On the other hand, it is said it takes a very skilled musician to play purposly bad. Take Victor Borge for instance - a master in bad playing, but playing bad as entertainment.
Anyone who watched MTV through the 80's learned how to be quick on the mute button for Safety and a few others.
There is still a difference between "worst" and "most annoying." There is plenty of music out there that is competently performed, yet quite annoying. Much of the disco era stuff is worthy of muting in my opinion, yet there are plenty of people that still like it. There is also some music that could be OK if it was done right, but still sucks due to lousy performance or poor recording and mastering.
Sometimes classics that got played to death many years ago now seem to invoke a "crank it to eleven" response when they come out of the radio. Smoke on the Water, Money for Nothing, and I can't drive 55 still remind me of events or time periods the result in cranking the volume. There are several others that date back to the 60's.
Sometimes there is music that sucks so bad that it makes Safety look good. Somehow this stuff gets airplay. Fortunately, I had forgotten this trash long ago, but this thread dug it up from a dark corner of my brain. Watch or listen at your own risk.
I bet I'am going to be trashed for this, but what the heck! At my younger days I heard some great praise about Jethro Tull.
Wow, Jethro Tull, wow Jethro Tull...
So, I got myself their double vinyl "20 years of Jethro Tull". Somehow I manage to listen (to be correct, torture myself with) that album exactly two times. Than I get rid of it for good.
The only vinyl I ever get rid of beacuse I couldnt stand the music on it.
What an utterly overrated piece of... whatever it is.
Wow, Jethro Tull, wow Jethro Tull...
So, I got myself their double vinyl "20 years of Jethro Tull". Somehow I manage to listen (to be correct, torture myself with) that album exactly two times. Than I get rid of it for good.
The only vinyl I ever get rid of beacuse I couldnt stand the music on it.
What an utterly overrated piece of... whatever it is.
Creepy .... (Tiny Tim)
A collegue told me about a rockfestival in Germany he went to and thru the days of the festival som idiots in a VW-bus played a rather cute but annoying song - ON REPEAT - day and night, until someone decided that enuff was enuff and sabotaged the speakers. Cannot remember ... I can actually ... really nice and fun song first time you hear it but after 2-3 days ....????
A collegue told me about a rockfestival in Germany he went to and thru the days of the festival som idiots in a VW-bus played a rather cute but annoying song - ON REPEAT - day and night, until someone decided that enuff was enuff and sabotaged the speakers. Cannot remember ... I can actually ... really nice and fun song first time you hear it but after 2-3 days ....????
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Holy crap was that funny. Better then the Shags. Made my morning.
That kind of saccharine confection was the bulk of popular western music in the 1970s. It was forgotten history for me until recently scoping out what the music scene was when the Sex Pistols dropped into the industry's punch bowl. Today they sound almost trite and nostalgic, then it was difficult to parse it as music at all.
I know... Queen and Bruce Springsteen : cannot decide which I dislike the most. Has to do with the screaming I guess.
I liked, and still play the first two Tull albums, Stand Up (the musicians to stand up when you open the album cover) and Benefit. Maybe it's because I was the Benefit tour at a large outdoor show at the University of Miami and a proper mindset for a gathering of about 15,000 people on a soccer field / football practice field. I had an excellent seat up on the cross bar of the football goal post. Some "electric orange juice" might have been involved. While working at Olsons next door to the field the Aqualung album came out. That record turned me totally off on Tull and haven't listened to anything but the first two since.
I do not own any Steely Dan albums. There is no doubt that they are accomplished musicians with great skills including songwriting. I like some of their songs, but never liked them enough to buy an album.
Queen, there are two male singers that just hit a note in my head that sounds like a cross between fingernails on a chalkboard and a dentist's drill. They are Freddy Mercury and Robert Plant. Don't want to hear either, but that doesn't make them a "worst band."
This crap flowed freely from the AM pop music stations during my high school days (67 - 70). Sugar Sugar by the Archies, anything by the 1910 Fruitgum Company (they border on "worst" too), and many more with sugar, candy or other sweets in the name.
I tended more toward Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. Needed an FM radio to hear the "good stuff" though Born to be Wild and Magic Carpet Ride did make it to AM radio after Easy Rider hit the big screen in the summer of 69.
That, psychedelic, Ohio garage and more even as an adolescent. Ironically my first broadcast gig was with an AM station core to defining that sound in North America. But before really tightening up the playlists in the 70s (thanks Jackson 5) it wasn't uncommon to hear Percy Faith and The Standells in a single air shift.
One favourite of mine was Family with Roger Chapman, the guy with an intense vibrato. Listen to Drowned In Wine. This is absolutely FANTAZZTIC even without "electric orange juice" ...
Another guy with an intense vibrato is Demis Roussos from the Greek band Aphrodite's Child. However ..... NOOO NO NO NO! (And still my ex had me buy his album but NOOOO NO NO and NO!)
Another guy with an intense vibrato is Demis Roussos from the Greek band Aphrodite's Child. However ..... NOOO NO NO NO! (And still my ex had me buy his album but NOOOO NO NO and NO!)
Don't hear the name Standells mentioned much any more. Dirty Water was one of the songs our teenage garage band played.
Hard to remember that far back, but I remember hearing the Summer Place instrumental and The Standells on the radio. Since my DIY radio couldn't get the West Palm Beach pop station, they were likely both on the same station, probably both stations. There were few other instrumentals that got airplay on pop radio, but I can't recall a name now.
There were two AM pop stations in Miami in the 60's. WQAM put anything by the Beatles in heavy rotation while WFUN tended toward surf music and anything related to fast cars. I got sent to a special school for misfits in the early 60s due to what is now known as ADHD, back then I was a "misfit" that didn't belong in public school. The school was tiny, so they piled us into a VW van and drove us to a public park every afternoon for recess / Phys Ed. The van driver would put on WQAM for a sing-along to the Beatles songs that owned the top 10 at the time, but one day we were leaving the park, turned on the radio, but there was no music. JFK had just been shot. That was the first of those never forget moments from my younger days. Both formats died, but WQAM still lives as a sports and talk radio station.
Back in the 60's people said that the Standells band took its name from the guitar amps they used, but the spelling is different. I have never seen an old video that showed guitar amps, but Standel amps were expensive, rare, and the solid state versions were unrepairable due to colored epoxy potting over the individual amp "modules."
Hard to remember that far back, but I remember hearing the Summer Place instrumental and The Standells on the radio. Since my DIY radio couldn't get the West Palm Beach pop station, they were likely both on the same station, probably both stations. There were few other instrumentals that got airplay on pop radio, but I can't recall a name now.
There were two AM pop stations in Miami in the 60's. WQAM put anything by the Beatles in heavy rotation while WFUN tended toward surf music and anything related to fast cars. I got sent to a special school for misfits in the early 60s due to what is now known as ADHD, back then I was a "misfit" that didn't belong in public school. The school was tiny, so they piled us into a VW van and drove us to a public park every afternoon for recess / Phys Ed. The van driver would put on WQAM for a sing-along to the Beatles songs that owned the top 10 at the time, but one day we were leaving the park, turned on the radio, but there was no music. JFK had just been shot. That was the first of those never forget moments from my younger days. Both formats died, but WQAM still lives as a sports and talk radio station.
Back in the 60's people said that the Standells band took its name from the guitar amps they used, but the spelling is different. I have never seen an old video that showed guitar amps, but Standel amps were expensive, rare, and the solid state versions were unrepairable due to colored epoxy potting over the individual amp "modules."
After the end of Aphrodite's Child, where he was bassguitarist and singer for, Roussos became a tearjerker crooner in Germany. Here's another bad, bad example. Anyway - you've been warned:
Best regards!
"Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" was a standard among some genres of indie rock for decades. In my area 60s AM and especially early 70s FM, before the latter became the primary monetary stream, were fun chaos in a way radio never recaptured.
Type O Negative is hard to like.
They do have a funny song though called "Bad Ground".
You have to listen to get it.
They do have a funny song though called "Bad Ground".
You have to listen to get it.
Exactly both these men use to be ranked as #1 and #2 lead vocalists in polls and surveys up to now, and this for good reason: Freddie Mercury had an exorbitant vocal range of four octaves, only bettered by Annie Haslam's six octaves. In addition he was gifted with an expressive voice and excellent stage performances. He could have been representing a skilled opera tenor as well. Personally, in my youth I disliked him due to his androgynous, bisexual appearance that I couldn't cope with. With this respect, Robert Plant was quite the contrary: He and his band, Led Zeppelin, were the achetype of testosterone driven **** rock which impressed me much more than Queen/Mercury. Plant was example for most of the following lead singers, including Mercury, who himself became example for others. Hence, both undoubtedly can be regarded as good rock musicians.
So, your statement is the only one in this thread to which the following is applicable:
In 1973 German comedian Otto Waalkes did a parody on this in his 1st TV appearance:
Best regards!
I do not imply that Queen or Zeppelin are bad musicians or a "worst band." As stated, they both do a very good job at what they do. Both Freddy Mercury and Robert Plant can hit notes above the range of most rock singers.
I have battled a middle ear disorder known as Meniere's Disease that causes dizziness, headaches, and loss of hearing for about 35 years. Every attack causes further loss of hearing such that I'm pretty much deaf now. During their popularity those two singers often set off a spell of dizziness or brought on a severe headache. So did many female singers as would a lot more singers it I had listened to them.
I stated back in post #83 that There is a difference between "worst" and "most annoying" to which I will add "can't listen to," or "don't like." The "can't listen to" category changes as my hearing degrades, Freddy or Robert might not bother me now.
