The Worst Songs I Have Ever Heard #1: “Waiting On the World to Change”

Well, folks, the new year is officially here and Bollocks! is coming off a pretty satisfying 2010; this blog was viewed 19,000 times last year, which probably ties into the unemployment numbers somehow, but I don’t want to dig too deep into that lest I start feeling all depressed. Since I’m always looking for ways to improve your Bollocks! experience, I decided to come up with a new feature called “The Worst Songs I Have Ever Heard” to shed some light on some of the worst individual songs of all time. Why would I do this? Because I have heard all of these songs (some of them occasionally get stuck in my head) and I need you to share my pain. This is not a countdown – like my much-vaunted (well, by me) Great Fucking Albums feature, The Worst Songs I Have Ever Heard is listed in the order that these things occur to me. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first installment – I’ll put up a page so you can gain easy access to your (least?) favorites as the list grows. Because believe me, it will grow.

The reason I decided to do this feature is because I hear bad fucking songs all the time, when I’m out shopping or dining somewhere with my wife or when her alarm clock goes off in the morning and the radio station it’s set on greets us with the Ataris cover of Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” (which, I mean, it should just be the soundtrack to a book called How to Make Bad Things Worse). But that’s not the song I wanted to start off my list with.

No, there was a clear favorite for the first song against the wall when I started thinking about The Worst Songs I Have Ever Heard: “Waiting On the World to Change” by John Mayer. Released in 2006 on his Continuum album, “Waiting On the World to Change” is a great way to find any reason you can think of to dislike John Mayer’s music (and maybe him as a person just a little bit).

Musically, the song is not that noteworthy, unless you’re noting that it is a ripoff of Curtis Mayfield’s vastly superior “People Get Ready” (you might have noticed that I sing the late Mr. Mayfield’s praises quite frequently here. Listen to his music and you’ll see why). But the music mostly keeps to the background so as to better highlight the “gee-ain’t-I-deep” lyrics which are some of the most laughably stupid I’ve heard this side of the first Hanson album. Mayer starts out singing about how he and all his friends “just feel like we don’t have the means/ to rise up and beat”… um… well, whatever it is he’s talking about. Oh: “everything that’s going wrong.” Well, John, let me tell you a little secret: nobody, in the entire history of everything, has changed anything by attempting to tackle “everything that’s going wrong.” So your problem is all in your approach. Why don’t you start small by maybe recycling or protesting a war or something? John Mayer and his friends are content to sit at home and wait for the world to change because they can’t solve every problem all at once, and the chorus, complete with an airy gospel choir, tells us that Mayer & Friends are willing to sit on the sidelines as long as necessary to get the job done. Imagine if Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks had thought that way.

“Just you wait,” thinks Rosa as she dutifully moves to the back of the bus, “In about fifty years, we’ll have a black president, and then you honky motherfuckers are gonna get it!”

Mayer’s assertion basically amounts to “I don’t wanna do anything about any problems because doin’ stuff is hard.” First of all, you fuck, you play guitar for a living. Your job is to rip off Stevie Ray Vaughan and wallow up to your neck in celebutante pussy – and you can’t take a few minutes on your day off to, I dunno, clean up a beach? Fuck you! There are people with real goddamn jobs who make time constantly to try to help other people, which is world-changing shit. There are people whose whole job is helping people. And none of them got to fuck Jennifer Aniston.

My favorite part of “Waiting On the World to Change” – and by “favorite part”, I mean the part that sends me into a nearly homicidal fury – is the part where Mayer sings, “One day our generation/ is gonna rule the population/ so we keep waiting (insert gospel chicks with a “Waitin’” right here)/ waiting on the world to change.”  Now I’m guessing that John Mayer, being 33, is part of my generation and I’m happy to say that none of us elected John to lead the charge on this whole “ruling the population thing.” Many of the very good people in my generation don’t even think in those terms, and I’m glad. It seems to me that John Mayer has created a convenient way to never do anything meaningful or helpful for humanity. After all, if he and his pals are operating on the premise that the time for action is after the world has already changed, can’t they just keep saying that it hasn’t change yet? “Hey John, can you take out the trash?” “Nah, I’m still waiting for the world to change.”

In an interview with the Advocate, Mayer said that “I know that if I were engaged in changing anything for the better, or the better as I see it, it would go unnoticed or be completely ineffective.” So Mayer doesn’t wanna try because he’s afraid no one would notice. Well, John, I’ve got something you could do that would not only change things for the better, but would be immediately noticeable: stop making music, you fucking hack.

Of course, right after Mayer said the above sentence, he added, “A lot of people have that feeling.” And what pisses me off is that he’s right - a lot of people don’t lift a finger for anyone else because they feel like nothing they do will help. They see a vast sea of troubles and don’t feel like there’s a vast sea of people who can do anything about it. The problem is, if we all did simple stuff that was completely within our means (like just being kind to each other, for starters), it could make a big difference (is that naive? Fuck you, we’ve never tried it, have we?). And I get that it’s tough to know what to do to help humanity (that’s a pretty general term to start with), but writing an anthem that excuses apathy (“It’s not that I don’t give a shit, I’m just waiting on the world to change”) is fucking pathetic. John Mayer has made plenty of music to be ashamed of, but I don’t think any of his songs tops “Waiting On the World to Change” in terms of audacious stupidity and general suckitude.

The Very Worst Album of 2010 Part II: Reflection (And Maybe Just a Little More Hostility)

Having vented my spleen on Santana’s utterly shitty Guitar Heaven, I would like to turn now to a broader contextual discussion of the record. How does something like this come into existence (and I am not prepared to rule out the possibility that a mad scientist created it in an attempt to destroy the world) and who is it for? And what, if anything, could such a musical abomination mean?

To take the last question first, Guitar Heaven might be the last nail in the coffin that holds the rapidly putrefying remains of Rolling Stone’s credibility. The magazine gave the album three stars (out of five) and called the performances, “mostly faithful to the originals” which suggests to me that Rolling Stone‘s Mark Kemp may not have actually listened to Guitar Heaven. Not that I can blame him. If you think the Joe Cocker-sung abortion that they call “Little Wing” on this album is “faithful” to Jimi Hendrix’s original, I will fight you. I will literally, violently, will all the force of my rage, fight you. With a two-by-four and a sock full of quarters. If anything, Cocktana’s version of “Little Wing” serves as definitive proof that we should pass an international law that forbids people to cover Jimi Hendrix songs.

And how did something like Guitar Heaven come to exist? That’s the easiest question of all to answer: it came about the same way every Santana album has for the last dozen years. Santana decides he wants to buy a boat, some producers come in and write some shitty tracks, arrange the collaborations with some brand-name, talentless vocalists (I know some people think that lasting a few weeks on American Idol means you’re talented, but I submit to you that it means exactly the opposite of that), and behold! a full-length album’s worth of crap is ready to clog up your FM radio for another year. Santana gets his boat, one or more asshole collaborators get Grammys, and everyone wins except, of course, people who believe in things like truth and beauty. Guitar Heaven turns the formula on its head by eliminating the need to actually write songs at all – now, Santana and his partners in crime (let’s just call it what it is, okay?) can mangle songs that people already know and love. And don’t believe for a second that this is a one-time deal; I’ll bet you every one of Carlos Santana’s dollars that there will be a Guitar Heaven II some time in the near future.

So who’s it for? You might be inclined to guess that it’s for the same Baby Boomers who saw Santana, drugged off his ass, at Woodstock forty-one years ago. If so, shouldn’t they be outraged? After all, Guitar Heaven almost certainly represents the co-opting and watering down of some of the great, primal rock ‘n’ roll moments that were the soundtrack to the youth of a many a Baby Boomer. Santana’s guitar tone renders the notes of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and Angus Young in a warm, digitally polished shine that is about as vital as a road-killed squid (it happens more often than you think) and only one vocal performance on Guitar Heaven really does justice to the original song; Chester Bennington’s performance on the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”, is every bit as boring as Jim Morrison’s.

Of course, Guitar Heaven isn’t just a cynical attempt to create and cash in on the perfect Baby Boomer nostalgia bait. It also tries to nab those of us on the cusp of Generation X and whatever the fuck the generation after X was. “Photograph” was a song from my childhood and having Chris Daughtry sing it is a clear attempt to get fourteen-year-old girls to buy this album or at least get that one track from I-Tunes. And if we’re talking about cynicism, what other word describes putting “Under the Bridge” on the album at all? The song is clearly not a guitar classic, but it was on the radio twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for about two straight years in the 1990s. That one is aimed squarely at people my age (as is the inclusion of Chris Cornell, although I was not fooled into believing for even a second that Cornell is as great as he was even as late as Superunknown), but literally nobody my age has ever strummed a solitary air-guitar note to “Under the Bridge.” Why? Because it’s the slow, sensitive song you put on when you want to try and slide into second base (I never did that, but I knew guys who did).

If you’re troubled and/or infuriated by Guitar Heaven, allow me to provide you with some comfort: although you’re right to be infuriated by this album (because – and I’m listening to it as I type this – it really fucking sucks), you needn’t worry that it represents some new kind of musical evil. These attempts to cash in on music someone else wrote have always been around. Paul Anka tried it a few years back with an album called Rock Swings which was so transparently hungry for the money of twenty-and-thirty-somethings that Anka even attempted a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There are, of course, good covers albums but they are the exception that proves the rule (the rule being, “Covers albums are generally cynical attempts to get money quick”). Astute readers will be in a hurry to point out that I loved Bettye LaVette’s Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook, and I say, “That’s very astute of you.” The thing is, LaVette, without any big-name assistance, took songs other people wrote and made them her own. There’s a sense, for instance, of the personal resonance that “Wish You Were Here” has for LaVette. When you listen to Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana choke the life out of “Sunshine of Your Love”, you can hear that the song means dollar signs to them and nothing else. They’re wringing it out like a sponge, waiting for money to fall out.

It might be tempting to try to link Santana’s decade-long mission to sell out as much as possible (which is his right, by the way – if you want to suck for money, that’s up to you, but don’t get all indignant when I call you a whore) to the Baby Boomer Generation as a whole. After all, a lot of these people spent maybe a decade (some more, some less) trying to stick it to the Man before deciding that they can save more for retirement if they just started working for him. Again, that’s their business and I certainly don’t mean that all Baby Boomer are sellouts, but I am willing to bet that those among the Boomers who buy Guitar Heaven are probably the most ashamed of their hippie-dippy past.  And to be honest, I don’t care so much that Carlos Santana is a sellout per se. I care that he’s a sellout who makes shitty music and now he’s making shitty music out of formerly good music.

And, lest I receive any Red-baiting comments, let me clear up what I mean when I say someone is a sellout. Making money doing what you love is not selling out. Watering down, pussifying, and taming your passions for mass appeal is selling out. Let the great Joseph Campbell sum it up for you: “There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.” Carlos Santana hasn’t just fallen “off the beam”; he’s swan-dived off of it into a swimming pool full of money, exchanging soulless, lifeless “music” (for it can just barely be called that, and mostly only because it consists of known chords and notes) for cold, hard cash. Or, to put it more succinctly:

Ladies and gentlemen, Carlos Santana has “lost his life.”

John Mayer: Enough Already

I know this is fish-in-a-barrel stuff here, but let me tell you where I’m at right now: last week, the hot water in our apartment building lost pressure in a serious way. Formerly warm showers became farces of soaped-up huddling under a trickle of hottish water. As of today, the hot water is simply gone. I was told it would be fixed yesterday. It wasn’t. My major goal this morning is to drive across town and use my friends’ shower. But first, I’m listening to the Future of the Left really loud and taking a minute to offer some thoughts on John Mayer.

Mayer has made “news” recently for saying some of the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard in an interview with Playboy. Apparently, Mayer thinks that he has a “hood pass” and, in his infinite wisdom he used the word “nigger” when talking about it. After talking about how much black people love him. Which is pretty ironic, considering that John Mayer is famous for watering down music that black people invented because Mayer’s ancestors (and mine, and many of yours) fucking enslaved them. So, in John Mayer’s mind, there’s Robert Johnson and then there’s John Mayer. And I know an astute person will point to the YouTube video of Mayer playing with B.B. King, but I would argue that B.B. King has been playing corporate white blues for the better part of my life now. Don’t believe me? Go back and listen to Robert Johnson and Son House and Leadbelly. That shit is raw. It’s broken. It’s sexual. It is everything “Your Body is A Wonderland” is not, in other words.

And I know Mayer is all contrite on Twitter now but his crimes go far beyond his inexplicable use of a racial slurs and he knows it (I need to clear the deck on something here too: I’ve met white people who say things like, “If rappers say the word ‘nigger’, why can’t I?” Well, I’ll tell you why, Sparky. “Nigger” is a word that white people forced upon black people when we stole them from their home country, took them to ours, and treated them worse than cattle. If black people want to take that word now and use it to their own purposes, that’s their business. I would guess that there are a large number of black people who wish the word would just go away [like I wish John Mayer would just go away], but either way, the white race used up its quota on the word long before any of us were born. And, by the way, the use of the word “nigger” has cast a social stigma on the non-racist word “niggardly”, which means “1. grudging and petty in giving or spending” or “2. Meanly small; scanty or meager.” The latter, I’m guessing, would adequately describe John Mayer’s “white supremacist” dick). This guy has publicly demonstrated that he is irredeemably stuck up his own ass time and time again . In his Playboy interview, Mayer says, “I’m a very… I’m just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can’t handle very, I’m a douche bag.” Well, John Mayer, since it’s impossible for you to be a word that modifies an adjective (his statement is equivalent to saying, “Wow, that girl is just extremely!”), I guess we have to go with Column B there.

But this is a music blog and we should discuss, in fairness, John Mayer’s (*cough*gag*cough*) music. Exhibits A-Z for the prosecution will be “Waiting On the World to Change,” which is exactly the sort of half-informed, mealy-mouthed, “it’s all gonna be fine if only we don’t do anything” pseudo-anthem that leads me to believe that John Mayer should be beaten to death with his own niggardly ball sack. The song is basically about how Mayer and all his friends are going to wait until all the bad people die off and then his “generation/ is gonna rule the population.” Great. A generation of corporate, Wonder-Bread blues kids are just waiting in the wings, to lead us into a brave new world of 65 calorie beer, Jay Leno on all channels at all times, and the most safe, banal music you can possibly imagine. John Mayer must be stopped, kids. He must be stopped now.

But I’ll give him one last chance to redeem himself. John Mayer, if you donate all of your money to Haiti earthquake relief, retire from making music, and actively campaign to make Aaron McGruder our next black president, maybe, maybe I’ll think about perhaps hating you a little less.

Nah. Who am I kidding? You will always suck, John Mayer. So please, for the good of all humanity, just go away.

Bitch, Please! A Review (and Response to a Review) of The Hazards of Love

First off – sorry about the brief hiatus there. Had a busy week. Working lots, getting engaged – these things can take up your time.

Anyhow, there are piles of albums to review and more coming out (like a certain live album and documentary about a certain best rock band in America, but we’ll get to that later) and I need to get back to work. But thanks to you, my 6 to 9 (on average) readers, for being patient.

The Decemberists are part of a music scene in my old stomping ground of Portland, Oregon, that has produced awesome punk music (like The Thermals), strummy goodness (like M. Ward), and whatever genre you would call the Decemberists.  I like to call it Novel Rock. And their new album is, naturally, a sort of “concept” album. Having discussed recently the pitfalls of the double-album, I feel I should take a minute to discuss the “concept” album with you. It’s usually a bad bet. The Wall was a concept album, but the concept is kinda loose and, if you can ignore the fact it carries a large subtext of Roger Waters hating his fucking fans, it’s a pretty good listen.  But you remember when Garth Brooks went all emo and did that Chris Gaines thing? Yeah, you don’t remember it because it was a fuck-awful idea. But, also a “concept” album.  So you can really hit with the concept album or really miss with it, depending on your abililties. If you’re abilities are unprecendentedly awesome, your concept album will be The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. But then you’d be David Bowie and, if you’re David Bowie and you read Bollocks!, I will totally by you a beer.  Or a tea. Or a whatever. You are awesome, David Bowie. That’s what I’m trying to say.

The Decemberists are ripe candidates to hit the mark with The Hazards of Love, and they do. After all, they’ve done epic songs before and even strung together the loosely conceptual The Tain EP, which was totally awesome (more awesome when performed in its entirety at the Hollywood Bowl, backed by the L.A. Philharmonic). But I feel, in order to properly review this album, I must respond to Pitchfork’s completely dumbassed review of it. My repsonse to their review should give you a good understanding of how I feel about it.

The Pitchfork review starts with some word-a-day calendar bullshit about how the Decemberists were always meant for an album like this, and that’s actually a valid point – and one I’ve made less pretentiously above. Then the reviewer apparently drops acid and decides that the blues-scale distorted guitar riffs on The Hazards of Love are “stoner-metal sludge.” Do they just have words in a hat over there, and they pull the words out and create new genres? Has this dude never listened to Led Zeppelin? Point being, there’s nothing remotely metal on this album.

But let’s set aside the music for a minute and talk about the plot of the album. Pitchfork says that, though it  “has some nice twists, it’s not exactly Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Excuse me, Pitchfork? Yeah, I have a degree in theatre. If your plots are “not exactly Andrew Lloyd Webber”, it means that they’re “probably good.” As an example, here’s the plot of The Phantom of the Opera: an ugly (disfigured)  guy likes a pretty girl. That’s it. The whole fucking thing. And some asshole sings “Music of the Night.” Andrew Lloyd Webber is to theatre what Judas was to Jesus (since it’s Good Friday) – a pile of money and some nails through the wrist. Fuck Andrew Lloyd Webber and fuck Pitchfork for holding him up as some sort of master of the musical genre. Haven’t you assholes ever heard of Stephen Sondheim?

And – what galls me further – is that the P-forker goes on to whine about how following the plot is “too much work, not enough payoff”, which he then follows with a smug-as-fuck (I seriously want to slap the sweater right off this dipshit) parenthetical “Hmm, imagine that“. Poor P-forker; it’s so much easier to just crank up Wavves and be hip without having to think. Dipshit. Anyway, here’s the plot of The Hazards of Love, which I discerned from 2 listens without reading the goddamn lyric sheet: Margaret is this lady who wanders through the woods one day and finds a fawn caught in a trap. She frees him, he turns into this dude William and they fall in love. Here’s the catch – William was abandoned at birth and rescued by a magical queen who wants him to be a mama’s boy forever, which is why he’s hardly ever allowed out of the house in human form. So she gets pissed at Margaret for deflowering her little guy and hires a murderous Rake (whose song, like all good villain tunes, kinda steals the show) to kidnap Margaret and have his way with her. William tries to rescue his true love and, spoiler alert, everyone drowns. Not too fucking complicated if you ask me, and the songs tie it together pretty well. Unless you’re a Pitchfork kid who’s too busy  asphyxiating auto-erotically while fantasizing about a three-way with Sufjan Stevens and Dan Deacon, apparently.

Colin Meloy sings the parts of a Narrator, William, and the Rake. Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond sings the part of the Queen (and damn, does she have a great voice). Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark is Margaret. The songs, particularly “The Rake’s Song” and “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” are beautiful and some of the finest melodic work the Decemberists have done to date. In fact, The Hazards of Love is probably my favorite of their albums.

But I’m not done with Pitchfork yet – you know what the guy did that really pisses me off? This sentence: “As a turn toward metal, The Tain EP’s smaller portion was more satisfying– although, as mid-career change-ups go, this is still a fair piece more enjoyable than something like MMJ’s Evil Urges.” Fuck you, buddy. Evil Urges was a great album. Objectively speaking, you can’t gush over Wavvvvvvvvvvvvvves and say that Evil Urges sucks. Just because Pitchfork wants My Morning Jacket to be their Lynyrd Skynyrd (and Jim James has the temerity to want them to be our My Morning Jacket), doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate their besweatered dis of one of the best albums of last year. I don’t know how a writer of the caliber of Amanda Petrusich could stand to write for those fuckwits. Although, come to think of it, the last review of hers I read was for the Onion‘s AV Club. And, wouldn’t you know it, it was a positive review of Evil Urges. Suck it, Pitchfork.

As a bonus, a request my pal Zac sent to The Current, a radio station you definitely should listen to:

I Drink My Way Through the New Chris Cornell Album (or, What the Fuck is Wrong with Me?) Pt. 1

Okay. It’s Saturday night. The girlfriend is out of town, friends are busy, but I have a few tall beers from the Ninkasi Brewery in Eugene, Oregon. Might as well crack one open and listen to… the new Chris Cornell album. The one that Timbalind produced.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Well, you gotta make your own damn fun in the world sometimes so I’ve decided to get drunk enough to sit through Chris Cornell’s entire Scream album and write a review of it. Why would I do this? I do it for you, my loyal 6 to 9 readers (on average). For your entertainment. And edification.  I’m doing this more or less live, and I’ll go back and proofread it later. These are my unfiltered feelings on Scream.

9:19 pm. It Begins – My first beer of the night is the Ninkasi Tricerahops, their double – double – IPA. Special thanks to Jacques for the Ninkasi brews.

All right, Cornell, do your worst.

His worst is pretty bad, and damned if he hasn’t been trying to do his worst ever since Soundgarden broke up. I was a huge fan of theirs, especially Badmotorfinger and Superunknown. I know the radio made you sick of “Black Hole Sun,” but that album is straight up raucous from start to finish. But enough about that. Let’s live in the now.

Scream starts off with a synthesized horn fan-fare, the kind of obvious douchebag maneuver I’d expect from Kanye West. That introduces “Part of Me,” the chorus of which is “No, that bitch ain’t a part of me.” This all sung in Cornell’s whiny new R&B voice. Timbalind, in his infinite wisdom, decided to digitize Cornell’s voice on the chorus so that Cornell sounds like Megatron. Except I don’t recall Megatron ever being such a blatant fucking misogynist. If anyone in my band wrote a song this bad, I’d assault them. That is how bad this is. Ya know how Trent Reznor’s recent output has been kinda middlin’ lately? Well, upon hearing Scream, he Twittered (or “Twatted” as Stephen Colbert puts it) that he felt embarrassed for Chris Cornell. Me too, Trent. Me too.

“Part of Me” is waaaaaaaaaay too long. Tricerahops to the rescue! The song ends with a guitar flourish right out of 80′s Journey. Meaning it ends with a shitty guitar doodle.

9:25: MTV Party to Go – The songs seem to all blend together, as “Time” has started immediately from the Journey-esque shitstorm that ends “Part of Me”. You know, like those old MTV Party mix tapes they used to have? The chorus of “Time” consists of Cornell singing the word “Time” over and over in his Woman-hating Megatron voice and occasionally caterwauling “I wish we could rewind.” I think he means he wishes he could rewind time. I wish I could rewind time too, Chris. I’d go back to 9pm tonight and decide to listen to Middle Cyclone for the gazillionth time instead of taking  on this fool’s errand…. but no. I must not waver. It’s you or me, Chris Cornell/Megatron. And I have good beer on my side.

9:30: Chris Cornell Hates Your Girlfriend – “Nowadays I think like a woman/ I’ve been looking for blood,” Cornell sings on “Sweet Revenge.” Perhaps Audioslave broke up because the progressive chaps who used to be in Rage Against the Fact that We Sound Like the Beastie Boys grew tired of Chris Cornell’s constant misogynist tirades.  Wait. No. Audioslave broke up because they fucking sucked. Anyway… “Sweet Revenge” has a completely Auto-Tuned chorus. It’s as if Cornell and Timbalind set out to make a party album for douchebags who want to throw a theme party where the theme is “Proving the Utter Extent of Our Douchebaggery.” Scream is the Platonic ideal of douchebaggery.

9:36: Not nearly drunk enough – Fuck fuck fuck. I’m only four songs into this motherfucker. I’m listening to a song called “Get Up.” I used to think Chris Cornell had a good voice, but Timbalind apparently doesn’t think so because Cornell doesn’t seem to sing a single note on Scream that isn’t covered in digital jizz. “Get Up” has a guitar part toward the end that is exactly the kind of distorted guitar part you would use if you were an over-rated pop producer who has clearly never heard anyone play a real electric guitar.

“Get Up” has meandered into “Ground Zero.”  “Ground Zero” has less digital bullshit, but there’s still plenty of digital bullshit. This seems to be one of the platitude-filled, trite-ass (trite-cera-tops?) “positive” songs that Cornell has been coughing up lately (think “Be Yourself,” that really shitty single off the last Audiosuck album.  When I was a kid, he sang “I know I’m headin’ for the bottom/ but I’m riding you all the way.” That’s way more compelling than this shit)

9:42 p.m. Oh fuck. A love song – “Never Far Away” is next and the Megatron voice is back singing about how “You are the road I travel/ you were the words I write”. Wait a minute. Five songs ago, this asshole wanted “the girl/ but not what she’s going through.” We’re supposed to believe that this same motherfucker’s soul is saved by his lady love? (Not making this up. He sings, “I don’t have to pray anymore/ because my soul is saved”). The chorus of this song is unintelligible, but seems like it wouldn’t be out of place in a Nickelback song. Hey, Timbalind! You clearly hate music. Why not raise the stakes a little next time out and produce a Nickelback album? Can you make them worse?

Note: I’m gonna cap each part of this review at about 1000 words, so be sure to stay tuned for parts 2 through Whatever.

9:48 p.m. This is good beer – I’m halfway through. This song is called “Take Me Alive.” In the immortal words of J. Alfred Prufrock, I’d prefer not to (this beer is quite effective; not only is it delicious, but I’m buzzed enough that I can’t remember if the Eliot poem to which I’m referring is called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or not. I may have added the “J.”)

Sacred Cows to the Slaughter

An email exchange with my pal Zac recently led me to an Onion AV Club article where the AV Club writers pussyfooted about cultural masterworks that they don’t really understand or don’t really like. I was led to this article by declaring that The Smiths are overrated and Morrissey is a pretentious, boring twat. See, that kind of statement is exactly the sort of thing those equivocators at the AV Club managed to avoid.  Zac thought I could do better and suggested as much, which was like throwing 100 menstruating fat chicks into a tank full of starving sharks. So, without further ado, I present to you The Bollocks! List of Overrated Musical Bullshit, my list of sacred musical cows who should be put out to pasture, shot in the back of the head, and then ground into tasty burgers.

For starters, let’s talk about Borrissey. Er, I mean, Morrissey. Dear Mr. “Meat is Murder”: Food is murder. You think it’s all right to eat plants because they’re not cute, but they’re alive, you asshole. But that’s not enough reason to dislike Morrissey, who is regarded by many as one of the great grandaddies of indie rock. His music is boring beyond compare. The guy is basically a lounge singer and he’s a pretentious one at that. Add slightly better guitars to Borissey and you get The Smiths, who are also vastly overrated. Fuck Morrissey.

Oh, and fuck Led Zeppelin while we’re at it. That’s right, fuck them. Especially that banshee-wailing douchebag Robert Plant. John Bonham was a great drummer, but that doesn’t excuse Led Zep’s shameless skullfucking of some of the best blues music ever recorded. You can claim they invented heavy metal all you want, too. Know what genre I could give less than half a fuck about? If you guessed heavy metal, you get a gold star for the day. You’d be better off listening to the original Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson recordings than canonizing the self-indulgent, cock-grabbing Led Zeppelin versions.

Speaking of Robert Johnson, no white guy has dealt him a greater blow than Eric Clapton, another highly overrated musician. I know, I know, Cream was pretty cool, but Clapton steadily nose-dived after that, meaning his career has consisted of cheesy lyrics and decent guitar solos, a fact often excused by “But he’s a great guitar player.” So is John Mayer and yet, John Mayer still sucks a big fat donkey cock. I don’t care how well you play the guitar, if you write “Waiting on the World to Change,” you should be buried up to your neck in your own shit. Besides, why listen to a band just for the guitar? You don’t read books just for the word “the”, do you? Where was I? Oh yeah, Clapton. Listen to his atrocious Me and Mr. Johnson and you’ll realize that there is only one white guy who should be allowed to touch Robert Johnson’s music and it aint’ Clapton. It’s John Hammond, Jr., whose At the Crossroads album is the only album of Robert Johnson covers that comes close to the original spirit of that great music.

This one is especially for Los Angeles, a city that seems to think otherwise, but all 1980s hair-metal was shitty. All of it. And I don’t care how many reality shows that asshole from Poison has, he is, was, and always will be a hack musician. That goes double for Def Leppard, who are still, for some ungodly reason, putting out albums. Hit the state fair circuit and have done with it.

Also, for the record, I don’t give a shit about Van Morrison. I don’t think “Brown-Eyed Girl” is a particularly good song. I’ll give him Astral Weeks as a good album, but the rest of his stuff can go fuck itself to death in subway station.

To everyone who adored/adores Rage Against the Machine: you’re wrong. There is nothing Rage did that Public Enemy didn’t do better. Tom Morrello may be the most overrated guitar player in the world at the moment.

Speaking of overrated guitar players: Van Halen is included in my statement about ’80s hair metal but they get special mention because everyone thinks Eddie Van Halen invented playing the electric guitar or something. He is very good at playing fast and finger-tapping. But you know what? Finger-tapping is so easy that I could teach you how to do it even if you don’t know how to play the guitar. It’s a gimmick. I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t lavish special attention on how shitty David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar are. I have heard people argue about whether Van Halen was better with Roth or Hagar and it’s like arguing about whether you should have the shit sandwich with mustard or horseradish.

This will surprise no one, but if I’m talking about shit sandwiches, I can’t leave out Metallica. I’m not a fan of metal, but I know enough to know that Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” kicks the ass of every Metallica song ever written. Lars Ulrich is a shitty drummer and James Hetfield is a terrible singer and a worse lyricist. I could go on about Metallica, but it’s almost too easy to talk about how awful they are.

A lot of people like Peter Gabriel, but I am not one of them. His music is incomprehensible to me, to the point of irritation. What exactly does he do that the Talking Heads didn’t do better? And riding a fucking Seg-Way (is that how you spell it? I don’t care) around on stage? Give me a break.

Black Sabbath had one good song. It was “Paranoid.” Everything else they did was crap and Ozzy Osbourne should be put in a home.

I spent a lot of time trying to like Bad Religion, but I just can’t do it. The Empire Strikes First was mostly all right, but I just don’t care about their other stuff. A lot of people love them, but I’m sorry – just can’t get into it. They don’t suck as bad as The Smiths, but I’d still rather listen to London Calling than any of their stuff.

I once met a dude who told me Peter Frampton was the reason he started playing guitar. I was stunned. Peter Frampton is one of the worst musicians I’ve ever heard and I’m actually quite upset that part of my brain is used up knowing who he is. That talk-box effect is stupid and gimmicky and people who use it should be jailed.

U2 is one of the world’s biggest pop acts and, but for a handful of tunes, I couldn’t care less. Most of their stuff sounds exactly the same to me and I think the Edge has been stuck in a musical rut for most of my lifetime. Seriously, dude, time for a couple different guitar effects. Also, Bono is a douchebag.

A lot of folks here in L.A. love their home-town heroes, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. These guys really piss me off. Anthony Kiedis mostly writes and sings in baby talk and anyone who’s heard a Funkadelic album knows that there’s nothing that funky about RHCP. I’ve heard this band is on hiatus and I can only hope that’s a permanent thing.

Those are all the overrated people I can think of at the moment. If I think of more later, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Douche Bagnetic

It’s Rocktober 1st. Rocktoberfest is coming up on the 18th (if you don’t know what that it is, consider it a pity you’re not invited). I’ve bided my time. I’ve read Tad’s “words” if you can call ‘em that and I’m ready to weigh in.

So what do I think of Metallica’s Death Magnetic?

Though the internet is frequently derided as the home of indie/hipster types (I’ve been called a hipster for voicing my opinion – also an objective fact – that Journey sucks; I include this just so you have some sort of criteria upon which to judge me), it is full of people who will gladly call you a fag in a tirade replete with misspelled words if you happen to suggest either of the following: 1) Metallica sucks or 2) Guns ‘n’ Roses sucks, and Chinese Democracy is more likely to end the world than the Large Hadron Collider (how, you ask? Why, it will create a massive black hole of Utter Suckitude that will pull the entirety of the universe into it; I think Stephen Hawking has published articles on this). Stop by any given music thread on Fark if you don’t believe me.

So I might be incurring the wrath of these internet Metallica-lovers by saying so, but the fact is, Death Magnetic is not only awful, it’s frequently unintentionally hilarious. These are grown men singing about “death,” “darkness,” “blackness,” and things shouting things like “We! Die! Hard!” (clearly a reference to the fact that you get a stiffy when Rigor Mortis sets in). It’s like watching a Wes Craven movie. No one with half a brain is frightened by Wes Craven movies, just as no one with half a brain believes the spolied millionaires in Metallica are really the tortured souls they’re trying to portray on Douche Bagnetic. This shit should be dark and broody, and all that, but the fact is, Metallica is less compelling as a metal band than Dethklok. When you’re getting your ass kicked by a joke cartoon band, it’s time to hang it up.

James Hetfield, as ever, is a histrionic mess on Death Magnetic. I’m guessing that’s supposed to be cathartic for metalheads or whatever, but it sounds ridiculous. When he shrieks “This I swear!” on “The Day That Never Comes”, I feel like he should be a villain in one of the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Hetfield’s villain  name could be The Nightmare and he could make puns about death and blackness while singing about hunting Batman down “All Nightmare Long.” Sounds more than a little plausible, doesn’t it? Fortunately, the Batman movie franchise is now in the much safer hands of Christopher Nolan.

Unfortunately, Metallica is still a band. There’s a place for brooding on mortality in song, don’t get me wrong. I See a Darkness is one of the finest (and most cripplingly depressing) meditations on love and death (mostly death) I’ve ever heard. But the difference between Will Oldham and Metallica is that I See a Darkness convinces the listener that this is what was on Oldham’s mind at the time, that he’d actually sat down and thought about this shit. Death Magnetic convinces me that Metallica had a meeting where they pulled metal tropes out of hat and said, “Ooh… that would be cool in a song. Like, what if we badly paraphrase Nietzsche and then scream ‘We! Die! Hard! at the end? That would tight, dog.” You see the difference? It’s not merely the subject matter that’s the problem here – it’s the assholes delivering it.

Death Magnetic runs rampant with examples of Metallica’s painful suck – on “Cyanide,” Hetfield drops this turd nugget: “Suicide/ I’ve already died” See what he did there? He rhymed “Suicide” and “died.” And then says “Cynaide/ dead inside.” Point being, this fucker cannot write. There is not one song on Death Magnetic equal in awesomeness or quality to Lordi’s “Devil’s a Loser.” Not one. There is also not one song shorter than five minutes on this album; Metallica has to allow for Kirk Hammett’s noodly, wah-drenched solos (I was hanging out w/ Radio America after their gig at the Viper Room a couple of weeks ago and Tom Stuart brougth up a salient point. When it comes to using a wah-wah pedal, you have to ask yourself one question: “Are you Jimi Hendrix? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you can use a wah-wah pedal.”). At a certain point, you have to admit Hammett is an accomplished musician, technically speaking. At a cetain other point, you realize that pretty much makes him the Kenny G of the guitar. Knowing a lot of notes and being awesome at playing notes are two drastically different things.

Of course, the elephant in the room here (the bloated, corporate elephant of cock-rock excess) is “The Unforgiven 3.” On paper, this is just fucking stupid. On record, it’s shameless. Especially when Douche-tallica eases you into the song by ripping off Richard Wright’s (rest in peace) awesome keyboard lick from “Comfortably Numb.” Yes, Metallica has resorted to putting bits from great songs in their shitty songs. The result is an aneurysm-inducing failure of epic proportions. We find out in “The Unforgiven 3″ that, according to Hetfield “It’s me I can’t forgive.” I can’t forgive you either, James. Go fuck yourself.

At the end of the day, if you’re like Tad the K-ROQ intern (who was recently found dead, by the way, stabbed repeatly by a shiv made from what appears to have been a broken and/or twisted Red Bull can; contrary to popular belief, I was not at the scene of the crime but in my office listening to the new TV on the Radio album), you’re gonna love Death Magnetic and hate my guts for pointing out that it sucks so hard that it makes me laugh. If you’re like me (a devilishly handsome person with dignity and taste), you probably haven’t even trifled with Death Magnetic. In that case, you might be wondering why I even subjected myself to such torture; I can only answer that my best friend is paying me twenty bucks to sit through Beverly Hills Chihuahua next weekend, so it might have something to do with a masochistic streak buried none-too-deeply under the surface.  Whatever. Go look up “Devil’s a Loser” on YouTube.