Bob Dylan "Blonde on Blonde" [1966]

If you're one of those people who considers the 1960s to have been actually kind of gross, lame and full of itself, you couldn't be more right. And perhaps nothing from that decade illustrates this with more pathetic uselessness than celebrated billy goat Bob Dylan's double album of absurdly long campfire ballads and blues ripoffs called "Blonde on Blonde." Just the fact that this propped-up, nasal-bleating folkie with a loose group of electric instrument-playing stoners surrounding him was so revered is in itself pretty gross and lame, and though this is largely the case with almost every one of Dylan's 700 albums, "Blonde on Blonde" is the exact place where he became a complete caricature of himself. Every comedian who can do even a half-assed Dylan impression cites this album directly, his voice drawn like a magnet to the saaame nooote evvvery siiiingle soooong. And all this without even mentioning he'd clearly abandoned his interest in Vietnam and the political cries of injustice that made Dylan famous in the first place, in favor of boring laments and vignettes about random chicks -- a typical rock star conceit. He does revisit his "Highway 61" dadaist narratives on occasion, and the fact that these come off as relatively refreshing (when they were insufferable on his previous album) heightens one's awareness just how sucky he is as a romantic crooner. Only suitable for playing ironically or for a 60s theme party.