em out so long ago like G'n'R's "Appetite For Destruction", which I put on the shelf in 1986 after listening to it solid for like a month, it was so groundbreaking.
Okay, if you struggled thru all the Preamble here goes...
First, the stuff I love that I don't view as Mediocre barring things I'm still upgrading and after that, nearly everything I regard as Brilliant Mediocrity of which there is a ton...
UN-Mediocrity, The Great Stuff:
(Ha! To Be Continued -- Metalboy!'s gotta Sleep!)
TS'S "COAP" was like a poorly packaged Kiss of yore album with some remarkable crap song. Crap that I enjoyed, maybe it was just the "time" it was released and what wackiness was going on in my life. But that disc takes me back to some fun, insane times. Not to mention that I got a chance to stand right next to Dee at the Civic Arena and sing "We're Not Gonna Take It," when he asked "several" people in the nosebleed section to get up onstage with TS!
Similar enjoyment form QR3. I love "Twilight Motel,"The Wild and the Young," and "Main Attraction," those are my true guilty pleasures...
Wise men listen to;
"The Twisted Metal Logic of Metalboy!"
Thanks Roy
Honestly the first 3 songs on QR3 are very good in my opinion just not what you think of when QR is mentioned. Slave to Love is another good song good solo. Cavazo's playing really sounds like it has improved from metal health in nearly QR album he was on after Condition Critical, QR 3 being no exception.
Kiss-unmasked is getting into this category for me also.
I loved everything up until "The Blitz" where they started trying to write "hit songs".. or covering more commercial songs by others. "The Blitz" still had a few strong songs. Their "Metal Rendez-vous" release is is my top 5 of all time and who can deny the power of "Headhunter"? But "Change Of Address"..? Come On.
"Change Of Address" was pure cheese done KROKUS style.. Though I'm the first to admit this.. I still love it..
I was in studio production hell during the making of this record and quit the band 4 times all the while knowing that these guys were burying a great record underneath a pile of effects and production tricks.
I can share some sentiment of distaste with people if they feel the record is over produced... it wasn't the way I had planned it. It was mostly due to the ignorant greed of our manager Dave Kaplan who pushed the mentality that a "HUGE!! make it sound like Def Leppard!!" record meant huge success to record executives and my co-writer Gary Hoey who bought his BS and the producers BS thus making me out to be the angry black sheep in the band... with records lack of expected success, Dave proved himself to be an inexperienced idiot whos corporate greed and lack of true artistic intuition drove this insanely talented band right out onto the "out-dated" shelf before we ever had a chance to be reckoned with justly.
So Roy, my words go out to your dogging critic is this; I understand dude, but we never say die, so keep your decerning ears open for my new records comming out 2011 and beyond. These records won't be controlled and processed by the corporate money machines of rock and there wont be any ass kissing sell outs performing in any more of my sessions.
Rock On!! ~ Joel Ellis
Roy, you can post my response to the web brother... thank you.
My love to you and Deb.