40 Terrible Albums by Great Artists - Guess which EC album?

[docinwestchester]

http://blog.sfgate.com/loaded/2012/08/3 ... e/#7113-21

Elvis Costello, "Brutal Youth" (1994): In a career as long and varied as his, you expect some clunkers. But this one revealed an alarming lack of quality control.

Some interesting choices on this list.

[SoulForHire]

I would have put money on Goodbye Cruel World.

This is DEAD WRONG. By virtue of You Tripped at Every Step alone.

[Neil.]

That person is crackers! Brutal Youth is one of his best!

[bronxapostle]

That person is crackers! Brutal Youth is one of his best!

MAN...i'm with you 100% Neil. this LP was both A) the first ATTRACTIONS LP in 8 years AND B) the return of NICK LOWE to the studio with them. then, he writes fifteen BRILLIANT EC songs that would make a masterpiece for ANY other act. TRIPPED was already named, so let me rattle off another 7-8! ALL THE RAGE, MY SCIENCE FICTION TWIN, 13 STEPS LEAD DOWN, FAVOURITE HOUR, CLOWN STRIKE, SULKY GIRL, STILL TOO SOON TO KNOW and KINDER MURDER. and this tour was freaking AMAZING with all four shows i saw, one better than the other! THAT person, as Neil implied, should have their head examined!!!

[Kevin Davis]

Hey, my favorite album of all-time is on this list: Pearl Jam's "Yield." And some of the artists they're calling "great" would be debatable to say the least.

[Poor Deportee]

When I Was Cruel would be my candidate for EC's entry on this list.

[when i was cruel]

Them's fightin' words, PD

[wardo68]

I have never been a defender of Brutal Youth -- unlike many others, I found it forced and noisy. But I don't hate it.

And I skimmed through the rest of the list at the link -- Back To The Egg has its charms, and Paulie's done way worse than that. And Coda shouldn't be there either, since none of the band ever cared for it.

[Jeremy Dylan]

YELLOW SUBMARINE is not terrible. Hey Bulldog and All Together Now alone would make it worth buying.

[bronxapostle]

Them's fightin' words, PD

i'm with you WIWC...yet ANOTHER great 'return to rocking' LP from our hero!

[docinwestchester]

YELLOW SUBMARINE is not terrible. Hey Bulldog and All Together Now alone would make it worth buying.

And the George songs - Only A Northern Song, It's All Too Much - are cool as hell.

Not a terrible album, for sure.

[bronxapostle]

aaah doc...gotta agree about the GEORGE songs. i see we are truly EC/BRUCE addicts bouncing back & forth from here to BACKSTREETS! is 9-22 your next show also??? THAT is gonna be a MONSTER night with the Boss turning 63 at midnight!

[docinwestchester]

aaah doc...gotta agree about the GEORGE songs. i see we are truly EC/BRUCE addicts bouncing back & forth from here to BACKSTREETS! is 9-22 your next show also??? THAT is gonna be a MONSTER night with the Boss turning 63 at midnight!

I'll be in the pit once again.

[sheeptotheslaughter]

The list was of course complied before Secret, Profane and Sugarcane.

I love Brutal Youth by the way. All the more so because I actually won it in a radio competition all those years ago.

[John]

Love Brutal Youth, one of my favourites. I hadn't listened to it for a long time but this prompted me to play it loud yesterday morning. The rest of the family were a little disturbed but I still love it. Even 20% Amnesia didn't sound too bad!

[Kevin Davis]

I love "20% Amnesia." Is that some kind of commonly hated song among EC fans?

[when i was cruel]

I can't get over '20% Amnesia' it's just too much. Then again, this comes from the same guy who hates 'Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution)'.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Let's hear it for Metal Machine Music!

[Jack of All Parades]

Let's hear it for Metal Machine Music!

I would but it destroyed my ear drums! Quite possibly one of the greatest wastes of vinyl along with Neil's"Arc" or any of his 80's records. Come to think of it a great many on that list are wastes of vinyl-though I too would switch ATUB or WIWC for BY.

[Top balcony]

It's North that gets my vote in this "Terrible" category. It's his Marmite album ( although I actually like Marmite) and I know plenty think it's great, it's just that I don't get it, any of it. However to be fair I do like the cover.

Colin Top Balcony

[Little Fool]

Totally agree with CTB, North is an album that I anticipated and wanted to like. Most of the songs start to develop but there is a certain 'discord' to the vocal delivery which may have been intended but in reality sounds like failure to hit the right notes. Blasphemy I know, but as an avid fan since 1977 it's the only album I can't truly embrace.

[Otis Westinghouse]

I would but it destroyed my ear drums!

Don't you find a certain sonic poetry in it? Talking of destroyed ear drums, I quite like music where my tinnitus blends successfully with the noises being created, and MMM is like tinnitus gone mad. I think seeing it 'performed', or something that took its cue from it, made me appreciate the ethos more.

Can't believe anyone would propose ATUB. The Other End of the Telescope alone is worthy of the label 'masterpiece'.

[when i was cruel]

I would but it destroyed my ear drums!

Don't you find a certain sonic poetry in it? Talking of destroyed ear drums, I quite like music where my tinnitus blends successfully with the noises being created, and MMM is like tinnitus gone mad. I think seeing it 'performed', or something that took its cue from it, made me appreciate the ethos more.

Can't believe anyone would propose ATUB. The Other End of the Telescope alone is worthy of the label 'masterpiece'.

EXACTLY ! A FANTASTIC ALBUM ALL AROUND ! I love EVERY song... damned crazies

[migdd]

I love ATUB. It's an album full of extremely thoughtful, but somewhat dreary, songs written in the last throughs of alcohol dependency and a failing marriage. It's not a collection of songs to listen to on a cheery day.

It contains songs that display some of EC's finest couplets but is doomed to be thought of as his last hurrah as a gin-sodden lout. Happier times were ahead.

[Poor Deportee]

ATUB is not worthy of classification as 'terrible' to my mind. It's merely mediocre. As for North, I've always found it more admirable than lovable, but those songs are well-crafted and - mercifully - the vocals are by and large tastefully restrained. As it's a highly rigorous mood piece, I can certainly see people saying they don't play it very often. What I can't see is somebody arguing that it is a bad record.

WIWC has a tremendous title track - and indeed, the first four songs make an enjoyable quartet. Then the album descends, alas, into a mostly unpleasant sonic bog, with several songs ('Soul,' '15 Petals,' 'Dissolve, 'Alibi,' 'Dust,' 'Daddy') that need never have existed, and others that just aren't good enough to carry the aforementioned dead weights ('Tart' is a great melody in need of a more coherent lyric, 'Dust 2' is nice enough but no more than a minor track, 'Window' likewise, 'Episode' is insufficiently clever logorrhea partly redeemed by a superb chorus, and 'Radio Silence' is the reverse of Tart - good if whiny lyric, but melodically uninspired). That is a dog's breakfast of some of the weakest material Elvis has ever seen fit to offer his public. That is was hailed as some sort of 'comeback' makes it even worse. Ugh.