The Black Crowes "The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" [1992]

Apparently, "Southern harmony" means existing as a rich-enough band of derivative redneck rockers to hire a bunch of soul sisters to find the harmonies within your scrawny, phony Steve Marriott posing vocal lines. With the Black Crowes, their fecklessness even at this early stage of their existence is toxic. What's helpful about this in retrospect was just how low the bar was set for rock music fans to escape the last bloviated gasps of LA hair metal that this album became a viable option. Every note played by everyone on this entire album is lifted from somewhere else; it's a veritable fencing operation of early-70s FM riffage. If only some of the guys tapping Public Enemy's phone would've bothered looking into this thievery, but somehow anything Stones-related -- even this obviously copy-cat -- has always been untouchable. So much the worse for all of us. Had the listening public known ahead of time that "Southern Harmony…" was on its way, perhaps we all might have pitched in to help build a time-machine so these guys could go back and suck-up with the hangers-on at Villa Nellcote so we'd never have had to hear from them in the first place. Win-win all around.