Chuck Berry "The Great Twenty-Eight" [1982]

I know there are actually 28 songs on the Chuck Berry compilation "The Great Twenty-Eight," but minus the same songs that he keeps re-writing in the same keys, at the same tempo, about basically the same things with exactly the same solos, it's like 3 -- and they're not even all that great. Of course Keith Richards thinks they are, but that's only because you can be this close to brain-dead and still be able to play Chuck Berry tunes on guitar. This brought the amateurs to rock 'n roll in droves, so the next time you have to endure a band that sounds like dogshit, you know who's ultimately to blame. Sure, he may have been an OK car mechanic, but we trusted this guy with the future of contemporary music? Serves us right. Ultimately, Chuck Berry was probably best suited for a nondescript songwriting career in Nashville, but his dark complexion made that next to impossible, so count the origins of rock 'n roll as another thing for which American racism is to blame. Elsewhere, Berry thinks of himself as an erudite citizen of the world, but his lyrics clearly demonstrate he's nothing more than a dime-store paperback novel reader, probably in between crap roadhouse gigs in Midwestern Nowheresville. So while he may, in fact, have nailed American existence -- at least as of the mid-late 1950s (he'd nail plenty of other things that would prove him to be a high-level pervert in future years) -- it's really nothing for any of us to be proud of. As much as Chuck Berry may have lowered the bar for everyone, we're still stuck with the asshole.