EDITING NOTE: This version of the
"Worst Rock Band Ever" page was compiled from entries originally
posted in real time on my blog, so the comments
about "come back tomorrow" or "yesterday I wrote" are
relics from that original presentation. You can read it all now in one fell
swoop. Also, I received a lot of complaints about the original green
background of this page, which worked fine on my main website for years, since all the
articles were short, but caused eye-strain when stared at for as long as it
took to read this lengthier page. So I've changed the color scheme, hopefully
to make it a little bit easier on the eyes. Sorry if I've already blinded
you. There are several other similar essays done around this time linked at
the bottom of this page.
The
Worst Rock Band Ever Competition (Part One):
Guitar World's article about the worst rock bands of 2003 (they picked
Limp Bizkit and Creed) got me to thinking . . .
which band is the worst band in the history of rock and roll? Being a stats
and numbers and research geek, I've developed a system for who qualifies and
a process for then honing the qualifiers down into a sheer hard ball of
ultimate badness. It'll probably take a week's worth of posts to type it all
out here with explanations and what have you, so watch this space to see the
worst of the worst pulled from under their rock and beaten to death with
sticks.
First,
setting the field. It seems that to qualify as a really significant atrocity,
a band has to have had dramatic commercial success. Naming some obscure
nonentity as the worst rock band of all time is pointless. If a band's
badness hasn't been spread from coast to coast by the record industry, and
then lapped up by the record buying rabble, then they really don't have a
right to claim the all-time worst title, do they?
So how do we identity such bands and set the stage for the suck-fest? First,
I went to the RIAA website (they're the folks who award gold and platinum
records) and did a search for artists who have had at least one record sell
over five million copies. There's a bunch of them. A surprisingly large
number of them, in fact, well over 100. So, since this is a survey designed
to assess the worst rock band ever, we first eliminate solo artists (with the
exception of cases where a solo artist and a band are viewed as a single
entity: Shania Twain doesn't qualify for the list, but Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers do, for example). Then we eliminate vocal groups (N'Sync, Boys II Men, etc.); if a group's members don't or
didn't at some point provide the primary instrumentation for their music,
then they really don't deserve scrutiny for all time worst band.
It's kind of a gimme that groups backed by
anonymous session musicians are gonna score higher
on the suck scale. Finally, we eliminate groups who exist completely outside
of the rock spectrum: if a group has never released a record that featured
rock music as a basic part of their sound (Alabama, Mannheim Steamroller, etc.), then
they don't belong in this competition either, since there's not really a fair
apples-to-apples comparison to be made there.
After that process, there were 79 bands left on the list. I wanted to get to
an even 64 teams, so they can be pitted against each other, head to head for
suck content, which means that I needed to judge 15 of the qualifying bands
as "bubble teams" who really don't belong in a competition for
worst band ever, due to consistent critical success, influence on entire
genres of music, etc. So in the first subjective cut, 15 bands were
eliminated from consideration, judged (by me) as being the least likely to
"win" the worst bands title. (After the Fact Note: The "bubble
team" that gave me the most trouble was The Eagles . . . and with 20/20
hindsight, I probably should have let them into the field of 64, if for no
other reason than for spawning Glenn Frey's solo career). The 15 so
eliminated were:
AC/DC
The Beatles
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
The Doors
The Eagles
Earth, Wind and Fire
Fleetwood Mac
Led Zeppelin
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Pink Floyd
Queen
The Rolling Stones
Sly and the Family Stone
U2
This leaves us with our field of 64. Now . . . to ensure that we have a
decent blend of styles and genres as we get closer to our final atrocity
selection, these 64 bands are broken into eight divisions, loosely by
stylistic approach. Of course, it's not possible to exactly fit them all into
clusters that make sense . . . but in the same way that Duke sometimes gets
sent to the West Regional in the NCAA basketball tournament, some bands have
to go into groupings that aren't quite right, just to get them spread out
evenly. Within each group, we will sort the bands in alphabetical order, then
look at them, head-to-head, to assess which group sucks more. That group will
then advance to the next round to be pitted against another advancing group.
Here are the groupings:
Classic Rock (Pool
A): Aerosmith vs. Bad Company, Boston vs. Foreigner, Genesis vs. Heart,
Journey vs. Van Halen.
Classic Rock (Pool
B): Bon Jovi vs. Dire Straits, Guns
n' Roses vs. Steve Miller Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers vs. R.E.O. Speedwagon, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band vs.
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.
Punk/New
Wave/Hardcore/Neopunk: Blink 182
vs. the Cars, Green Day vs. Korn, Limp Bizkit vs. Metallica, No Doubt
vs. the Offspring.
Metal:
Def Leppard vs. Motley Crue,
Poison vs. Quiet Riot, Skid Row vs. Stone Temple
Pilots, Soundgarden vs. Whitesnake.
Blues/Jam:
Black Crowes vs. Blues Traveler, Counting Crows vs. Doobie
Brothers, Dave Matthews Band vs. Santana, Spin Doctors vs. Z.Z. Top.
Soul/Funk/Rap:
Beastie Boys vs. Bee Gees, INXS vs. Linkin Park,
Prince and the Revolution vs. the Police, Red Hot Chili Peppers vs. Sublime.
Pop:
Chicago vs.
the Cranberries, Hootie and the Blowfish vs. Huey
Lewis and the News, Matchbox 20 vs. Men at Work, Tears for Fears vs. Third
Eye Blind.
Modern Rock:
Bush vs. Creed, Live vs. Nickelback, Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins vs. Staind.
When the suckiest band in each grouping have been
identified, Classic Rock (Pool A) will go up against Classic Rock (Pool B),
Pop will go up against Soul/Funk/Rap, Punk/New Wave/Hardcore/Neopunk will go up against Metal, and Blues/Jam will go
up against Modern Rock to give us a final four. We'll look at the final four
as a round robin, comparing each band to each of the others, ultimately
identifying one as the Worst Rock Band in History. Stay
tuned . . . or write if you'd like to offer comments, insights or
votes.
Keep an eye on this page . . . each day this week, I'll move us forward
another round towards . . . . ULTIMATE SUCKINESS!
The
Worst Rock Band Ever Competition (Part Two):
Today we work through the first round of increasing suckishness.
Remember: the bands that advance are the worse
bands, not the better bands.
Aerosmith vs. Bad
Company: Right off the bat, we've got to note that Aerosmith
aren't as good as everyone thinks they are, and Bad Company aren't as bad as
everyone thinks they are. While Aerosmith has more good songs and records
than Bad Company, they've got many
more bad songs and records. Let's be controversial right up front, shall we? The suckier:
Aerosmith.
Boston vs. Foreigner: Boston has always been
the emodiment of cold, calculating corporate rock.
Foreigner turned into that, eventually, but they were actually reasonably
interesting through their first few records, when King Crimson alumnus Ian
McDonald gave 'em some zip and cred.
The suckier: Boston.
Genesis vs. Heart:
Genesis issued some of the most amazing albums ever recorded early in their
career, before becoming the feeder band for Phil Collins' treacly
career and Mike and the Mechanics. Heart has pretty much been Heart all the
way through their career: flashy radio rock with the occasional power ballad
tossed in to leaven the mix. Still, Genesis'
overall quality average ends up higher than Heart's consistent mediocrity,
although Genesis' worst albums are worse than Heart's. The suckier:
Heart.
Journey vs. Van Halen: No contest. Van Halen redefined rock guitar, while Journey was originally
build around the castoffs of Santana, a pioneering band, sure, but not
because of the members who founded Journey. And that, of course, is before
Steve Perry joined, so it doesn't get better as you go forward. (To be fair,
Van Hagar and Van Horrible, the latter day incarnations of Van Halen, are pretty dire themselves, but not so dire that
they obviate the power of the original band). The suckier: Journey.
Bon Jovi vs. Dire Straits: I think this one
is closer than most people would think too. Bon Jovi
is corporate rock of the most lowest-common-denominator variety, but Dire
Straits are pretty tedious themselves, Mark Knopfler's
guitar playing notwithstanding. "Money for Nothing" may be one of
the most annoying songs of the '80s, but Bon Jovi
has to advance here, if only because one of their band members dated Cher. Shudder. The
suckier: Bon Jovi.
Guns n' Roses vs.
Steve Miller Band: As powerful as Gn'R
were out of the blocks, they've reached new peaks of suckiness
since the whole band adandoned Axl
to his own devices. The live cuts I saw from the Chinese Democracy tour were
truly some of the worst rock I've ever seen. Plus . . . without Steve Miller,
we wouldn't have the Pompatus of Love. The suckier:
Guns n' Roses.
Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers vs. R.E.O. Speedwagon:
Again, no contest. Petty is a great songwriter with a great band. Kevin
Cronin and company are neither. The
suckier: R.E.O. Speedwagon.
Bruce Springsteen
and the E Street Band vs. Bob Seger and the Silver
Bullet Band: Honestly, I dislike both of these bands, a lot,
but Seger takes the cake here for penning
"Turn the Page," the most odious of the "Oh, woe is me, I'm a
famous rock star" songs. The
suckier: Bob Seger and
the Silver Bullet Band.
Blink 182 vs. the
Cars: Duh. The
suckier: Blink 182.
Green Day vs. Korn: Korn is
pretty good, actually, once you get past their odious public persona. They
innovated (there wouldn't be as many 7-string guitars in your local music
shop if they hadn't taken 'em to the mainstream),
Green Day copied. The
suckier: Green Day.
Limp Bizkit vs. Metallica: St. Anger is so awful
that it almost, almost, makes me want to take a slap at the Metallica, but,
c'mon, who are we kidding, there's bad records, and
then there's bad careers. Limp Bizkit has mastered
the latter. The suckier: Limp Bizkit.
No Doubt vs. the
Offspring: Ehhhh . . . . both of these groups are wan imitators of things done
better elsewhere, but at least No Doubt have tried to develop themselves
musically, while the Offspring have launched a string of songs destined to be
played by obnoxious frat boys for generations to come. The suckier:
The Offspring.
Def Leppard vs. Motley Crue:
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal vs. Bad American Hair Band? No brainer. The suckier:
Motley Crue.
Poison vs. Quiet
Riot: Sheesh . . . two Bad American
Hair Bands. Dock Quiet Riot points for having to steal from Slade to get
their first hit. The
suckier: Quiet Riot.
Skid Row vs. Stone Temple Pilots: God, this
category is nauseating me, but not as much as Sebastian Bach does. The suckier:
Skid Row.
Soundgarden vs. Whitesnake:
I find Chris Cornell to be an astoundingly annoying singer, but I liked Soundgarden's songs. Can't say either about David Coverversion and friends. The suckier: Whitesnake.
Black Crowes vs.
Blues Traveler: No contest, Black Crowes had the muscle and
fire to mop the floor with Blues Traveler. The suckier: Blues Traveler.
Counting Crows vs. Doobie Brothers: The Doobie's
also didn't know when to quit, and their Michael McDonald era is pretty weeniefied, but in their '70s heyday, they kicked serious
ass, and wrote great singalong songs. Counting
Crowes have done neither, and their desecration of Joni Mitchel's
"Big Yellow Taxi" is one the suckiest of
all time sucky cover songs. The suckier:
Counting Crows.
Dave Matthews Band
vs. Santana: Two big improvisors,
one with lasting influence, one with lasting annoyance. Plus, Carlos Santana didn't
need to call Tim Reynolds in to play his parts in the studio. The suckier:
The Dave Matthews Band.
Spin Doctors vs.
Z.Z. Top: Dusty Hill would eat Chris Barron for breakfast,
with a side of bacon. The
suckier: Spin Doctors.
Beastie Boys vs. Bee
Gees: (Note:
this entry edited a day later after it was made clear to me that I had not
stated my case clearly or explained my logic thoroughly enough. Making a
heretical pick like this one requires that the picker at least explain his
position). Heresy alert! Heresy alert! I consider the Beastie
Boys to be the most over-rated band of the past 20 years: mostly obnoxious
fake hip-hop from guys who started off making mostly obnoxious fake punk.
Give 'em credit for spotting the better wave to
ride when they did. Things got better as they got more organic (their
mid-period albums where they functioned as a reasonably self-sufficient
instrumental trio are their best), but the vocals have always remained
teeth-gratingly shrill and whiny, with not a powerful voice in the bunch.
It's like having a band with three Flavor Flavs . .
. everybody loves the Flava, sure, but you need
some Chuck D in there to anchor the proceedings and to make your sinuses stop
vibrating in resonance with the group's high-pitched, dental-drill-buzzing
raps. The Bee Gees get damned eternally for Saturday Night Fever and all that it
spawned, but their early pop works are lasting pop masterpieces, and if I
needed to hire a songwriter, I'd call Barry Gibb before the Beastie of your
choice. There's some apples-against-oranges here, but when push comes right
down to shove, we've got to conclude that "Fight For Your Right to
Party" is more of a blight on classic radio than the Bee Gees disco hits
were. Sorry, Grand Royal posse. The
suckier: Beastie Boys.
INXS vs. Linkin
Park:
Smooth and cool funk-styled pop against surprisingly melodic and well-written
rap-rock. A closer contest than it would seem on the surface, since Linkin
Park are
far better than most other bands in their genre. Still, it's hard to argue
with the number of great, lasting songs that INXS managed to get onto radio
over the years, and their Australian pub rock background gives them some cred that most other bands lack. The suckier:
Linkin Park.
Prince and the
Revolution vs. the Police: A very, very, very tough call: two
great bands, both of which spawned really annoying and pretentious solo
artists. I've got to stick it to Prince here, though, if only because the
Police were more of a band, Sting's grandstanding notwithstanding, while the
Revolution was more of a collection of (very talented and worthy) backing
players. So with some chagrin, the
suckier: Prince and the Revolution.
Red Hot Chili
Peppers vs. Sublime: Pioneering rap-rock versus derivative
rap-rock, from a couple of bands savaged by heroin addiction. You gotta keep the originals and let the one-hit wonders go. The suckier:
Sublime.
Chicago vs. the Cranberries:
Bleurgh. Can we skip this one? No? Well . . . I
find the hiccuping, over-wrought vocals on the
Cranberries' recordings to be unlistenable, while Chicago's smooth pop goes straight through
my head without making an impression at all. You've gotta
keep the invisible over the annoying, right? The suckier: the
Cranberries.
Hootie and the Blowfish vs. Huey Lewis
and the News: Double bleurgh! Two
terrible, popular acts, but at least Lewis and company had some interesting
early session work to their names, while Hootie
emerged full blown in their awfulness, and didn't have the sense to leave the
scene after their unimaginably successful first record. The suckier:
Hootie and the Blowfish.
Matchbox 20 vs. Men
at Work: You just gotta take the
Aussies here, since they're outsiders by definition, and Matchbox 20 have got
"corporate" stamped all over them, and they get docked for Rob
Thomas' participation in Santana's cheesy comeback album. The suckier:
Matchbox 20.
Tears for Fears vs.
Third Eye Blind: Tears for Fears are overwrought, but they
did cover a lot of stylistic ground, and grew dramatically over their career.
Third Eye Blind sounds like lots and lots and lots of other college rock
radio bands, and don't appear to want to change that. The suckier:
Third Eye Blind.
Bush vs. Creed:
Fake Nirvana vs. Fake Pearl
Jam. We don't like either of the original bands, but Creed's preachiness comes with a whiff of hypocrisy to it, and
their over-emoting and anthem-writing gets real old, real fast. The suckier:
Creed.
Live vs. Nickelback: Nickelback
are another one of those bands that sounds like all the other college rock radio
bands. Live think too much, and fall prey to the same over-emoting and
anthem-writing that Creed indulge in. Relax, guys,
it's only rock n' roll, but when you do it, we don't like it. The suckier:
Live.
Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam: Phew!! The grand pappies of
grunge slugging it out in the first round. Again, another heresy alert: if
you've been reading this blog for a while, you've read my Anti-Nirvana
screed. I pity Kurt Cobain (and even more pity his child), but he and his
band were only as good as Dave Grohl and Butch Vig made them. Pearl Jam are
very, very annoying, but they get points for evolving and taking on new
challenges. But they're still annoying. The suckier: Nirvana.
Smashing Pumpkins
vs. Staind: Billy Corgan is a shrill whiner, but you gotta
give him credit for being ambitious. Staind have
successfully mined the lowest common denominator points of modern rock with
verve and applomb, but that's not a good thing, is
it? The suckier: Staind.
And so, for tomorrow's second round, that leaves us with the following
matchups:
Classic Rock (Pool
A): Aerosmith vs. Boston,
Heart vs. Journey
Classic Rock (Pool
B): Bon Jovi vs. Guns n' Roses,
R.E.O. Speedwagon vs. Bob Seger
and the Silver Bullet Band.
Punk/New
Wave/Hardcore/Neopunk: Blink 182
vs. Green Day, Limp Bizkit vs. the Offspring.
Metal:
Motley Crue vs. Quiet Riot, Skid Row vs. Whitesnake.
Blues/Jam:
Blues Traveler vs. Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band vs. Spin Doctors.
Soul/Funk/Rap:
Beastie Boys vs. Linkin Park, Prince and the
Revolution vs. Sublime.
Pop:
The Cranberries vs. Hootie and the Blowfish,
Matchbox 20 vs. Third Eye Blind.
Modern Rock:
Creed vs. Live, Nirvana vs. Staind.
Tune in tomorrow as we move ever closer to determining . . . . the worst rock band in history!
The Worst Rock Band Ever Competition (Part Three):
Today we weed the prospects into a dense sweet sixteen of suck. Remember: to
qualify for this list, each band had to have at least one album sell five
million copies, and it's the worse, not the better bands that advance. So
without further ado:
Aerosmith vs. Boston:
Aerosmith has put out some really dismal albums and singles over the past 15
years, ever since they started relying heavily on outside songwriters for
hits and/or beginning to craft aggressively adolescent lyrics and/or
featuring too-much-too-young pre-starlets in their videos: I see "Love
in an Elevator" and "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" and
"Janie's Got A Gun" as the watershed transitional singles for them,
when they passed from dangerous rockers to winking superstars. That having
been said, they issued some tough, hard, nasty albums in their heyday, and
they did work their up from clubs and pubs on their way to superstardom. Boston, on the other
hand . . . didn't. They were always the canned vision of Tom Scholz: while they played clubs in their early days, it
was Scholz's meticulous basement demos that earned
them their contract, not their live chops. Scholz's
studio geekery/freakery
got worse with time, although the longer he took on Boston's records, the worse they got. Rock
and roll is ultimately about soul and passion and rebellion, and a band as
cold and calculating as Boston
doesn't satisfy those primal requirements. The suckier: Boston.
Heart vs. Journey:
Heart's Dreamboat Annie
and Little Queen
were pretty stunningly shocking when they hit pop/rock radio in the mid-'70s,
since we'd been programmed by that time to accept women singers, but not
ass-kicking female guitarists, or a pair of sisters serving as their own
musical directors and writing their own songs. Those two records presented
material by a surprisingly mature emergent band: the seeds of Heart go all
the back to 1963, so the Wilson
sisters had been doing their thing for a long time before they broke big with
it. Of course, when they had to start churning out the obligatory album a
year during the '70s, the quality level dropped off dramatically. They had a
commercial renaissance with their self-titled '85 album, but by that time,
they'd taken the Aerosmith path of hiring outside songwriters to write more
formulaic hits for them. Most of which were, let's be honest, pretty lame.
Journey's career path took the opposite approach: the first three albums by
this Santana spin off band were critically and commercially tepid jazz-fusion
flavored records, before they took on singer Steve Perry and broke huge with
1978's Infinity
and 1979's Evolution.
The jazz rock stuff was pretty weak, while the pop-rock stuff became annoying
radio fodder for years to come: "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" is
particularly shudder inducing to this day. I think, ultimately, this one
comes down to the radio test: I don't switch the station when
"Barracuda" or "Straight On" or "Magic Man"
come on, but I'm quick with the dial when "Anyway You Want It" or
"Open Arms" or (shudder) "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" come
on. The suckier: Journey.
Bon Jovi vs. Guns n' Roses: Guns n' Roses
were so good when they first started, and the Use Your Illusions albums too long by
half, but show an astounding degree of ambition for a genre of music that
wasn't known for it. The bottom fell out at that point, though, once Izzy Stradlin left, beginning
the steady sequence of departures that have left Axl
to putter about in his hair piece and girdle, playing unbelievably bad live shows
with a cobbled-together band of merceneries, when
he feels up to it. Bon Jovi, on the other hand, have been paeans to the consistency of mediocrity: they
are what they are, and that's all that they are, and you know what you're
getting, and that's all there is. We have to go with a band that once had big
vision and ambition over the middle of the road rockers. The suckier:
Bon Jovi.
R.E.O. Speedwagon vs. Bob Seger and
the Silver Bullet Band: Both of these bands were classic
middle of the road radio rockers at their commercial apexes. Seger, however, had some pretty significant back story:
his late '60s releases Ramblin Gamblin
Man and Mongrel
were piledriving Detroit rock records, the place
where the MC5 met Mitch Ryder; Seger's "2+2 =
?" is one of the more powerful anti-war songs of its era. He was still
rocking hard and mean with 1974's Seven,
but with 1975's Beautiful
Loser he walked into the mainstream and spent the next five years
sitting pretty near the top of the charts with a series of accessible, mostly
harmless pop rock records. Right around the time that Seger's
key commercial period ended, R.E.O. Speedwagon shot
to the top of the charts with Hi
Infidelity in 1980, capping a ten-year, ten-album slog through
various subgenres of arena-ready rock. They got their arenas in the early
'80s, but they were sharing them with Styx
and Journey, so what does that tell you about the spirit of that age? The suckier:
R.E.O. Speedwagon.
Blink 182 vs. Green
Day: Both derivative neo-punk bands, both with huge crossover
success, but Green Day got through the door first, letting Blink 182 pop
through in the wake they created. Green Day get points for tackling the
occasional non-genre cut, most notably "Good Riddance (Time of Your
Life)," while Blink 182 get docked for one of the worst album covers and
titles in rock history with Enema
of the State. (Which outsucks
even Green Day's own puerile Dookie disc). The suckier:
Blink 182.
Limp Bizkit vs. the Offspring: Rapcore vs. neo-punk, how appealing. Not. While the
Offspring's frat friendly fare gets obnoxious quickly, at least it's catchy
enough to stick in your noggin for a while, whether you want it to our not.
Limp Bizkit, on the other hand, can get painfully amelodic at times, and not in the good/experimental sense
of that word: they're trying to write melodies, they just can't do it, or if
they can, then Fred Durst can't sing them. We have to ask ourselves: how did
such an unappealing vocalist come to front such a successful group? Well,
we'll certainly be able to talk about them more tomorrow, since they are . .
. The suckier: Limp Bizkit.
Motley Crue vs. Quiet Riot: It's frightening to
remember that the first heavy metal record to top Billboard's charts was
Quiet Riot's Metal
Health. It's also frightening to consider that a metal band with
a guitarist as bad as Mick Mars could rise to the commercial apex of this
guitar-intensive genre. Quiet Riot were essentially one hit wonders (they
sold plenty of copies of Condition
Critical, the followup to Metal Health, but it's
a blueprint of its predecessor, making it one hit spread over two discs,
right down to the paired Slade covers, which are the best songs on both
albums), while Motley Crue managed to offend over a
long series of discs and tours and excesses and VH1 television shows. I
started this paragraph thinking I was going to give the nod to Quiet Riot as
the suckier band, but as I type, I think we've got
to honor Motley Crue's long-term commitment to
making bad music in public places, since Quiet Riot at least had the dignity
to fall off the radar screen after their moment in the sun. The suckier:
Motley Crue.
Skid Row vs. Whitesnake: As noted yesterday, I find
Sebastian Bach to be a particularly annoying metal singer/persona. Maybe it's
the hair, I dunno. Of course, as annoying as he is,
he is the person you think of when you think of Skid Row, so when a couple of
the other members of the band got back together to put out a new record under
the Skid Row monniker without him, it dinged the
band as an entity down a couple on notches on the
integrity scale. Whitesnake is derivative, sure,
but at least they came by their derivativeness honestly: most of them were
veterans of Deep Purple, so if they weren't blazing trails with Whitesnake, it might be because they'd done so already
and were ready to just take the rock god dollars without having to redefine
the rock god rules again. The
suckier: Skid Row.
Blues Traveler vs.
Counting Crows: I have a confession to make. When I first
sketched out this strategy for identifying the worst rock band of all time,
these two bands were both in the final four of suckiness,
along with another lightly jam-flavored band (and, yes, I know the Crows
aren't really a jam band, but they craft music that's textured and flavored
in the same ways that most of the jam bands texture and flavor their music,
they just don't wank on it as long). It occured to me that, as odious as the jam scene can be,
picking three of the final four bands from a single genre seemed a bit
reductive. So I came up with the eight categories to make sure that the final
four represented a little bit more variety when it came to badness. Of
course, that means that now I have to chose one
these bands to advance and one to fall off the radar screen, even though I
think they're both pretty awful and both could stand to go another round or
two. Oh well, you can't change the rules once you've posted them (well . . .
you can, but
I won't). I'm going to give the Counting Crows the benefit of being less
straightly jam driven and more song oriented, and because their debut album
is actually reasonably dark and reflective, indicating that they were
thinking about something other than how the hell they were gonna get back to the root chord after a 20 minute
harmonica workout. The
suckier: Blues Traveler.
Dave Matthews Band
vs. Spin Doctors: Dave Matthews and company have been
carrying the Dead/Allmans torch for much of the
past decade, drawing huge throngs to watch their onstage pyrotechnics and
improvisations, based on and build around reasonably accessible pop songs.
They deserve credit for creating their fare from a very unusual instrumental
configuration: how many other guitar-drum-bass-violin-sax bands can you think
of? (Here's two: Hawkwind
and Roxy Music, at different points in their careers). Spin Doctors, on the
other hand, were one-hit jam band wonders, dropped by their own label five
years after releasing a six-times platinum record.
With so little to recommend them, they are clearly . . . The suckier:
Spin Doctors.
Beastie Boys vs. Linkin Park: I dislike the Beastie Boys,
I really do, and I find Linkin Park one of the more
appealing post-rapcore crossover bands (and before
you write to snark about this, listen to their
records . . . I'm always amazed at how quickly people are to dismiss things
based on having caught a piece of a video or a part of a song on the radio).
However, this contest is unbalanced in terms of career length and prospects
that there's not really any good model that I could come up with to judge Linkin
Park as a superior band
to the Beastie Boys, however much I dislike them. So, on the strength of
their career, their reasonably innovative early work with Rick Rubin, their
nurturing of other artists, and their one great song ("Sabotage"),
we let the purveyors of "Fight for Your Right to Party" off the
hook, and reluctanly reward . . . The suckier:
Linkin Park.
Prince and the
Revolution vs. Sublime: No contest, again both in terms of
career arc, influence, longevity, creativity, originality, etc. etc. etc.
etc. The grossest mismatch of the second round, clearly, although there's
nothing really wrong with Sublime. They just can't hang with Prince. Or Wendy
and Lisa, for that matter. The
suckier: Sublime.
The Cranberries vs. Hootie and the Blowfish: I don't know
which is the chicken and which is the egg, but I suspect we have the
Cranberries Dolores O'Riordan to thank for the hiccuping vocal trick that Alanis Morrissete
rode to superstardom a couple of years after the Cranberries first popped up
on American (and presumably Canadian) radio. While it's interesting the first
time you hear it, it makes listening to records (or even songs) by artists
who sing that way very, very repetitive sounding, very, very quickly. But, to
their credit, the Cranberries were inspired by artists like the Smiths, and
were trying to do some interesting instrumental things early on in their
careers, until O'Riordan decided to focus the
band's attention onto topical subjects, writing about them badly, becoming a
lightweight counter to the already over-rated Sinead O'Connor in the process.
Hootie in the Blowfish? Well, they were sort of the
steroid-fueled version of the Spin Doctors, a band that astounded everyone,
and I mean everyone,
by selling millions and millions of copies of a wan and tepid debut album,
then slowly, steadily, falling out of everyone's consciousness, leaving
millions and millions of people to wonder: what was I thinking? Ambition, however
misguided, always trumps easy listening, however lucrative. The suckier:
Hootie and the Blowfish.
Matchbox 20 vs.
Third Eye Blind: Third Eye Blind are mostly harmless radio
rock, really. As are Matchbox 20, come to think of it. Both of these groups
fit so seamlessly into the sounds of pop format radio these days that it's kinda hard to think which songs are theirs until you look
at a listing of their albums: "Oh! That's them? Oh!" Once again,
this one comes down to the margins . . . Matchbox 20 get dinged because Rob
Thomas has become a go-to guy for tepid comeback songs by classic rockers,
and when I saw them in concert (hey, I was reviewing the show, I didn't want to be there),
their live presentation was so innocuous on one hand, but manipulative and
calculating on another. They pushed each of the stock live show buttons systemically,
sequentially, goading the audience right to where they wanted them. If you
hadn't seen a lot of rock shows, I could see how you could have walked out of
that room thinking you'd seen a classic. If you'd seen a lot of rock shows,
then you'd know that you'd been had. The
suckier: Matchbox 20.
Creed vs. Live:
Before I assess this one, I have to strain real hard to make the tendons in
my neck stand out, and scrunch my eyes together, and lift my hands up in the
air to show how thoughtful and earnest and sincere I am as I spill my guts
onto the computer. Both of these bands are way, way, way, way, way too
pompous and histrionic and preachy for their own good, Creed from an
ostensibly Christian perspective, Live from a more Eastern/pantheistic standpoint.
Look at us! We're so sincere! We're so thoughtful! Buy our records! Uhh . . . no. Instrumentally, Live are the more ambitious
of the two groups, with Creed's music being as heavy-handed and plodding as
their philosophy and preaching. I shiver as I untense
my shoulders, let out a deep breath, and declare . . . The suckier:
Creed.
Nirvana vs. Staind: Nirvana launched a revolution,
even if it was a backward looking one, even if it died on the vine, even if
their legacy now hinges more on the pillaging of poor Kurt Cobain's backstory and diaries than it does on the music. At least
they mattered, once upon a time. I first encountered Staind
on a triple live bill with Static-X and the Clay People. I adored the sets
that those two bands offered, but found Staind to
be dull and tepid by comparison, clearly the inferior act. Six months later
they were sitting atop the charts, so what do I know? Well, I do know this .
. . The suckier: Staind.
Alright, that's it for today! Tomorrow we pick the final eight, one finalist
from each of our eight categories. To sum up, tomorrow's competition will be
between:
Classic Rock (Pool
A): Boston
vs. Journey
Classic Rock (Pool
B): Bon Jovi vs. R.E.O. Speedwagon
Punk/New
Wave/Hardcore/Neopunk: Blink 182
vs. Limp Bizkit
Metal:
Motley Crue vs. Skid Row
Blues/Jam:
Blues Traveler vs. Spin Doctors.
Soul/Funk/Rap:
Linkin Park vs. Sublime
Pop:
Hootie and the Blowfish vs. Matchbox 20
Modern Rock:
Creed vs. Staind
Watch this space, as the ball of badness gets smaller and denser, each and
every day.
The
Worst Rock Band Ever Competition (Part Four):
We're back . . . and today we pick the final eight, one from each category.
Before we get to the selections, though, a couple of thoughts on the process
and reactions to feedback received:
1. As a general rule, I'm not a fan of destructive criticism: it's always
better to write a good review of an unknown band just starting out than it is
to take potshots at bands who have already succeeded (commercially, that is).
Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship, and all that. This competition, of
course, is all about the negative . . . but that's the main reason that I
made the criteria for participation sales of at least five million copies of
one or more albums. Once you've achieved commercial success at that level,
the price of fame is that you're open for having your bubble popped, both in
the national press and on private journals like this one. You can't put your
art statements out in front of millions of people without accepting, and
expecting, a more stringent critical view than a band that's playing for
peanuts and beer money is going to get from the same critics. That's why
people often accuse critics of going soft on our own hometown bands. In
general, it's not that we're going soft on them, it's that we're not going as
hard on the big name bands that we could savage, if there was a point to
doing so.
2. Every one of these bands is commercially successful, which means that
every one of these bands has millions and millions of fans. I don't hate you
if you like these bands, I don't think you're stupid
if you like these bands, I'm not insulting you if you like these bands. I'm
insulting the bands themselves. There's a difference. You are a fan. You are
not the band, and not responsible for upholding their honor. They have press
flacks to do that for them. They can afford that luxury, having sold at least
five million albums. Based on responses I've heard already, I'm sure that
when this all gets indexed into the search engines that I'll be hearing from
an increasing number of people saying "Dude . . . [your band name here]
rocks . . . you suck!" And, well, hey . . . no argument there, really,
but if you don't like what I'm saying, then why are you reading my blog?
3. Yes, of course this is all subjective. All music criticism is subjective.
If there was an objective standard for judging music, then we wouldn't need
music critics, and we wouldn't need record labels, and we wouldn't need press
flacks: corporations would just put out a very small number of records that
met the objective standard for "good music" and everyone would buy
and listen to the same small number of things. It's
subjectivity, both in terms of artists' aspirations and talents and critical
and commercial response to them, that makes music exciting. You can't have a
happy trainwreck or an inspired mistake in a world
ruled by objectivity.
4. Yes, of course this is just my opinion. (Well, not really, I have been
getting input from readers, and have been taking their points into
consideration). But, ultimately, it's me that's making the call. But, then,
ultimately this is my blog, innit? Why would I fill
my blog with somebody else's opinion? If you want to know what Kurt Loder or Dave Marsh or Greil
Marcus think about these bands, go read their blogs.
Alright, then, that taken care of, we can now move subjectively, negatively
and personally into selecting the final eight.
Boston vs. Journey:
Both bands are, ultimately, creatures of their sole permanent member
guitarists: Tom Scholz for Boston and Neal Schon for Journey. The difference between them is that
Journey has at least functioned as a fully formed band for most of their
history: you can hear that a drummer and a bassist and a guitarist and a
keyboardist actually got together to make music together. It's hard to hear
that with Boston, since so much of their recorded output has been so heavily
and tightly controlled, composed, produced and processed by Scholz, which has made his bandmates
expendable. Or so Scholz imagined, since the
problem with him using his mad, precise studio wizardry to polish his band's
sound to a reflective sheen is that the only really, truly unique thing that
listeners recognize as a distinctive sound to Boston's music is singer Brad Delp's voice. Scholz forgot
that on 1994's Walk On,
spending seven years in the studio and cavalierly replacing Delp with another singer. Fans and AOR radio weren't
buying it by that time, though. As much as Scholz
is the brains behind Boston, Delp is the voice, and
it ain't Boston without him. Some folks would make
the same argument about Journey, that they're not Journey without Steve
Perry, but Perry wasn't an original member, and the first Journey album
without him (2001's Arrival)
is actually better than the last Journey album with him (1996's Trial By Fire).
Ultimately, it comes down to a competition between a band that has steadily
mutated its membership over the years (Journey) and a marketing construct
that hires and fires musicians and singers as necessary to serve the musical
overlord. I'll always pick a band over a marketing construct. The suckier:
Boston.
Bon Jovi vs. R.E.O. Speedwagon:
The Heartland vs. the Jersey Shore. Both of these bands are real bands (unlike Boston),
both of them slogged their way up through clubs, although Bon Jovi had a bit of a head start in that department, given
that Jon Bon Jovi's cousin is Tony Bongiovi, owner of the Power Station recording studio,
and young Jon had the chance to hobnob, rub shoulders and record demos with
members of Springsteen's E Street Band, which presumably R.E.O. Speedwagon's members didn't. It took R.E.O. Speedwagon ten years and ten albums before they broke the
five-times-platinum barrier with the chart-topping Hi Infidelity, but
they did it themselves, and their breakthrough album didn't have any
particular pot sweeteners or additives crassly added to take it over the
hump. Bon Jovi, on the other hand, scored big with
their third album, Slippery
When Wet: for which they brought in mercenary schlockmeister
Desmond Child to write the hits, and behind which the emphasis in the
marketing package shifted to making sure that the very telegenic
Jon Bon Jovi was given male pin-up heart throb
treatment. R.E.O. Speedwagon were
never going to be poster boys: they got what they got through the music, not
by being cute, and not by hiring hacks to do their songwriting for them. With
that distinction in hand, we salute the Heartland and decree . . . the suckier:
Bon Jovi.
Blink 182 vs. Limp Bizkit: Okay, I'll admit it: I actually
liked Limp Bizkit's "Nookie"
the first time I heard it. There. It's out. I've said it. Of course, I
thought it was Korn the first time I heard it,
since what I liked about it was its bottom-heavy bass and seven string guitar
crunch, not the dreadful vocals on top of it. It's understandable that Limp Bizkit would issue a song that sounded (instrumentally)
like Korn, since Jonathan Davis and company served
as the conduit through which Limp Bizkit got its
crack at the big time: without Korn, Fred Durst
would still be a tattoo artist somewhere. (Hmmm . . . maybe I need to rethink
how much I like Korn). Durst went on to actually
perform a with Korn on Follow Your Leader, dragging Jonathan
Davis through what is probably supposed to be a spontaneous free-style rapped
dis fest, but which actually becomes one of Korn's most empty and hollow and pointless sounding
songs. Limp Bizkit's career opened with a dreadful
cover of George Michael's "Faith" (one where you're not quite sure
if you're laughing with the band, or at the band), and their desecration of
the Who's "Behind Blues Eyes" is currently on the charts. In
between those points, the band lost guitarist Wes Borland (who, despite the
idiocy of his onstage costumes, actually offered some of the few interesting
moments his band produced), the music stayed pretty much exactly the same
(except that the guitar parts got worse) and Fred Durst's
lyrics grew to be almost as whiny as his voice: nobody understands him, boo freakin' hoo. Blink 182 rose
out of the whole surf/skate/punk/Warped/Vans scene, playing mostly harmless neopunk, although as I've noted before, I cringe every
time I see their Enema
of the State record in the racks, one of the worst record covers
ever, certainly the worst by a five-times-platinum band. However, I've got to
give them credit for realizing that it's time to grow up and put aside the
skateboards after ten years of surf rat fodder: their self-titled 2003 album
finds them stretching themselves in new directions, going so far as to
recruit the Cure's Robert Smith to sing on a track. Give 'em
credit for balls, if nothing else, and for looking in the mirror and
realizing that it was time to grow up. I suppose we can hope that someday
Fred Durst has such a moment. The
suckier: Limp Bizkit.
Motley Crue vs. Skid Row: Motley Crue were one of the first
prominent hair metal bands of the '80s, while Skid Row emerged at the tail
end of the hair metal era. We can blame Motley Crue
for that unfortunate phenomenon accordingly, while with Skid Row we just have
to shake our heads and wonder how they could have been sucked into such
things. Skid Row, to their credit, tried some interesting modern metal tricks
in between the rock radio friendly fare, particularly on their more speed-metal
flavored mid'90s records. Motley Crue, on the other
hand, were always about pushing the same buttons that Kiss pushed on their
rise to stardom, only several years later, the make-up, the devil references,
the girls, the explosions, etc. etc. etc. If you can find a stitch or a spark
of originality in the Motley Crue canon, then
you're a more detailed observer than I could ever be. I will always see them
as Kiss Ultra-Lite (now with 20% more pasturized cheese food product!) The suckier:
Motley Crue.
Blues Traveler vs.
Spin Doctors: It's very, very interesting that these two slug
it out against each other here, since Spin Doctor Chris Barron went to high
school with the founding members of Blues Traveler, and is a close friend of
Traveler frontman John Popper; the two even jammed
together in their formative years, and there are apocryphal tales to be found
online of Barron being an original member of the Blues Traveler's earliest
incarnations, before he was given the boot. Blues Traveler made it out of the
starting blocks first, and were instrumental in the
founding on Spin Doctors: Popper and company encountered Barron while on
tour, and brought him back to New York City with them, saving him from having
to continue playing in such bands as the Funbunnies
and Dead Alcoholics With Boners. (This is true, I'm not making this up, or if
it's not true, then the All Music Guide is making up facts again). He met his
fellow Spin Doctors there, which probably relieved Blues Traveler, since they
probably didn't really want to bring him back into their band again. Both
bands rode the Grateful Dead fueled jam train to their unexpected (in Blues
Traveler's case) and amazingly unexpected (in the Spin Doctor's case) pop
breakthroughs. It's how they handled the post-breakthrough success that
separates them: Spin Doctors oscillated wildly between pushing the sorts of
straight pop that got them onto the radio (and MTV) and pushing the sorts of
jam fare that their original following liked, and by trying to please
everyone, they pleased no one, including Epic Records, who dumped them after
1994's dreadful Turn It
Upside Down. Blues Traveler, on the other hand, have aged with
some dignity, and their musical changes seem to be driven less by market
considerations that by internal forces (the death of bassist Bob Sheehan,
John Popper's struggles with weight and illness, attempts to incorporate new
instrumentation or to mix up their classics acoustic style, etc.).
Ultimately, it seems that Blues Traveler did the right thing when they left
high school chum Chris Barron to his own devices, since if they hadn't, we
wouldn't be able to declare . . . the
suckier: Spin Doctors.
Linkin Park vs. Sublime:
Now this is an unfortunate final for the soul/funk/rap division of our
competition, in that neither of these bands really suck.
They just has the misfortune of going up against heavier hitters in the early
rounds, with Linkin Park being defeated by INXS and
the Beastie Boys, and Sublime falling to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Prince
and the Revolution. Who'da thunk
that this category would have been the highest quality one when push came
down to final shove? Not me! Anyway . . . Linkin
Park is melodic rapcore (no mean feat) with a cool jones for Aphex Twin styled
rhythms and textures. Sublime was melodic post-punk with a splash of reggae sunsplash thrown into the mix for good measure. We're gonna give Linkin Park the
benefit of the doubt here in that they're an ongoing concern, and have thus
far been smart enough not to lose their creative sparkplug to a heroin
overdose. We'll dock Sublime's surviving members, too, for the things they've
done with Long Beach Dub Allstars, which veer
perilously close to jam band wankiness, even when
they're done in the name of dub. A little bit less dope might tighten it up a
bit, perhaps? Punchline is,
one of these bands has to advance, although basically this amounts to a
"free ride to the final four" for whoever they meet in the next
round. Therefore . . . the
suckier: Sublime.
Hootie and the Blowfish vs. Matchbox 20:
Hootie and the Blowfish were the little bar band
that could . . . chugga chugga
chugga chugga solo chugga chugga chugga chugga chorus chugga chugga chugga chugga fade. It's almost hard to blame or credit them for their
success, since they were the beneficiaries of an unexpected mass and
widespread desire by American listeners to hear a bar band at home, instead
of in the bars where their unoffensive fare goes
down smooth with bourbon and smokes. Hootie and the
Blowfish were onetime offenders: it's easy to let 'em
off with a slap on the wrist and probation, telling them that they'll only
have to do their prison time if they offend again. Which they're never going
to. Problem solved. Matchbox 20, though, are repeat
offenders, recidivists of the most pernicious variety. Their debut album Yourself or Someone Like You
just . . . would . . . not . . . . go . . . away!!!
Ten million copies sold and counting, singles on the charts and on the radio
for years after it was issued, never a chart-topper, just a constant, nagging
reminder of how rock music can be so well packaged and marketed. Singer Rob
Thomas then became ubiquitous with his performance on Santana's
"Smooth," a truly lowest common denominator version of the Latin
rock that Carlos Santana single-handedly invented 25 years earlier. And then
. . . Mad Season
. . . and then More Than
You Think You Are . . . all of them sounding exactly the same,
all of them polished to a tee and perfect in their construction, sleek and
aerodynamically designed to permeate the airwaves and stay there, forever,
songs that could have been written, recorded and issued anytime in the past
25 years by any number of bands, they're so generic and fit so well with
whatever else is on the radio or MTV. But, they were actually made by only
one band, and therefore . . . the
suckier: Matchbox 20.
Creed vs. Staind: This one's the opposite of the Linkin Park-Sublime contest, in that both of these bands
have many, many, many strikes against them, and I'd be happy to see both of them
move forward in the contest. But we need to pick the worse of the two to
preserve the sanctity of the event (how could I have been so dumb . . . why
didn't I put them in separate categories?? foolish! foolish!!!). In the same
way that we have to damn Korn for inflicting Limp Bizkit upon us, we have to damn Limp Bizkit
for inflicting Staind upon us: Fred Durst just
loved the band, and helped get them studio time and a record deal. Thanks,
Fred, for sharing. While Staind had faux rough
chops early on, playing light a lighterweight
counterpart to Tool or Korn, they really found
their niche (such as it is) when they sawed the edges of their music and
began issuing singles that are sort of the power ballads of the nu metal era. They are very sensitive, and earnest, and
will tell you so in their songs. But they've got nothing on Creed in the earnest
department: as you can tell by the title of their debut album My Own Prison, these
guys are just all torn up inside, and they're gonna
tell us all about it, you bet, in their best post-grunge leather-lunged
knock-upside-the-head fashion. And then on Human
Clay, they're gonna tell us about how
we're all clay, see, and we can be molded, if you shout really loudly over
trundling riffs and mid-tempo slabs of mediocrity. And now they're Weathered, they're
older and more experienced, and they're gonna
shout, shout let it all out (sorry, Tears for Fears), but it sounds the same
as it's always sounded, and stop yelling at me, dammit,
I hear you, I just don't care!!! The
suckier: Creed.
And, so that takes us down to our final eight, one from each category, which
means we merge the categories tomorrow to get a final four. Tomorrow's Elite
Eight matchups will be:
Classic Rock (Pools
A and B): Boston vs. Bon Jovi.
Punk/New Wave/Hardcore/Neopunk/Metal: Limp Bizkit
vs. Motley Crue.
Soul/Funk/Rap/Pop:
Matchbox 20 vs. Sublime.
Blues/Jam/Modern
Rock: Creed vs. Spin Doctors.
It's getting tense and intense . . . as we move ever closer towards
recognizing: The Worst Rock Band Ever!!
The Worst Rock Band Ever Competition (Part Five):
Today we pick the final four, combining our original eight categories into
four super categories, seeking the four most heinous offenders to move on to
the final round robin tournament of badness. By this time tomorrow (well,
maybe by a later time tomorrow, since it's Saturday
and I'll probably sleep in, sorry), we should have our winner. Or loser, I
guess would be the better way to honor them. So . . . without further ado,
today's contests are:
Boston vs. Bon Jovi: A New England vs. New Jersey
slugfest between two bands who are as tightly marketed, glossily produced and
manipulatively packaged as any others to ever come out of the classic radio
rock genre. In Bon Jovi's favor, there is the fact
that they really are a band, not a shell concept for pushing the monomaniacal
impulses of a single producer/guitarist, a la Boston's Tom Scholz. Look at Scholz's
credits on the last Boston album, 2002's Corporate
America: Bass, Guitar, Drums, Guitar (Electric), Keyboards,
Vocals, Art Direction. Hmmm . . . that's pretty much everything, isn't it?
(Note, too, that Boston has now resorted to revolving lead singers: Scholz knows that people associate Brad Delp's voice with Boston, but if Delp
only sings occassionally, he can't erode or impede
Tom's total control). Bon Jovi have
a lot of hired guns on their discs, but there is a band buried under there,
somewhere. The problem is, though, that most of the songs that you recognize
from the radio also feature the songwriting and production talents of Desmond
Child, one of the most serious purveyors of pop rock pablum
to ever take pen to hand or sit behind a mixing board. Boston, at least,
wrote their own hits. Or, uh, Tom Scholz wrote their hits. But he is Boston, so that means
the same thing. Boston wins on the marketing front to some extent to: as antisceptic and soulless as it can, it's all about the
music with Boston. Do you even know what any of the band's member(s) look
like? Have their faces ever appeared on the front of an album cover? Bon Jovi, on the other hand, has ridden pretty boy looks and
style that perfectly mesh with their (Desmond) Childish musical approach,
playing as cute young things to cute young things, or at least to the guys
who want to hang out with cute young things. To some extent, they built on
the radio rock that Boston pioneered in the '70s, and gave it a hairband era brush cut and make-up job. Which also
reminds us that when Boston hit the airwaves with the best selling debut
album ever (at the time, they've seen be supplanted by Whitney Houston), they
were actually something of a breath of fresh air in a radio environment that
was packed with things like disco and "You Light Up My Life" and
"Afternoon Delight" and all sorts of other timeless horrors. They
were innovative (if calculating) in their day. Bon Jovi
was derivative (and calculating) in theirs. And the radio
dial test stands: when I hear Boston's earliest cuts on the radio, I
don't change the station. I haven't listened to a Bon Jovi
cut sitting in my car all the way through since, oh, I dunno,
maybe ever, although I've been subjected to them at parties and clubs and
social settings far more often than I would have liked. Looking at all the
pros and cons, we therefore decree . . . the suckier: Bon Jovi.
Limp Bizkit vs. Motley Crue:
Allmusic Guide's
review of Limp Bizkit's latest album, Results May Vary,
pretty much hits the crux of this band's problem right on the head:
"Part of its weakness stems from two perennial Limp Bizkit
problems: for a metal band they sound, well, limp, and in Fred Durst they
have the worst frontman in the history of
rock." He really, truly is about as bad a singer and public face as any
band could ever ask for, or ever ask to avoid, and there's something really,
savagely wrong with us as a nation that we don't recognize that this in an
emperor wearing no clothes deal here. Durst's
influence on his own band has grown over its career, particularly since Wes
Borland departed, leaving Durst to provide the creative spark and impetus for
the truly odious Results
May Vary. Not that the earlier discs were all that much better
mind you: you've gotta shake your head over the
fact that an album with the title Chocolate
Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water (with content that lived
down to its cover) could actually top the American charts. The other problem
with Limp Bizkit is that they are in our faces right now: this whole
survey started when I read an article citing Limp Bizkit
and Creed as the worst bands of 2003, and both of them are still surviving
now in the final eight. Does that mean that things are worse now than they've
ever been? I don't think so . . . I think it's just that time heals, and
recent affronts to good taste are going to feel bigger than slights from 20
years ago. So to fairly assess the odious Limp Bizkit
against Motley Crue, we've really got to go back
and give the Crue's career a thorough scrub:
they're off the radar screen now, but they were really, really, really pointlessly
stupid and bad in their glory (?) days. In summary . . . their terrible,
horrible makeup and hair on the cover of breakthrough album Shout at the Devil
launched a thousand hair band photos . . . the devil imagery on that record
was so shallow and transparent, right down to covering the Beatles'
"Helter Skelter" (they probably thought
Charles Manson wrote it) and inserted an instrumental called "God Bless
the Children of the Beast" . . . their breakthrough single was a lousy
cover of Brownsville Station's stupid song "Smokin'
in the Boy's Room" . . . ."Home Sweet Home" was arguably the
first metal power ballad to break through on MTV . . . "Dr. Feelgood" and "Girls, Girls, Girls" are
two of the worst songs to continually recycle on rock radio to this day . . .
Vince Neil killed Nicholas Dingley of Hanoi Rocks
in an auto accident . . . Tommy Lee served time for beating up Pamela
Anderson . . . Nikki Sixx served as songwriter for
hire to Meatloaf, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw . . . Vince Neil's ex-wife
accused him of spousal abuse . . . . married family
man Sixx slept with tour drummer Samantha Maloney
and slammed her for it on his website after the fact . . . . and what the hell is that thing sitting on top of Mick
Mars' head? Is that hair? He is a scary troll, he is. And not scary in the
good sense of the word. So as you wrap things up and look at the cons and
more cons on both sides of the argument, and discount the fact that Limp Bizkit's horrible presence is in the now, while Motley Crue's heinous offenses are historical (but many and
multifaceted), I actually end up in a different place than I would have
expected as I began writing this paragraph. Limp Bizkit
aren't worth the ink to damn them, they're going to be historically
insignificant in the grander scheme of music: you've got to aim bigger to win
this contest than Limp Bizkit will ever be able.
Motley Crue (right down to the umlauts over their
letters, which I refuse to type, and which they stole from Motorhead) are badness for the
ages, and badness that inspired a lot of other badness, and as such, we must
acknowledge them as . . . . the suckier:
Motley Crue.
Matchbox 20 vs.
Sublime: Well, this one doesn't take a lot of thought. As
noted yesterday, Sublime made it to the final eight not on the merits of
their own scant suckiness, but because they had the
misfortune of going up against obviously superior, non-sucky
bands in the first two rounds. But their bad luck streak ends here, because
there is no question that Matchbox 20's ubiquitous, lowest common denominator
radio rock is of a more insidious, perfidious stripe that Sublime's passing
(and passed) moment in the reggae-punk limelight, even when we adjust for
present aggravation against past aggravation. Plus, there's no doubt that
Matchbox 20 are going to offend again, and in anticipation of that, we decree
them to be . . . the
suckier: Matchbox 20.
Creed vs. Spin
Doctors: This contest, on the other hand, is a tough one. We
have to take the Limp Bizkit Factor into
consideration: does Creed seem more annoying to us because they're a present
annoyance, rather than a past annoyance? Because they are really, really annoying, there
is no doubt about that at all, with their midtempo anthemic rockers and Scott Stapp's
"I'm oh so serious and emotive" baritone yell. If you boil
everything about mainstream post-grunge rock music down into a heartless,
tasteless broth, you could can it and package it and sell it as
"Campbell's Creed Soup." Sad thing is,
you'd make millions doing it. On the upside (such as it is), Stapp did duke it out in the public domain with Fred
Durst over the Limp one's "mobster mentality" business tactics
(Durst, in addition to being the worst front man in rock history is also a
senior Vice President for Interscope Records, which
is as telling an indictment against the state of the rock industry as any I
can come up with). But that outburst aside, Creed are just too damn serious
for their own good, and their records have gotten weaker and weaker as they
go along, even as their sales grow higher and higher. Stapp
has compared his band to Led Zeppelin, who were also routinely slagged by critics while selling millions and millions of
records, but the difference is that Zeppelin made something people still want
to hear 30 years later, while Creed is more likely to end up on the
soundtrack of "I Love the Nineties" 15 years from now, while people
watching the show sit on their couches saying "Oh, are those the guys
that did that 'arms wide open' song? What were they called again?" But
this competition isn't between Creed and Led Zepellin,
it's between Creed and Spin Doctors. And Spin Doctors are (or were) pretty
dire too, but in the opposite end of the spectrum: perennially, heinously
goofy and lightweight. The first cut on their debut live EP was called
"Big Fat Funky Booty." Cringe! But, then, later on that disc, we
get "Yo Mama's a Pajama." Double
cringe!!! Their breakthrough single was "Little Miss Can't Be
Wrong." I have a hard time accepting anything with the words
"Little Miss" in them, and the album that rode that song to super
multiplatinum status, Pocket
Full of Kryptonite, (ha ha, ha ha, I
get it) played like a watered down version of the Grateful Dead's Arista era records,
which were pretty watery to start with. (Maybe we need to market
"Campbell's Cream of Spin Doctors" broth, too, for the older,
toothless listeners). That one-hit wonder was followed by three albums of
decreasing quality and decreasing sales (the opposite of Creed's "reduce
quality/increase sales" approach), before a throat problem forced Chris
Barron to take a vow of silence for a year, which he followed with a solo
album. (I do have to give him credit and props for that: that's a level of
commitment that requires some serious discipline, certainly more discipline
that he and his band evidenced in their recordings and performances). So I'm
really torn on this one: expired one-hit wonder vs. growing ongoing concern.
Modern Rock (a bad genre) vs. Jam Band (a very, very bad genre). Ultimately,
though, I think we have to pick the band that's perpetrating the greater
damage to pop culture as a whole: the Spin Doctors represented the temporary
penetration of jam band subculture into the record buying mainstream before
the noodle dancers went back to trading tapes and being mostly harmless in
their own little world; Creed, on the other hand, represent to total
neutralization and standardization of modern rock radio, standing as the
perfect strip mall band for play on strip mall radio stations, all of which
are owned by the same companies, who also own the bands. How convenient. The suckier:
Creed.
So! To recap, our final four are:
Classic Rock:
Bon Jovi
Punk/New
Wave/Metal/Hardcore/Neopunk: Motley
Crue
Pop/Funk/Soul/Rap:
Matchbox 20
Modern
Rock/Blues/Jam: Creed
Remember that the final four will be held round-robin style: each band
against the others, the one with the most "suckier"
points at the end of the process deemed and dubbed . . . the worst rock band
ever!!
The
Worst Rock Band Ever Competition (Part Six):
Today's the day we pick a champion. Our final four are:
Classic Rock:
Bon Jovi
Punk/New
Wave/Metal/Hardcore/Neopunk: Motley
Crue
Pop/Funk/Soul/Rap:
Matchbox 20
Modern
Rock/Blues/Jam: Creed
Up to this point, it's been straight one-on-one process of elimination, with
the worst band in each pair moving forward in the bracket. To really get our
hands around the final four, though, we shift into a round robin mode: each
band pitted against every other finalist, this time picking the more worthy and
awarding two points for a win, one point for a tie, and no points for a loss.
There will be six pairings (do the math: and remember that "Motley Crue vs. Matchbox 20" is the same thing as
"Matchbox 20 vs. Motley Crue"). At the
end of the process, the band with the fewest
points is decreed the Worst Rock Band Ever. The essays over the past five
days explaining how each band has moved forward have laid out in great detail
the reasons for each of these finalists being here. We're not going to repeat
or recap all that information, so if you need it again, please review the
submissions to the blog over the past week. And so, without further ado.
Bon Jovi vs. Motley Crue:
Bon Jovi's middle of the road rock offers few edges
and blazed few trails, and ultimately they are about packaging
easy-to-swallow songs and nice-to-stare-at looks into a marketable rock
product. Motley Crue is supposed to be all about
decadence, but on one hand they offer a stock-shock, no imagination affronts
("Ooo! The devil! That's scary!"), and on
the other hand, the decadence they offer is of a distinctively white trash
variety; the Rolling Stones are elegantly decadent, Motley Crue is just gross. The better band: Bon Jovi
(2 points).
Creed vs. Matchbox
20: Easy to swallow rock for the new millenium
in both cases: if you averaged the sounds of these bands together, you would
have the exact middle point of commercial radio, the place where everything
is safe and comfortable, the format that fits everything from Adult
Contemporary to Pop to Modern Rock. We have to give Matchbox 20 the edge
here, though, simply because they seem slightly more relaxed and fun about
what they're doing, while Creed scowls intently and puts on their best serious
face when talking about the power of music to change lives. Hey . . . rock
and roll can
change lives, but not by being mediocre. The better band: Matchbox 20 (2 points).
Motley Crue vs. Matchbox 20: While we normally
give bands nods for inspiring whole genres of music, it's hard to consider
that an accomplishment in Motley Crue's case, since
pretty much everybody
is ashamed of our nation's Hair Band phase, and the numbers of albums we
bought while drunk on the fumes of hairspray and mascara. Motley Crue and their spawn set popular metal back a decade, and
if there's one lasting benefit of the stillborn grunge revolution, it's that
it knocked teased hair off the charts. Matchbox 20? No innovation, just
perfectly precise monitoring of the popular trends of their day, and a
comprehension of how to work an increasingly homogenized radio universe. The better band: Matchbox 20 (2
points).
Creed vs. Bon Jovi: Creed loses to Bon Jovi for the same reason that they lose to Matchbox 20:
Rock and roll is supposed to be fun, not like passing an impacted stool, and
then telling all your friends about it. Bon Jovi's
fluffy, sure, but at least they don't make you feel guilty because your human
clay hasn't been weathered in your own prison. The better band: Bon Jovi (2 points).
Matchbox 20 vs. Bon Jovi: Matchbox 20 is Bon Jovi for a new generation, playing to the same crowds,
filling the same radio niche. It's only a matter of time before Rob Thomas
follows Jon Bon Jovi to Hollywood to star in chick
flicks. Tie:
Matchbox 20 (1 point), Bon Jovi (1 point).
Motley Crue vs. Creed: Maggoty, fake-devil rock
made by low rent scumbags vs. earnest, God-rock made by too-too-serious
sensitive new age guys. On the surface, it looks like you've got to pick
Motley Crue, because rock is supposed to be about
rebellion and fun. But on the other hand . . . rock is also supposed to be
about passion and sincerity and being true to your own vision and beliefs. Do
any of you really think that Motley Crue believes
in (or even understands) the devil-oriented fare they use in their artwork
and lyrics? They looked at how Black Sabbath and Kiss used such imagery
(better), and they made a calculating choice to incorporate it, soullessly,
into their own work. At least Creed can claim some strength of conviction,
and when you're singing along to their songs, you can at least know that they
believe what they're saying. With Motley Crue, when
you sing along you know it's because they chose those words and images
because they were designed to piss off your parents in the quickest and most
obvious ways, thereby helping you feel rebellious, even as your money went
from your pockets to theirs. Creed represent the
pinnacle of how the sanitized, strip-malled modern
music industry puts the mediocre atop the commercial pile, but they are the
beneficiaries of that system, not the perpetrators. Motley Crue, on the other hand, represent everything that's bad
about spoiled rich people acting obnoxiously in the most cliched,
pointless and obvious ways imaginable. And I, for one, demand some
imagination from the spoiled rich people I support. The better band: Creed (2 points).
So to wrap it all up, to finish the deed, our final four round robin
standings are as follows . . .
Bon Jovi: 5 points
Matchbox 20: 5
points
Creed: 2 points
Motley Crue: 0 points
. . . which means, of course, that we have a champion:
MOTLEY CRUE IS THE
WORST ROCK BAND EVER!
Thanks to everybody who's been reading and/or commenting on this process over
the past week: your input and insights made a difference. I welcome feedback
and reaction on the process and the results . . . only asking that it take
some form other than: "Motley Crue rocks! You
suck!" Because I know that there are millions and millions of people out
there who have gotten great joy and entertainment from Motley Crue's records and concerts . . . and the ultimate,
reductive, bottom line of any of this is: whatever
makes you happy is cool for you, as long as you're not hurting anybody by
enjoying it. Happy listening, everybody!
Musical Dissections by J. Eric Smith:
The Worst Rock Band Ever
Or . . . The Greatest
Secret Rock Band
Or . . . Best of the
Blockbusters
Or . . . Slaughtering the
Sacred Cows
Or . . . March of the Mellotrons
Or . . . Flexible Tetragrammaton (The Blog)
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