The worst album ever?
*albums in response to the death of George Floyd*
I once told you that England considered Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends the worst album ever recorded (i disagree). We have a contender for that title too. It's a sort of strange mash up of compilation/tribute/soundtrack, and only two bands came out of it without giant bleeding gashes across their cheeks. Put it this way, Aerosmith didn't cover Come Together just because they felt like it. Interesting tangent, Run DMC didn't really want to cover Walk This Way, and they thought it was corny and weird. Turned out ok in my opinion.
So let's see if the movie soundtrack to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band deserved to be a "return platinum" album complete with an Atari-like trip to the landfill to dump all that wasted PVC. Another interesting tangent, i sure as hell couldn't figure out how to play that infernal ET game when i was a kid.
I'm not particularly keen on the Beegees or Frampton but "Euthanizing the population" for buying it at all might be a little overboard. Dare i compare it to the frighteneningly real risk of Trump trying to federalize the National Guard?
Then again, i haven't listened to it yet (that's sarcasm, giving Trump a WWII style lobotomy couldn't make him any less dangerous). Critic Dave Marsh is responsible for the euthanasia hyperbole, send your hate mail to him. Tangent 3, we should do the Megadeth discography (that ends with not at all funny pun Youthanasia as far as i'm concerned).
I'm stalling, i don't want to listen to this thing. But i will. For science!
It leads off with Aerosmith's Come Together, exactly what you would expect 'cause it's not from Sgt. Pepper at all. Huh, George Burns, alright. Ugh, yeah that's Peter Frampton not rocking at all. I believe he expressed reservations about many aspects of this endeavor, but actually it's fine. I mean, it all sounds more like Lionel Richie that either Frampton or the Beatles, but that doesn't make it bad.
Oooooh. That's bad. Barry. No. Yeah, all anyone is going to remember is Barry Gibb ruining A Day In The Life. I never want to hear that again, ever. I'd count how ridiculously long that last note was, but i said never.
Much better. Billy Preston is exactly the kind of frontman the Beatles thought they were poorly imitating. This is better than Paul's original version of Get Back.
Disco for the title track? Pass. Ugh. 3 more sides? Once more without the gorgonzola (funky cheese, get it?) We might need an ellipsis...
... so, there are some lessons we can learn. First, disco was not an "authentic" genre. There is great disco, but great disco didn't start out as something else (with the possible exception of Meco's Star Wars thing). Doing a "disco" version is almost always bad. Second, the Beatles were imitating R&B, Soul, Blues, etc. You hand their music to a real band like Aerosmith, Earth Wind and Fire, Billy Preston, anybody, it's going to be amazing. And it is. You hand it to a performer with their own bizarre approach that no one would ever expect, it's incredibly interesting like Alice Cooper's Because. But if you hand a random nonsense Beatles song to the Beegees or Frampton and they try to play it straight it's going to suck. And suck it does.
Who gave them a ring modulator?! Was it Carl? Who put Carl in charge? (That's an old bottle of beef joke).The Daleks sing the Beatles!
Everybody criticizes Steve Martin's Boris Karloff impression, but i counter argue with I Am A Dentist from Little Shop Of Horrors. Unique. Weird. It works because he's the right kind of silly.
In summary, half this album is crap and it's the half with any of the Gibb brothers, Peter Frampton, Dianne Steinberg, and Sandy Fajina. That's a typo, Farina, i apologize. Sgt. Pepper was nonsense to begin with, the whole concept was that the Beatles didn't want to be the Beatles because they were just making up nonsense to sell records. What better concept than an imaginary band playing nonsense songs. We all know that backfired like a rusty '78 Pinto, and you can hear it happening on this album. You can't take it serious, but they sure tried.
Still not the worst album ever, but definitely make your own heebie-beegee free playlist of the actual good parts. Don't tell 'em bottle sent you, they'll make you pay full price even with a student id.
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