I like crappy music

[MoreSpaceEcho]

My personal fave is the cokehead in red on the right. I think he used to drive my schoolbus.

i imagine he's been back driving that bus for awhile now.

speaking of JCM, i remember my friends back home used to make fun of me for liking 'scarecrow' but i still maintain that is some good shit.

[cgarges]

2 more words: Kelly Clarkson. I don't know about her records so much, but she's a hell of a rock vocalist. Kathleen Hanna good.

Well, here you go, then:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4sJMcgeDe0

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[douglas baldwin]

Gotta throw my 2 cents in: I listen to EVERYTHING. I go to the public library every week and take out 6 CDs, listen, and copy what I like. What I find fascinating (in the pop arena, mostly, but sometimes in the jazz realm too) is how a band can have maybe one or two or even a half dozen songs that I SWOON over (or I'll remember having swooned over), then I'll get ahold of their greatest hits package (or the "classic" album), and the rest will be el STINKEROO.

Examples:
The Dave Clark Five - Bits and Pieces, Glad All Over, Because, even Catch Us If You Can. All killer. The other twenty-some-odd tracks are right down there with the Hullabaloos, the Swingin' Blue Jeans, and a bunch of other British Invasion yobbos.
The Association - Y'all know the big ones. Don't look for any "lost classics." They ain't there.
ABBA - DANCING QUEEN! HUGE! ABSURD! ("Feel the beat of the tambourine" ...?!?!?!) Other cuts are okay, but I'm sorry, "Waterloo" is no "Dancing Queen."
Boston - that guitar solo could be the friggin' national anthem of some small European nation. Beyond that, I don't get too excited.
The Moody Blues - about five songs I love to death, NOT INCLUDING "Knights in White Spandex."

I remember seeing a "Kiss vs. New York Dolls" show on Don Kirshner and wanting SO BAD to see the Dolls beat Kiss. Didn't. Sometimes you just have to accept that bad is good.
dB

[douglas baldwin]

...and then there's the other side of this topic: artists who you're not "supposed" to like, but who put out WHOLE ALBUMS of great material. The prime exmple of which would be The Monkees. Also George Michaels. Slayer and Pantera come to mind, too. And jeez, the Straus waltzes - I LOVE them! Took me until Zep IV to admit I liked them, too, back when. For the first three albums I HATED ZEP. Now I actually pay attention to my "hate-o-meter" because if something gets me that riled up, something's gotta be going on.

...and what about artists who you're "supposed" to like, that you never listen to? When was the last time you cued up "Trout Mask Replica?" Or "Sandinista." Or The Rite of Spring, or Beethoven, or Schoenberg (on the other hand I LOVE Webern...).

[cgarges]

Boston - that guitar solo could be the friggin' national anthem of some small European nation.

That's AWESOME!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[ckeene]

Thank god punk rock saved me from hair metal. was a very close call...

Now we need to figure out what's gonna save you from punk rock.

ha, that's what alt-country is for, right?

[lg]

Judy Collins's "Wildflowers" is one of my favorite records of all time.

i remember, during my first adolescent party w/ folks out of town and beers courtesy of someone's older sibling, realizing the value of liking (or even pretending to like) something that wasn't cool: the absolute hottest girl in my 7th grade class was flipping through my records and came across (cringe) MY DAD"S copy of "wildflowers" (obviously i was into it, since it was in with my LP's) and cooed, 'oh, you like judy collins!'

a few other embarrassments to note: human league, thompson twins, B-52's...oh yeah, and while passing through trader joe's the other day they were playing "last train to clarkesville" and i admit i was rockin' out!

as for things we 'should' like: the fast'n'bulbous sounds of trout mask replica don't get that much play around here either, ella guru notwithstanding. safe as milk, on the other hand...

[Mark]

Does that include pre girlies Human League?

[lg]

or Beethoven, or Schoenberg (on the other hand I LOVE Webern...).

i can't believe you're dissing Ludwig van- i'm afraid it'll be the ludovico technique for you.

[Jpp]

I have a cassette full of Blue Oyster Cult favorites (from all eras, not just "Secret Treaties"!) that I labelled "Bad Music: Do Not Listen To". Embarrassing but so darn catchy is "Let Go" from the mid-80s.

I also confess a weakness for the first few Pat Benatar albums, the Hall & Oates hits, Manilow's "Copacabana", and Mark Post's "Rockford Files" theme. Yes, I was a kid in the 70s.

[lg]

Does that include pre girlies Human League?

nah (correct me if i'm wrong), but i think their earlier incarnation was definitely more cool. the girlies helped 'em get airplay on KROQ though, which is where a dim SoCal boy like meself must've heard 'em first.

[lg]

and Mark Post's "Rockford Files" theme. Yes, I was a kid in the 70s.

i was actually quite proud of getting the 'rockford files' portamento lick on an arp oddysey (c. '75).

"it's like a pair of eyes. you're looking at the umlaut, and it's looking at you."

[Mane1234]

Yea man, the other night at like 2 in the morning I'm watching this infomersh for some disco collection hosted by Mr.Sunshine Band himself. 147 of your favorite disco hits and I knew every freakin one of them....Thank god in 1979 I heard my first Ramones album.

Wish I could see that PBS Carpenters thing. That was one pop song writing machine.

[Zygomorph]

I have no idea what the public barometer reads on Supertramp, but I followed them through the thrift stores in high school. Actually, I guess if they get used on Coast-to-Coast AM as bumper music, they must be pretty cool. My seventh grade english teacher always had record covers pinned to his walls. The three I remember are "Breakfast in America", "The Captain and Tenille" and Lenono's "Double Fantasy."

A few months ago, I started hearing in various big-box shopping centers some hideous cover of "Give a Little Bit" which further reinforced my fondness of Supertramp, because I could say "Ugh, the original is so much better, they're totally missing the point."

I used to think that liking ELO was kind of lame, until I got to college, and everybody had "Mr. Blue Skies" on their iPods... so it's probably only lame to be an ELO completest. (For what it's worth, I don't like the way Lynne always makes the drums sound like they're in a tiny bathroom.)

[Mark Alan Miller]

Does that include pre girlies Human League?

Sure does for me! And some post-women HL as well... through somewhere like, oh, "The Lebabon". At "Human" they lost me completely... although I do have that 7" for some reason.

Oh, and YAY to the B52s, too. Even some of Bouncing Off The Sattelites and Cosmic Thing had some good stuff...
But "Party Mix" is hard to beat when cranked up on a PA IMO.

But now I gotta say, these folks and others like the Thompson Twins hardly classify as "crappy" in my book. Would it be that some bands today had the inventiveness, the freshness, the 'who cares if it sounds like anything else that's going on' attitude like folks like these seemed to have. We need more of that these days, if I do say so. Man, I sound like an old fart.