Classic Album Disappreciation

A friend has recommended the following pastime. It combines rudeness, kicking sacred cows in the udders, and using databases as they were not designed. It is, ladies and gentlemen, Classic Album Disappreciation.

Using Amazon, search and find yourself a Classic Album, one that perceived wisdom holds sacrosanct, say, anything by the Beatles. Now, the reviews at the bottom generally wax enthusiastic about how this album or that album redefined music for a generation, created complex audio sculptures, opened listeners' ears up to new influences, blah-de-blah-de-blah. What you want to do, if you're playing Classic Album Disappreciation, is to click the 'See All 226 Reviews' button near the bottom. Then, from the little drop-down box, select 'Show Lowest Rated First'. Then pour yourself a large port and lap up the mixture of bile, hatred, accurate insights into overrated albums, libel and poor syntax.

Think of it as an antidote to Mojo and Q.

Thank you Jamie.

Below are (sometimes selectively edited) extracts from some of the one-starrers.

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The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

This is not the Beach Boys. It can't be. Why? No beach songs!

Maybe the problem is me.

C'mon people! I have around 2000 Rock albums in my collection and I would never placed this not even between the top 100.

Britney Spears albums have great production.

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Television - Marquee Moon

IVE always been convinced THAT TELEVISION were REALLY no better than a HIGH SCHOOL SEVENTY PSYCEDELIC, third rate amateaur bar band like AWFULL.

BULLOCKS!!! Clean out your ears and stop being so pretentious.

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Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

Don't buy this album unless your a big fan of slow accoustic guitar songs without any depth.

whining/whaling/screeching/yelping and nostril-itis.

Terrible, terrible work! One of my worst purchases, I think.,

I'm all up for excusing lyrical hemmaroids

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Beatles - White Album

I even say it is a discraze.

The White Album at one time was great. But grow up people, it is 2005, this album is a relic, not a classic.

a) inexcusable
b) repettattive
c) boring

It is dangrous and emptyheaded

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Nirvana - In Utero

Nirvana didn't define a generation, it lowered the bar for generations to come.

The online rhyming dictionary can make better plays on words than Cobain does.

This isn't party music by any means, who would want to hear 'Rape Me' at a party? Why couldn't Kurt just lighten up once in a while?

Kurt thought he could not only get away with releasing an album not finished enough for fans, but he also half arsed the inside graphic design (actually, he co-half arsed it).

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Also, it can be extended to become Classic Novel Disappreciation, which is fun.

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JD Sallinger - the Catcher in the Rye

First of all, there is the repeated swearing. I'm not usually bothered by this. Stephen King uses quite a bit of cursing, for example, but his stories are still interesting. This book, however, swears so much that the book would probably be twice as short if you took them all out. Every other word seems to be "g-dd--n or a variation of it.

There is also the repitition of the phrases "____kill(s) me" and "phony". Now, this wouldn't seem so bad at first. But believe me, you have NO IDEA how incredibly annoying that gets after a while. I actually started to cringe whenever those phrases were coming up, and I'm not exaggerating. Take out those two phrases plus the swearing, and this book is reduced to about 1/4 of it's actual size - maybe less.

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Let me know what You, The People, can come up with.