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The Worst Record Ever?

Started by Ciarán2, January 07, 2007, 11:39:14 PM

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Ciarán2

Ha, well you see I'm always interested in pop albums that get rubbished throughout the media. The "rubbishness" of "Rudebox" has become a bit of a phenomenon. Having heard three tracks from it and LIKING two of them, I'm prepared to give it a listen.

chand

Quote from: "Ciarán"Ha, well you see I'm always interested in pop albums that get rubbished throughout the media.

Well sometimes the media is right. I daresay 'Rudebox' the album is more interesting than any of his other albums, but I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason to get into it.

QuoteThe "rubbishness" of "Rudebox" has become a bit of a phenomenon. Having heard three tracks from it and LIKING two of them, I'm prepared to give it a listen.

'Lovelight' is alright as a tune, although it sounds like something George Michael could have tossed off in a weed-induced sleep. Or in a public toilet, at least. He seems to have decided that singing in a high voice like Justin Timberlake = pop genius, which would be fine if his voice didn't sound so monumentally awful when he goes out of his comfort zone. Although admittedly his trying-too-hard squealing is vastly preferable to his cheeky wideboy cod-rapping.

The Plunger

Quote from: "Ciarán"Ha, well you see I'm always interested in pop albums that get rubbished throughout the media. The "rubbishness" of "Rudebox" has become a bit of a phenomenon. Having heard three tracks from it and LIKING two of them, I'm prepared to give it a listen.

It is very hit and miss, but 'The 80s' and 'The 90s' are ace. There's also a passable cover of 'Kiss Me' by Stephen 'Tin Tin' Duffy (who i think was supposed to be one of the albums co-writers). There is also some utter shite on it though - be warned.

Quote from: "Ray Le Otter"It's even worse than "Pomme Fritz" by The Orb
Definitely a "difficult" album, but there are two good tracks on it: "Pomme Fritz" and "Alles Ist Schoen". So not the worst album ever, but I can definitely understand why most Ultraworld and UFOrb fans find it unpalatable. Here's a good description for the uninitiated (excuse the poor punctuation):

Quotethis is one of the most psychedelic recordings i have ever heard, and it drifts through both good and bad trips. it's actually more like an ep or even a single, with radically remixed versions of essentially two tracks, plus a short outro. we start with a blissed out sleepy abstract dub with noodly guitar ("pomme fritz (meat 'n veg")), and then plunge into a sonic sound processing nightmare in which the "songs" ("more gills less fishcakes" and we're pastie to be grill you") break down and erupt with many weirdly distorted and processed sounds and vocals. this portion of the disc is hard to take, because it is distinctly "listener unfriendly." eventually, we move on to a more coherent bubbly track "bang'er 'n chips," which is then expanded on in sublime bliss out fashion on "alles ist schoen." the last track is a short, humorous swirl of sound ("his immortal logness"). the danceable sound of previous orb material is completely dispensed with, and there is a huge leap in terms of compositional and rhythmic sophistication. to the unitiated, however, the album can seem impenetrable, and on the second and third tracks, chaotic and annoying. the central theme of the album is defined by a repeated voice sample from an american television program called "saturday night live." the voice intones, "you've just had a heavy session of electroshock therapy, and you're more relaxed than you've been in weeks. all those childhood traumas, magically wiped away...along with most of your personality."

http://www.discogs.com/release/2729

I'd agree with most of that. The unlistenable 2nd and 3rd tracks form an inpenatrable barrier to album appreciation, and the other tracks aren't sufficiently good to salvage the experience for most people. I still enjoy ot though.

TJ

Quote from: "JesusAndYourBush"The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralysed

Oh come on, that's fantastic!

Ray Le Otter

Quote from: "Ciarán"I'm finally going to buy "Rudebox" the album today. "Lovelight" was a good single. "She's Madonna" is also a good single. "Rudebox" (the single) remains rather embarrassing. Like I said before the album was released - interesting...

also, i like "Pomme Fritz" a lot.

Ahh. You've let me down there with "Pomme Fritz". It's baaaaad. Still, each to their own.

However "Rudebox" (the album) is great. His version of "KIss Me" is faithful to the original Duffy version (before the Art Of Noise got their hands all over it), and a good 2/3 of the album is good stuff, especially "Viva Life On Mars".

Back on the bad albums.. I may be stepping out of line here but I always thought Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II" was a steaming pile of shite - he was taking the piss there. Plus no track titles, just colours and textures. Cock. Unlistenable. Conned there.


The Manics "Know Your Enemy is a waste of space as well, for many reasons, fake posturing and middle aged "punk". Blurgh.

phantom_power

Quote from: "samadriel"Ben Lee's the worst type of horrible little dimwitted cunt; the type that thinks it isn't.

he did write some great songs for evan dando's solo album though

Quote from: "Ray Le Otter"Back on the bad albums.. I may be stepping out of line here but I always thought Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II" was a steaming pile of shite - he was taking the piss there. Plus no track titles, just colours and textures. Cock. Unlistenable. Conned there.
Have to disagree again - SAW II is only 50% bad. There is an excellent single disc album there, roughly comprising of:

1:1
1:3
1:7
2:1 (Blue Calx)
2:5
2:7
2:8
2:12

Some of these tracks border on "genious" - track 1:3 is simple (2 overlapping melodies), but very moving. 2:8 is another beautiful piece, sounding like Eno on the Apollo Soundtracks.

Much of the rest is rubbish - droning noises and repetitive keyboard motifs.

Quote from: "phantom_power"
Quote from: "samadriel"Ben Lee's the worst type of horrible little dimwitted cunt; the type that thinks it isn't.

he did write some great songs for evan dando's solo album though

An album, which although had a few great songs on it, was nowhere near the masterpiece it should have been, since Evan had been touring a whole bunch of new songs for about five years beforehand.

Ciarán2

Er, just quickly to say - I'm two listens in to "Rudebox" and it has been unfairly dismissed. Dreadful lead off single (and first track on the album) "Rudebox". Plenty of dodgy rapping, but far from a disaster. both PSB tracks are excellent, the production throughout is refreshing...well, more later... But thumbs up here.

the midnight watch baboon

'Love Shack', the B-52s single. This song is one of the worst things that've ever happened, regardless of context. I'd rather drop a sofa on my cock then listen to it ever again.

Jemble Fred

Agreed, I despise that song with a passion â€" but I place it alongside the likes of 'YMCA' and, worst of all, 'It's Raining Men' as disco mood-killers. It's no worse than everything else on that list.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: "Ray Le Otter"
Back on the bad albums.. I may be stepping out of line here but I always thought Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II" was a steaming pile of shite - he was taking the piss there. Plus no track titles, just colours and textures. Cock. Unlistenable. Conned there.

Ahh no, I love that album. I've had it on cassette for doinkey's years and despite umpteen listens, I still don't 'know' my way around it. It manages to be simultaneously relaxing and unsettling (though occasionally beautiful). I can't really fault it much at all.

the midnight watch baboon

Love Shack, It's Raining Men, YMCA.... and I Will Survive. Nuclear waste should by law have to splutter onto anyone who remains on the dancefloor when these abominations start up![/i]

samadriel

'Roam', conversely, is brilliance, and will soon grace the Top 1000 Singles Thread.

buttgammon

Quote from: "Egyptian Feast"
Quote from: "Ray Le Otter"
Back on the bad albums.. I may be stepping out of line here but I always thought Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II" was a steaming pile of shite - he was taking the piss there. Plus no track titles, just colours and textures. Cock. Unlistenable. Conned there.

Ahh no, I love that album. I've had it on cassette for doinkey's years and despite umpteen listens, I still don't 'know' my way around it. It manages to be simultaneously relaxing and unsettling (though occasionally beautiful). I can't really fault it much at all.

I think some of the best tracks on SAW II match Brian Eno's Apollo for unsettling ambience, but a lot of it is total bollocks and it goes on for too long. It's nothing on Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which may well be the best ambient techno album ever made. It's too beat driven to be called true ambient music as such, but it's far less frantic many of his later recordings and I love it to bits. Maybe my adoration for the first volume of SAW is the reason I can't get into the second.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: "samadriel"'Roam', conversely, is brilliance, and will soon grace the Top 1000 Singles Thread.

Agreed. I couldn't understand at the time why that wasn't at least as big a hit as 'Love Shack'. I always love B-52s songs with Cindy singing lead (see '52 Girls' and 'Dance This Mess Around' on the first album).

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: "buttgammon"
Maybe my adoration for the first volume of SAW is the reason I can't get into the second.

They're very different albums, so I can understand that. I actually heard SAW II first and was surprised at how...well, lively SAW I was when I bought it (99p in a Fara charity shop - I was disgusted!). It's undoubtedly a better album, and an easier listen, but I'll always be fond of the follow-up nonetheless.

buttgammon

Quote from: "Egyptian Feast"
Quote from: "buttgammon"
Maybe my adoration for the first volume of SAW is the reason I can't get into the second.

They're very different albums, so I can understand that. I actually heard SAW II first and was surprised at how...well, lively SAW I was when I bought it (99p in a Fara charity shop - I was disgusted!). It's undoubtedly a better album, and an easier listen, but I'll always be fond of the follow-up nonetheless.

I got into Aphex Twin quite late (I think the first album of his I got was Drukqs), so I always saw SAW 85-92 as being a diversion from his later, more experimental kind of stuff anyway. SAW II is even more a diversion from the later albums he made. Of course, it's probably even more experimental but it's in a totally different way. As a matter of fact, I didn't even like the more ambient tracks on SAW 85-92 at first. Pulsewidth and Ptolemy were the only two I thought were really great when I first listened to it but I grew to love the rest of it and now I can't help but think it might be the finest album I have ever heard.

Quote from: "Egyptian Feast"
Quote from: "samadriel"'Roam', conversely, is brilliance, and will soon grace the Top 1000 Singles Thread.

Agreed. I couldn't understand at the time why that wasn't at least as big a hit as 'Love Shack'. I always love B-52s songs with Cindy singing lead (see '52 Girls' and 'Dance This Mess Around' on the first album).

'Love Shack' is overplayed and tired, I think.  I love 'Rock Lobster' myself.

GetTheeBehindMeStan

QuoteI love 'Rock Lobster' myself.

Nah - Strobe Light's the one for me.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: "trotsky assortment"
Quote from: "Egyptian Feast"
Quote from: "samadriel"'Roam', conversely, is brilliance, and will soon grace the Top 1000 Singles Thread.

Agreed. I couldn't understand at the time why that wasn't at least as big a hit as 'Love Shack'. I always love B-52s songs with Cindy singing lead (see '52 Girls' and 'Dance This Mess Around' on the first album).

'Love Shack' is overplayed and tired, I think.  I love 'Rock Lobster' myself.

Damn right. You can't get much better than side 1 of The B-52s.

One of the most jaw-dropping songs I've heard in my life was 'The Water Song' by The Incredible String Band. I must admit I've not heard the whole album it came from so the rest of it may be pure dynamite, but it''s not something I lose sleep over, to be honest.

Anyway, 'The Water Song's an unbearable folky piece about the magical wonder of water and, excitingly, features an actual 'water solo' in the middle.  They just sort of stop singing and playing the recorder, and present us with about 10 seconds worth of what appears to be a pub toilet cistern refilling.

It sounds like a Mulligan & O'Hare B-side.


These are the thought-provoking lyrics:

Water water see the water flow
Glancing dancing see the water flow
O wizard of changes water water water
Dark or silvery mother of life
Water water holy mystery heavens daughter

God made a song when the world was new
Waters laughter sings it is true
O, wizard of changes, teach me the lesson of flowing


Well, exactly.

This is the album it's from, by the way.


Maximash

Quote from: "Egyptian Feast"It's undoubtedly a better album

It took a while but I now prefer SAW II over anything else he's done. I love the beats and playful nature of his later work (not to mention the melodies, probably my favourite electronic artist for those) but the wide array of moods and atmospheres on SAW II is something that I hold very dearly.

Speaking of SAW85-92, has anyone heard the remastered version? I keep seeing it on vinyl and want to know if it would be worth it.

ccbaxter

Quote from: "Ray Le Otter"The Manics "Know Your Enemy is a waste of space as well, for many reasons, fake posturing and middle aged "punk". Blurgh.

Hm, think this one's a much-unfairly-maligned album - and while there may be two, three, "punky" stabs, plenty of the album is rather lovely and warm in sound, if snippy in lyrics. Nicky Wire's painful lead vocal aside.

Quote from: "Ciarán"Rudebox

Oh god, you've just reminded me of when I nearly crashed my car listening to the radio.  Not because of the musical art of Williams or anything like that, but because of the quiz on Jonathan Ross's radio show.  He asked someone "which chart act is bringing out the album 'rudebox' on Monday?"  The person replied the Beatles which tickled me because

a) surely if the Beatle were bringing out a new record it'd be all over the papers; and

b) because of the idea of the Beatles bringing out an album called 'rudebox'.

Rudebox is a fantastic name for a record

23 Daves

I've always maintained that one of the worst albums I've ever heard (and one of the worst I own in fact) is the Bee Gees soundtrack to the film of "Sergeant Pepper".  I only bought it second hand for the poster that came contained within:



It contains Beatles cover versions by the likes of Steve Martin and Peter Frampton plus vocoder (which he uses on Mean Mr Mustard if memory serves, to no "mean" effect). For all that, and to my huge disappointment when I got it home, it's actually deeply dull, and not at all amusing. It gives me a strangely hollow, depressed feeling every time I pull it out to listen to it, and it's one of the most mint second hand records I've ever owned, which would suggest it wasn't well loved by its previous owner either.  If Sergeant Pepper had been inspired by cocaine rather than LSD, this would have been the horrendous result I suppose.

I also found this on one occasion:



Which is fucking ridiculous really, for reasons I'm sure I don't need to spell out.  It's probably not the worst album of all time, though, because the Sandhurst Military Band do take certain liberties with the arrangements of many of the ditties, to periodically vaguely interesting effect.  Listen to more than two tracks in a row and you tend to go a bit beserk, though.

Other than that, I have to be deathly predictable and say that the worst album I've probably ever heard (but don't own) is Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music".  I borrowed it off a friend, and it's unbearable.  It's utterly impossible to listen to, though I do know people who claim to be "into" it.  You'd get more melody out of turning the hoover and the electronic whisk on simultaneously and changing their speeds around gradually, and at least by doing that you'd be involved in the "creative process" rather than being an unwilling listener.

Ciarán2

Guess what my fave Aphex Twin album is then: "SAW2".  I prefer it even over SAW85-92. My revelatory moment with that came when I had flu one Christmas many years ago. I remember playing SAW2 whilst I had my head over a basin filled with Vick mixed with boiling water and a towel over my head so I could inhale all the fumes. It made perfect sense. Even the madder moments came to life. Yes, I do also kind of associate it with "Apollo" by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno.

Re: "Pomme Fritz", well by the summer of 1994 I was a big fan of The Orb. Every one else at school shunned me for that of course, but I stuck by them. When I first heard "Pomme Fritz" I missed the tunefulness of "U.F.Orb", but I liked it's humour all the same. About three or four years ago I went back to "Pomme Fritz" and played it all summer. I had this thing again at the time about ambient. Not chill out compilations, but things like Tangerine Dream, FSOL, Steve Hillage and Seefeel. I became interested in the idea of a music which was half pure pop, half ambient. A good example is Erasure's self-titled album from 1995. That was a great atmospheric pop record (featured Thomas Fehlmann). But it was a bit of a flop and the beginning of the end for Erasure, but I thought it was brave. So I went through this phase of continuing to listen to the poppy stuff I usually do, but I also made an effort to dig out the old ambient stuff I'd neglected to fill my world with ambient and pop. I played a lot of Brian Eno, and really got into things like "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" and "Another Green World".

But "Pomme Fritz" was kind of funny - I like the samples on it. I like "We're Pasty To Be Grill You", I like how things come back from earlier tracks when you don't expect it. I'll have to listen to it again soon. It's not a classic by any means, but it's overlooked. I never did buy "Orbvs Terrarvm", and now I can't find it anywhere! I'd say I'd like it...

Brutus Beefcake

Looks like we have some new contenders: http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=12679

Although I'll be surprised if the Sugarbabes can out do that song about how ugly they are (which managed to be even shitter that the Christina Aguilera song about how ugly she is).

Quote from: "Beep Cleep Chimney"One of the most jaw-dropping songs I've heard in my life was 'The Water Song' by The Incredible String Band. I must admit I've not heard the whole album it came from so the rest of it may be pure dynamite, but it''s not something I lose sleep over, to be honest.

Well, if it helps, the ISB also gave us this peice of wishy-washiness:

QuoteThe Amoeba Song

Oh Arr ee Ooo
There is absolutely no strife
Living the timeless life
I don't need a wife
Living the timeless life
If I need a friend
I just give a wriggle
Split right down the middle
Adn when I look there is two of me
Both as handsome as can be
Oh here we go slithering
Here we go slithering and squelching on
Here we go slithering and squelching on
Oh Arr Ee Ooh
There is absolutely no strife
Living the timeless life

Balls.