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What are the 5 most overrated rock albums?

1. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. The songs on this album are nowhere near as memorable as those on "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul". For that matter, this album is nowhere near as innovative, nor ultimately as influential, as either "Pet Sounds" or the first Velvet Underground album. I'm not the first to point out that blame for such artless excess as all seventeen minutes of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida rests primarily with Sgt. Pepper.

2. Pink Floyd: The Wall. All of the criticisms usually applied to late 70's stadium rock, i.e., that it was pretentious, bloated, pseudo-intellectual,and self-indulgent; apply doubly to this crock opera. If you want witty and insightful philosophizing on the human condition, read Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken, or Michel Foucault. To seek such wisdom from pop music, a genre defined by its righteous Dionysian folly, is the greatest folly imaginable.

Pearl Jam: 10. Johnny Rotten was bang on when he described Pearl Jam as "bloody awful" and as sounding like "Joe Cocker singing for Black Sabbath." To my ears, this sounds like so much bland 70's rock (e.g., Bad Company). As The Monkees are to The Beatles, so are Pearl Jam to Nirvana.

4. U2: The Joshua Tree. I don't know where to begin. These guys plagiarized Joy Division, and set their sublime riffs to dumbass lyrics bespeaking the most niave sort of Oprah Winfrey meets Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms bourgeois liberalism. I've said it before, I'll say it again: If you make me listen to a record by someone named Bono, his first name better be SONNY.

5. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Exodus. Not only was Bob Marley not, by a long shot, the best pop music figure to come out of Jamaica, he wasn't even my favorite member of The Wailers. The monomaniacal cult of personality surrounding the deceased Robert Nesta Marley comes at the expense of all the other, far more exciting, music to come out of that poverty-stricken island. As Lester Bangs put it:

"Toots and the Maytalls, who never got promoted properly, are the real heat from a Stax/Volt kitchen, whereas Marley always struck me as being so laid back he seemed almost MOR. Rastaman Vibration was the last straw: an LP obviously calculated to break Disco Bob into the American Kleenex radio market full force, complete with chicklet vocal backdrops chirping 'Pos-i-tive!'
tweakgeek
ben_campbell
1,169 posts
 
Tweak surprisingly we have semi-similar tastes-I would disagree perhaps about specific albums-Roxy etc....The Cramps well I would guess you were a big fan at the time and you see it as great rock and roll no doubt,to me fun stuff big energy-not great....likewise The Pogues a drunken bigot fronting a folk band who want to be the Clash does not great music make-Clinic surely too soon.
But I see why you don't like The Wall-you read the NME for too long..........keep fighting kids it's fun and I actually like Hotel California mostly because I don't listen to radio and I only play it about once every five years
tweakgeek OP
76 posts
 

I find Rush to be wildly entertaining, and consider them to be the funniest Rock band in the business. Your post brings to mind one of the most common criticisms of the film "This is Spinal Tap." Everyone can name at least a dozen real-life rock bands that are way funnier than Spinal Tap. Did anyone else catch that hilarious VH-1 "Behind the Music" segment on Styx? It was everything "This is Spinal Tap" should have been, but wasn't.

Yes indeed, Rush wouldn't be Rush, and Rick Wakeman wouldn't be Rick Wakeman, without their signature over-the-top pomposity. Our world would be a more somber place without them.
ben_campbell
1,169 posts
 
Docwarnock you've obviously buying all the wrong records,I heard a record once (forget it's name) it was really quite though-provoking...:-)
I like that idea where you can decide what people can and can't get out of music,remember you are only limited by your own imigination and I AM looking for truth and meaning..so where exactly should I look?
Tv,under the bed,better speaker cable?
tweakgeek OP
76 posts
 
Ben, about The Pogues,
when I was hanging out in London in the late 70's, I knew Shane Mcgowan as an impossibly ugly obsessive Clash fan. His Gaelic sensibilities apparently came to him later in life: his t-shirt of choice back then usually bore the Union Jack.

In 1992 I was at a Pogues concert at the Town & Country. This was when Joe Strummer was singing for them. The experience was a bit of a mise-en-abime. I was standing by the bar watching Joe Strummer immitate Shane Mcgowan imitating Joe Strummer. In the midst of it all, Shane McGowan & his wife walked right up to the bar next to me. Very wierd.

That being said, I nevertheless nominate The Pogues for the dubious distinction of the best band of the 80's. There is hardly fierce competition for this honor (the Jam? Run DMC?)

While I'm at it, the following albums also deserve a place on my all-time best list:

T-Rex-Electric Warrior
The Residents-Commercial Album
Primal Scream-Screamadelica
Captain Beefheart-Trout Mask Replica
MC5-Back in the USA (do not attempt to play this one on a high-end system)
Tom Waits-Heartattack and Vine

Let's get back on the topic of trashing crappy rock albums that somehow enjoy outsized reputations. Does anybody else get an uncontrollable urge to take an axe to any speaker from which emanates the saccharine sweetness of Supertramp's "Breakfast in America"?
drewfidelity
178 posts
 
Here a few that come to mind:

Radiohead-OK Computer--Way Overrated. Not a bad album, but not the album of the Nineties.

Moby-Play--Not even a pleasant album to listen to.

Chemical Brothers-Dust--Horrible Album.

Pearl Jam-Ten--A well constructed pop album. More like Brittany Spears than Seattle grunge of its era.

Mettalica-Anything by this band--I just do not get it with this band. Average music at best.

That being said, I love Hotel Calfornia, any Rush album from Moving Pictures and before, and The Wall. Great thread.
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