Scritti Politti - Provision
I posed the question "what's the worst album you've listened to all the way through?" And i got some great answers, mostly things that were really disappointing. I have a worst album. It's the worst album in the bottle of beef collection. I actually bought it BECAUSE it is terrible. It has no redeeming qualities that i can think of, and that is really saying something.
Let's look at some of the official worst albums based on critical reviews (but only the ones i've actually heard, so no kevin federline, or one direction spin offs, or novelty stuff). For that, we go to wikipedia's "List of music considered the worst/albums."
Shaggs - Philosophy of the World: no, incredibly influential album, and technical proficiency has no bearing on musical merit.
Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends: no, i reviewed it, he's my spirit animal, plus it's good. Embarrassment after the fact because "it might hurt my career" is grade a bullshit, every single one of those people had fun making it.
Attila - Attila: no, Billy Joel didn't go full on "hurt my career" and that saves him in my eyes, but it's a completely acceptable album for the time and place and world in which it was created.
Elvis and Lou Reed don't count. Adding Metallica into the mix doesn't count either. As far as Guns 'n Roses goes, The Spaghetti Incident is way worse than Chinese Democracy because everyone expected Chinese Democracy to suck.
I already did the soundtrack version of Sgt. Pepper, and it was like 40% great.
That's it, the rest are disqualified.
What makes an album terrible? Well, it has to invalidate its own existence. It has to be so egregiously horrible that it drags the universe down with it. It can't be funny, it can't be insane, it can't be derivative, and it can't be ill advised. Every one involved had to take it serious, it had to sell well (in context), and it had to be followed by a decade of hiding out in the country to live down the mental anguish of creating it at all.
I've mentioned it before. It's Scritti Polotti's Provision. I believe i called it "audio gonnorhea." I did call it that. If we were playing the "girl/baby" drinking game we would all have fatal alcohol poisoning before the end of side a. That's not even the bad part. This album actually transcends irony, rockets past cult level ideology at ludicrous speed, and somehow includes a trumpet solo from Miles Davis, who i assume was too high and too broke to care anymore. A sub two million dollar estate when he died unexpectedly after fighting with multiple doctors' recommendations? Miles Davis deserves every accolade a musician could possibly garner, but he lived like buying enough cocaine to never sleep again was a challenge he was ready and willing to accept. Bill Evans famously used the word "corrupted" when talking about labels and fame and pop/rock stardom. Not the point. Let's dive right into it.
What the hell does any of this mean? No seriously, this is an actual honest to sincerity communist love song album. Oooh girl, baby baby, i love you, but in the communist way. Love (in Communism), Green Gartside. He started his own communist club in high school. The band name is a rock-bandification of "scritti politici" (political writings in Italian).
The Tupamaros aren't hard core enough? For those of you who don't know, the Tupamaros were a Uraguayan organization that sprang out of the steep decline in value of agricultural exports to Europe in the 60s. The post civil war government of Uruguay had a trade deal with Europe, and it was pretty freakin' awesome from an economic standpoint. Uruguay was a first-world track country through both, count 'em both, world wars. But after Hitler suicided himself, food prices dropped significantly, and the economy of Uruguay went to shit. The Tupamaros started off peaceful and had massive support, but by 1970 they had morphed into a militant guerilla army that directly attacked the government and military, and subsequently got squashed like bugs. Now before you pick a side in that fight, remember that in 1984, yes you read that year right, Uruguay had it's first democratic election and the people of Uraguay decided that the whole thing would best be left to the past. No more dictators, let the communists out of prison, act like adults. Not that i'm scolding you America, but Uruguay figured it out in 19goddamned84, and we're so back-assward we're finally having that same childish fight in 2020? Really?
Scritti Politti didn't always suck, you just can't buy any of their non-sucky records. They were originally a new wave band like everyone else. But, Green had some serious anxiety issues and turned to synthpop in the hopes of hiding in the studio and never having to perform again. This album was what finally broke him. It got to the point where they were programming kick drums in raw time code, he couldn't even form coherent sentences as you can clearly hear, and after it was done he went back to the Welsh countryside for 10 years.
Everyone describes his writing style as essentially wordy and obtuse, but i just hear him as a nonsensical Michael Jackson. He puts the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble and constructs awkward half thoughts that sound like they are supposed to convey some underlying clever secondary meaning, but most definitely do not.
Musically speaking, one could argue that this is gobbledigook, and no one would disagree. Bleeps and bloops are the hallmark of good synthpop, but this sounds like everyone thought those bass lines were killer and expected everyone to dance. He wanted to make this, and not in the ironic "taking down capitalism from the inside" way you might imagine. SPK gives it that much needed dead inside/last hope of surviving feeling, but this is (and i apologize for using the term because i do not have a more accurate one) retarded.
You should absolutely go listen to this monstrosity and feel free to tell me i'm wrong. But, and i can't stress this enough, don't pretend that it's intelligent because you and i both know that's a fist squeezing a deflated globe, but it contains the lyric "Hot sugar returns to toy town" in a song subtitled Lovesick.
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