The Best Of The 50 Worst Rock-n-Roll Albums Of All Time

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We have worn our love like heaven.

first there is no poll winner then there is

What do you mean?

I get it now. Sorry - just wakin' up here.

I do want to say, though, that a lot of these albums are still fuckin' awful, i.e. I'd LOVE to hear that Beach Boys defense.

Shakey meant "first there is a poll winner then there is no poll winner then there is"

You can now listen to the book's 50 worst singles all in order...though I wish there was a way to skip to the next track. (A 30 second sample is enough for a good laugh, but nobody needs to sit through the entirety of most of this shit.)
https://www.mixcloud.com/leerosevere/fifty-worst-rock-and-roll-singles-of-all-time/

I'm compelled to admit that, having learned here yesterday about the circumstances of author Jimmy Guterman's death in 2016, I've been obsessing whether to give greater or lesser credence to his opinion of the 50 worst records of all time. He died four months after Keith Emerson - I wonder if Emerson's death coloured his opinion of Tarkus? Did he perceive some common thread there that he didn't in 1991? The Costello blurb quoted above is also notable in this regard.
His wife has a blog where she discusses how much he loved music - how did it feel to him that his book of the worst records was more successful than his book about the best records?

I'm sure there are many atrocious records on this list, but Donovan's Greatest Hits is silly (so I'm glad it won this poll).

Paul McCartney can be heard as one of the background revellers on this track, but the "quite rightly" whispering lines in the chorus is not McCartney, but rather Donovan himself.[10] Donovan had a small part in coming up with the lyrics for "Yellow Submarine", and McCartney played bass guitar (uncredited) on portions of Donovan's Mellow Yellow album.[11]

does anyone know which portions on Mellow Yellow have mccartney's bass?

There's a bunch of conflicting information about McCartney's involvement with Donovan records, some of it spread by Donovan himself.

I actually have to give credit to this book for being confident enough to say, "I don't like Donovan, Moody Blues, Tull, BST, ELP - I'm going to say their worst albums are their most beloved". It's bolder than making a list with e.g. Cosmic Wheels, Under Wraps, Love Beach, etc. etc., because if you hate the essence of an act, why wouldn't you hate their hits the most?

Whatever your opinion of the Grateful Dead, Europe ‘72 is a bizarre choice for such a list (I read the rationale a few posts down from the OP, and still don’t get it).

the louche quality of Mellow Yellow and Donovan's voice were what confirmed for me that I was gay when I was a kid. I had already suspected it when I was seven and had a crush on my high school sister's Swedish exchange student friend

I think the Dead rationale was nothing more than, "3 albums, it's three times as boring".

Queen II is the best Queen album

It's at least the most Queen album.

I kinda miss this style of music writing. Just some dude writing about the shit he hates. Classic

Chris Ott thread is thataway

I looked up something by Guterman for the Springsteen thread and stumbled on this January 2022 blog entry from his widow in the process. Really a sad read. It actually goes into private details about his struggle with depression - I want to say it's too much, but it's coming from his widow and she's still grieving and struggling with his death, and this is clearly part of that process.

https://www.pangyrus.com/essay-memoir/this-will-be-the-last-time/

I read that book over and over as a kid ca. 1990. I disagreed with theM about some things, but in the text there are enthusiasms for Elvis and early Rod Stewart that challenged my received wisdom when all I had known of them at the time was “lol fat”, and “housewives love him” respectively.

Not to excuse his sins as a writer (whom I don't think I've ever read, other than on this thread), but he earned Rock 'N' Roll Heaven for putting together The Sandinista! Project, that rarest kind of tribute album, which honors and sometimes improves on/fully realizes the original--- coverage archived here when villagevoice.com links started getting too changeable: https://myvil.blogspot.com/2016/06/clash-stash-actually-cuts-crap.html

Lol why didn’t Sandinista make his list? I mean, really?

Well, he did initially claim that The Sandinista! Project was the first in a series of remakes of "the worst albums by the best artists" (and supposedly was working on The Self-Portrait Project, which I still hope one day surfaces), but maybe hearing his contributors' visions of the original album made him realize it wasn't so bad. (Also, maybe he listened to Cut The Crap, and thought, "Oh wait.")

Although that one had its good moments too.

Disappointed in you for the first time evah, Josefa!

I actually liked Cut the Crap, it was different, and I always thought it was underrated compared to the first Big Audio Dynamite album that came out at the same time. “Yes I am… a dictator!” goes thru my head more often than anything from the BAD album.

Yeah, I hardly remember BAD at all. Really liked Julien Temple's Strummer doc, btw.

Almost exactly a year ago (8/3/21) I said this on Twitter:

CUT THE CRAP is as good as any other Clash album, and better than some. Their whole discography is a goddamn mess, and as a strip-it-to-the-bone, fuck-the-pop-charts record, it more than does the job. The guitar sound is ugly as shit, but in a really interesting way, and when you combine that with the Big Black-ish drum machine, the random stabs of ultra-80s synth, and the gang vocals, Strummer was actually really onto something. People who don't like CUT THE CRAP are too attached to the mythology of four dudes in a room makin' rock 'n' roll. Listen to it side by side with the first Big Audio Dynamite album, and wise the fuck up.

I love the first BAD album, btw, and like the second and third quite a bit too. I have no use for anything after that, though.

Is Jones the only or dominant vocalist in BAD? Don't know if I could get into that.

Well done unperson, I agree with all that

That self-titled Byrds album is pretty good. The Gene Clark songs are particularly nice. I suspect "No Other" was not quite the cult record it is now and these authors would have called it crappy and overblown back in '91.

I love This Is Big Audio Dynamite and I love Cut the Crap. Together they really form a blueprint for the collision-y 'Clash meets Public Enemy halfway' bands to follow in ensuing years.

CTC is also a lot of fun if thought of as the 'pop' As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade.

I've written about Cut the Crap before but only in eight paragraphs. I'm gonna develop it into a proper review sometime soon I reckon

Yes to Big Audio Dynamite -- also the second one, with many lyrics co-written with Joe. I had a bootleg of an early Joe Strummer + Latino Rockabilly War album where they covered a few of the songs and dedicated them "to the boys in Big Odio Dynmaite"

I do think Megatop Phoenix is their best, though.

I gotta give that one another spin. I remember the first track being great.

The album template feels strangely prescient of Foxbase Alpha to me bcuz mix of house-informed modern London songs interconnected with found-sound-ish collages.

Will check it out with that in mind. I always thought late Clash responded to hip hop in a super interesting way. Not only Magnificent 7/Radio Clash, but all the drum machiney stuff on the Combat Rock b-sides. Mick with the synth drums at Bonds Casino, etc. Love all of that.

I've just been listening to Goodbye Cruel World, and I have a tough time imagining either a Costello hater or a disenchanted Costello lover calling it among the worst of all time. It's mostly weak songs mostly poorly produced, but just a couple of notches below Punch the Clock.
Cut the Crap is a collage of the worst bits of punk and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which doesn't preclude a couple of good songs from being included.

Goodbye Cruel World is pretty good. He has worse albums to come, albeit the other side of this book.

Can we poll the worst 'worst album' lists? Q's mid-00s version is particularly witless.

I actually with Guterman's argument that Goodbye Cruel World is a pretty good batch of songs that's simply arranged and produced either poorly or haphazardly. I think "Love Field" manages to work pretty well, but even the live solo performances from 1984 are better. Wish I could link to it, but it's the one that's just Elvis on an electric piano.

*actually agree

I feel like Costello's made worse albums since, but GCW is the one most fans can agree one. Like you still have fans championing Mighty Like a Rose and The Juliet Letters.

argh, *agree on

Like you still have fans championing Mighty Like a Rose and The Juliet Letters

Hell yeah you do

I just listened to Cut the Crap for the first time ever, thanks thread! It's nowhere near as bad as I'd been led to believe. I'll even give it a few more spins soon. It's maybe missing some hookier songwriting - perhaps those will sink in later - and the production is kind of a kitchen sink mess, a la Sandinista, but as unperson said in a really interesting way.

Rhodes had no idea what he was doing but that's why it works and why the hyperpop etc kids love it :)

Like "Dictator" is always pinned up for being the atonal headrush that it is but what about "We are the Clash" with its unrelated solos for guitar, synths and bongos all happening at the same time, or "Are You Red...Y" where the main synth bit arrives deliciously a whole bar too late?

FWIW, Xgau gave Cut the Crap a B+. He also gave Goodbye Cruel World a B+. Just to confirm, he does indeed consider a B+ to be a good grade.

wild to see those Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, & Moody Blues albums on there - like sure I get why people don't like 'em but this was published in 1991 and all 4 groups had made way worse music since