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Lou Reed "Transformer" [1972]

Those who suspected in the 60s that the Velvet Underground were the most talentless group of miscreant druggies propped up by their vague association with Andy Warhol and nothing else -- assuming you even heard of the fucking Velvet Underground before Lou Reed went solo -- were proven so incredibly, profoundly correct upon the release of Reed's solo breakthrough album "Transformer" it's impossible to exaggerate. This time he gets propped up by David Bowie as these two speed-freak zombies in pancake makeup and eyeliner race to the bottom of the realms of bad taste. And Lou Reed wins. Still struggling to hold a tune with his nasal quiver of a voice and with no ability to figure out an interesting chord progression, it takes Bowie's hyperactive session-wonk studio taskmastering to get "Transformer" out of the toilet, however briefly. But even Bowie is helpless beneath the most insipidly absurd lyric sheet ever printed -- retarded gender-bending mixed with amphetamine-fueled idiocy that makes "Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear" seem like Longfellow. It's probably very fortunate Reed likely remembers none of this period of his life, and because he's not yet dead from embarrassment it's a good indication he's never been curious to revisit it. Because even if you tried, you couldn't remotely approach this level of lowlife, unintentional comedy -- Lou Reed was the biggest clown rock music has ever produced, even bigger than Gene Simmons.

Tame Impala "Lonerism" [2012]

Wow — you’d think “futurism” this ridiculously lame would have been over as of the original “Flash Gordon,” or at least Shat-man Era “Star Trek.” The year 2012 must have been a very tough one for music critics whose job it is to find something interesting to say about new music; by this time 20 years ago, the entire landscape had been re-done from coke-B.O. leather to flea-riddled flannel. But between Tame Impala’s “Lonerism” and things like Frank Ocean’s “channel ORANGE” — the difference here being the guy named after a body of water virtually drowned onstage at the Grammys — indie rock in the 20-teens is about as nutritious as eating smoke. When Tame Impala (which I guess translates from pretentious rockstar-ese to “dead meat,” otherwise “underperforming Chevy”) stops dicking around and gets to some actual songs, they tend to sound exactly like John Lennon’s heroin nods (all of them — they all sounded the same, which is why his 70s output was so shitty). Basically, Tame Impala exists on the same airy plane as MGMT — young kids engaging in unapologetic multi-track abuse (“What do you mean, people used to not record music on computers?”) and stumbling into “psychedelia” simply because they can’t stop themselves from drenching everything in too many effects. It’s beard rock for people too immature to grow beards. Apparently this spaced-out aesthetic has flown all the way down-under, from where Tame Impala hails. Sound like CO2 won’t be the only major issue concerning our global atmosphere for the next decade or so.

Leonard Cohen "I'm Your Man" [1988]

OK, the contest is officially over -- no matter how big an ass-head Bob Dylan ever was (or big a washout he'd have become by the late 80's) -- at least he never stooped to cheap Euro-disco synth bullshit to push his egocentric lyrics on the music-buying public like Leonard Cohen does on "I'm Your Man." Who the fuck rescued this guy from obscurity, and why the fuck did they do it? Cheap, phoney Georgio Moroder backing tracks with a trio of session-hack sisters as backup singers, Cohen proves he really has no level of depth he won't sink to -- his tuneless basso voice is a perfect testament to this, as well. He sounds like Nick Cave fronting Donna Summers' studio band after burning them out on drugs, probably the way Cohen was able to seduce all those starlets in the 60s, when he was still a pedestrian talent but mercifully only carried around an acoustic guitar with him instead. Even though he's approaching Viagra-taking age during the "I'm Your Man" sessions, his lechery has not left him. Every Barry White was able to suppress the drool coming out his face hole while in front of a microphone. Maybe Serge Gainsbourg wasn't -- and that's clearly what Cohen's going for here: an aging scumbag Jew trying to get in the pants of the most amount of pseudo-sophisticated hot babes in the cheapest way possible -- but what the world really needs is fewer Serge Gainsbourgs, not more of them who speak in different languages.

Nirvana "In Utero" [1993]

The rise of the Seattle grunge movement was remarkably swift and relatively long-lasting, proving the music industry had already organized itself in reaction to the Warrant "She's My Cherry Pie"-led movement of LA hair metal, and apparently threw a dart to decide which group would be deigned their movement's "leader" and it hit Nirvana. So it's noisy, obnoxious, simplistic major-label debut "Nevermind" became anthemic of the early 90s -- so much so that their follow-up, "In Utero," could be any old piece of shit and still be considered a classic work of genius, and it was (any old piece of shit, that is). Here Kurt Cobain has made a choice very few people ever get to make: treat yourself seriously and branch out into bold new musical real estate under the spotlight at the risk of coming off too full of yourself, or just snort a lot of junk and go through the motions like a bitch. It becomes apparent upon revisiting "In Utero" not only which decision he took but why he couldn't wait to off himself. Some cynics claim he killed himself for the publicity, because he was a junkie with a one-way ticket or because his cunt of a wife had him murdered. Listen to this album and feel the weight of Cobain's fucked up decision to let Steve Albini produce him; I'd feel not only compelled to kill myself but Albini as well. In a way, I wish "In Utero" had come before "Nevermind;" that way Pearl Jam could have been the grunge poster boys and the movement would've lasted far less time.

Kid Creole and the Coconuts "Tropical Gangsters" [1982]

Every time you book a beach vacation, you fantasize about all the trouble-free bliss you're going to have -- but once you arrive there's always this one charming local in a Panama hat who fucks up your good time by flirting with your wife and offering to take her to all the popular tourist sites. Now imagine that guy with his own pop-calypso band and then consider how much you're going to hate Kid Creole and the Coconuts' "Tropical Gangsters." As if music fans in the early 80s didn't already have enough to contend with -- between the Boy George-led second British Invasion and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" coup still in blitzkrieg stage -- here comes a jive-ass Cab Calloway Jr. in Miami Vice pastels. Tempting as it is to call the sound of "Tropical Gangsters" simply Prince at Club Med, it's actually a lot less sexy and a lot more petty than that. Ripping off a "1999" beat to sing a song about other people ripping him off, Kid Creole clearly has a lot of nerve calling the kettle high-yella. Besides which, his grooves (if you can call them that) and his raps (which absolutely can't be called that) do a good job of making Huey Lewis & the News sound funky. What the Coconuts offer to the act must be in their no-doubt campy-as-hell live show (meaning they probably all have big tits, otherwise they would have been named something else), because they don't bring anything to this album the Pointer Sisters sleepwalking couldn't manage. Easiest way to tell this is a band of hack frauds, however, is to notice they're not even from the islands at all -- they're New Yorkers who have to take the 6 Line like every other schnook.

Richard & Linda Thompson "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" [1974]

Be forewarned: Richard and Linda Thompson's "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" is what happens when even studio hacks can't get anybody to finance their music project and they go ahead and do it anyway. Apparently recorded in the living room of their London flat, Fairport Convention survivors the Thompsons (not to be confused with the Thompson Twins -- these two were married until their lack of success drove them apart) offer a relatively useless glimpse into what Eric Clapton would have sounded like had he kept an old lady for more than five minutes. What was likely much more useful about this record was doubtlessly picked up by partners-in-crime Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, who'd already pitched their tent in LA and were just looking for a huge void to exploit; they found it in this failed experiment of what I'll for now call "burb-rock," and built the entire kingdom of melodrama that were the Buckingham-Nicks years directly on it. White as a bedsheet soaked in Clorox, "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" countrifies British MOR rock and Britifies anything that may have previously existed as originally American (and worthwhile), progressing at a mild, anti-aggressive tempo throughout, with plenty of show-offy accompaniments that fit right into the mix. These two are nothing if not well-trained mutts, after all. But just as Fairport Convention was unjustly lauded in the 60s, so its remnants are bestowed undue praise -- did one of these people perform the Heimlich maneuver on Jann Wenner at a dinner party or something?

Soundgarden "Badmotorfinger" [1991]

You can't spell "Badmotorfinger" without "bong," nor "Soundgarden" without "dude." This album has the musical appeal for most women that setting your farts on fire does. Drop-tuned trailer guitar and bass playing, screech-metal 80s-style Sammy Hagar singing, ham-fisted prog-rock time-signature switcheroos and a Seattle-centric lyrical landscape of waste and depression were what A&M thought were going to break through in the marketplace for this foul group of stoner lumberjacks. That they may have partially succeeded is to lay much of the blame of the glum 90s Gen-X attitude directly before their scuffed-up Doc Martens. Sluggish and pulverizing, Soundgarden set out to make Tool sound like Milli Vanilli on "Badmotorfinger," which helpfully illustrates the album as a classic case of reverse-reaction overkill. It's no wonder music fans were still clinging to Madonna at the time; they didn't want to be trapped in this jockstrap-reeking locker room one second longer than they had to. They clearly learned how to play their instruments listening to Aerosmith 45s at 33 1/3, knowing that smackheads could care less if anything was being played at a danceable tempo, just so long as the low-end was loud enough to turn your vital organs into mush. Between Nirvana and Soundgarden, the next five-plus years of indie rock were set in stone: it was to be a miserable, bleak, rainy place even though the economy was on solid ground and Americans were prospering. Hmm -- perhaps the Seattle grunge movement was a big conspiratorial set-up by the political wing of the Republican party.

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles "Going to a Go-Go" [1965]

Almost two full decades after Henry Ford kicked the bucket, somebody in Detroit finally had another good idea: music audiences liked female voices, but because the pre-sexual revolution 60s was still sexist as fuck, the music industry needed a guy who could sing like a girl (and preferably not a fairy). They struck pay-dirt with Smokey Robinson, a young Sam Cooke knock-off who sang like he had a clamp on his testicles. Motown chief Berry Gordy hadn't yet established himself as the totalitarian task-master (substituting Armani for typical military garb, like dictators from most second-world regions [upon which Detroit most certainly qualified] normally did), but he did already have a sweet tooth for strings, horns, vibes and other gooey sentiment. Smokey then employed this syrupy overproduction in his singles that make you feel like you're sinking into tacky 60s living room furniture at someone's home who don't really like all that much -- listening to "Going to a Go-Go" holds the same sort of awkward guilt. Don't be fooled by the puppy-dog looks of this album -- Motown meant serious business, and they were going to have everyone in America buy their 45s, even if you had to hide them from your racist parents. Thus, the operatives of this record company were early and fully conscious sell-outs, hell-bent on buffing the edges of the black American experience in the name of turning a quick buck. Not exactly honorable, but at least no one sicced any German shepherds on Smokey Robinson's ass.

Them Crooked Vultures "Them Crooked Vultures" [2009]

This makes it official: Josh Homme clearly must have pushed Dave Grohl out of the way of a speeding bus at some point. It's the only thing that remotely justifies not only Grohl's Jay Leno-like installation of himself into Homme's band Queens of the Stone Age earlier in the decade, but his impetus for cobbling the phony Led Zep tribute band Them Crooked Vultures together -- with himself playing Bonzo, Homme noodling like a cut-rate Jimmy Page (and for some reason crooning like Jack Bruce; somebody was confused what the game was) and John Paul Jones himself, who apparently had never picked up golf as a retirement activity. That they could get this group signed to RCA was a no-brainer, but of course neither it nor the album went anywhere. Led Zeppelin was instrumental in stomping the guts out of prog rock even before the band became a shell of its former self -- and that was 30 fucking years before "Them Crooked Vultures" was released. Jesus Christ, talk about clueless. Maybe Homme needed the money after a decade and a half of busting his ass to become a complete unknown on the contemporary rock scene. Maybe Jones' royalty money finally ran out? Fat fucking chance -- it's entirely possible Them Crooked Vultures owe Zep even more in royalties due to having ripped off their licks at every turn. Ultimately, it's fine if rock stars want to dress up like other rock stars once in awhile, but to expect that anyone would be interested in listening to it means either guys like these don't actually live in the real world or they just don't give a fuck what anyone expects from them.

The Doors "Morrison Hotel" [1970]

It's likely Jim Morrison always had a screw loose, but even after he stopped dropping acid it was clear his brain was cashed anyway. Following the monumental "Doors-in-Vegas" flop of the previous year's "The Soft Parade," Morrison's band of hack-lackeys -- who'd already put up with the most asinine and infantile behavior from their front man (at least until Elvis got back into music full-time) -- retreat back to however close they could get to garage rock while simultaneously existing as worthless, coddled rock stars. And still the Englebert Humperdinck conceits are there in "Morrison Hotel," in between Morrison's drunken rants about how shitty the world outside is, and how critically deranged he'd allowed himself to become. Amazingly, his poetry only got worse -- and he hadn't exactly set a high bar in the first place -- and still no one had bothered to tell Ray Manzarek his comicly horrid circus organ had to go. So here the Doors were, stuck as fuck with nowhere to go but down. I'm sure Elektra Records was fed up with them by now, too, especially now that Jim was turning into a fat-ass before their very eyes; they probably advised him, "Hey Jim -- yeah, just go ahead and whip it out next time you're onstage. Let's see what happens." I guess they felt maybe the liability of burning down "Morrison Hotel" with the Doors still in it might have come back on them somehow. Much easier to set Jim up with a flat in Paris and a smack dealer, and let things work themselves out.

My Bloody Valentine "Loveless" [1991]

Ever wonder what Enya's music would sound like if she was forced to live a tool shed for an entire Irish winter? That would be My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," an album that actually achieves what had long been thought impossible: it made Sonic Youth sound somewhat palatable. Dour creeps The Jesus and Mary Chain have more dynamics -- and more fun -- than My Bloody Valentine does here. Call these slo-mo sad-sacks Tangerine Nightmare. Aural corrosives gross out the stretched-out soundscapes of disinterest and petulance, with the overall effect coming off something like Beth Orton dying at the bottom of a well. By all means crank the "Loveless" CD at your apartment if you never want to meet any new people. And if you do, it'll be those types of hopelessly miserable schmucks who are drawn to walls of moody noise. Apparently there were plenty of them around in the early 90s, when the new era was eager to shed their boat shoes and pastel sweaters tied over their shoulders. But settling here in what is pretty much the sonic version of what the pissed-on Blarney Stone looks like under a microscope reeks of unnecessary haste and extremely bad taste. Perhaps My Bloody Valentine is engaging in a similar action to what the local drunks relieving themselves are; by listening to "Loveless" the joke's on us as we pucker up and give ourselves a hideous face-full of germs.

Squeeze "East Side Story" [1981]

If you're looking for the oldest-sounding new wave album of all time, you've just found it -- these tunes fart dust. White people -- especially the English -- always tend to water down the styles of music they play, but on "East Side Story," the faceless gang of pastey, verbose pub-rock lame-asses named Squeeze (as in "we can only ever get to second base, even though we're in a band") set themselves miles apart from the mild genre-faking of even the second-most boring group in the UK at the time. The Zombies as watery gruel, the Kinks as a tasteless lollipop, George Jones with a bullet through his head, "East Side Story" has everything one needs to know about how someone as rigid and visionless as Margaret Thatcher could come to rule that country. Largely produced by Elvis Costello -- as most sub-par efforts were in the early 80s -- Squeeze sounds like nothing so much as Paul McCartney if he'd had no talent and never made it. And that's before the flat, low-voiced putz gets a crack at singing lead, at which point it becomes pretty clear Squeeze is ultimately a mean-spirited joke band, parodying all the torturous mediocrities of their time and place. Add to the mix arrangement experiments that flop repeatedly, and all you really need to know is that "East Side Story" is one book you'd be wasting your time checking out.

The English Beat "I Just Can't Stop It" [1980]

Somebody traced the Specials and came out with a lame, sterilized approximation of two-tone ska. Some revival. Whatever fun ska music had to offer in the first place was always laced with the bitter pain felt by its artists, who were forced to live as second- and third-class citizens, at least until the Caribbean turned into a tourist trap. The Beat merely gives British white kids a reason to spill their pints while jumping around like jerkoffs as they're being spared the brawling dickheadedness of the punk movement. So it's just a re-hashing of pub rock with sax solos and guitar up-strumming on the "one-and." Which would have been fine as a minor curiosity, but not taken as a serious movement, unless by movement you mean "defecation." Even the dub-reggae passages here are weak tea; Lee "Scratch" Perry could've swatted these poseurs down with a simple flick of one of his dreadlocks. But this isn't Jamaica, it's England -- nobody chooses to visit there for the weather. Not only that, but if you suck in front of a black crowd, it'll likely be rudely suggested you leave the stage immediately. But white kids never seem to learn their lesson, generation after generation. England is, after all, where all new, legitimate forms of African American music go to die.

Van Morrison "Astral Weeks" [1968]

Before shameless white men in the 70s vented their spleens to try and prove they've got as much soul as black singers, there was Van Morrison, a shameless white man who got his start in the 60s. But on "Astral Weeks," this Irish barking frog employs his fat voice not in service of the latest rock single about the newest girl he's banging, but in this weird stringy and reedy series of extended vignettes while reading from the journals he wrote while obviously stoned. He's backed up by a bunch of faceless jazzers who work their asses off trying to wring some dynamics out of Morrison's persistently pitchy emoting; I hope he paid them a lot of money, but none of them ever worked with him again so he probably didn't. It's just as well he went from "Astral Weeks" to a more typical front-man for a pop-soul outfit, though I'm sure the reason he could never pull off the Otis Redding red suit was because he'd look too much like a singing fire hydrant, which would have tripped out far too many people back in the day. Back to "Astral Weeks," there is plenty of supple improvisation between the players, actually. The violins and the upright bass tend to mesh well with the simple keyboard and vibe figures, especially when they bury that lame acoustic guitar. The only thing this album needs is a decent singer.

Kool & the Gang "Celebrate!" [1980]

Tempting as it would be to blame Earth, Wind & Fire for the flaccid funk-pop that was to usher in the pre-Michael Jackson "Thriller" Era -- meaning ball-less white pop-rock groups like REO Speedwagon now had their black counterparts -- ultimately it was Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" that softened spirited grooves and church music until they resembled so many fluff-dried kittens, with pretentious jazz modulations and squeaky-clean horn sections. Even after disco was taken out to the woodshed, jive-ass groups like Village People and Kool & the Gang, especially on "Celebrate!," somehow persisted with their saccharine beats and vacuously generic positive sentiments. Kool & the Gang had been around for years by this time, but they were by now so edgeless they made Chuck Mangione sound like Miles Davis. Black pop had already taken a slick and greasy turn for the worse once Quincy Jones got his hooks into the Brothers Johnson, but Kool & the Gang take it another large step more neutered (another couple inches taken off the "brothers' johnson," if you will). Goddamn, it's hard not to be provoked to serious anger listening to this musical goosh; Kid Creole's even like, "toughen your shit up, fellas." I wonder if smooth jazz radio programmers simply plugged in "Celebrate!" on an endless loop instead of whatever crap they usually play that even one person would notice the difference.

Black Flag "Damaged" [1981]

Back in England around this time, family night at the pub had already gone completely to hell with the onset of prole-centric punk rock, turning places Grannie used to feel welcome in into noisy, aggressive shitholes. Southern California has never had any such tradition of "pub night," so when Black Flag brutalized their way onto the scene, they just turned everywhere they went into their own noisy, aggressive shithole -- the world became their personal disgusting toilet. About the only redeeming quality about their seminal (yes, semin-al as in "jizz") hardcore album "Damaged" is that it's recorded so poorly neither Greg Ginn's scratchy, shitass guitar nor Henry Rollins' scratchy, shitass vocals make anywhere near a deep impression. It's a good thing for everyone who's never had the displeasure of this third-rate assault, but also fortunate for Black Flag themselves: their lunkheaded attempts at satire might have been taken at face value by the immune-to-irony U.S. crowd and turned into "hip" new slogans for prime-time network TV, Budweiser and major Wall Street banking firms, had any of their tunes been the least bit palatable. To say these guys were a cut-rate Motorhead is to insult how quickly Lemmy would be able to dispense of these idiots with his facial warts alone.

The Hold Steady "Boys and Girls in America" [2006]

Got a much better title for this: "Dad and His Alcoholic Buddies Are Making a Huge Mistake Taking All Those Springsteen Albums to Heart." The Hold Steady are like college profs who pretend to be the E Street Band on the occasional Friday night at the local watering hole; their students show up and everyone has a harmless laugh... that is, until the group starts taking itself way too seriously and writes its own tunes, at which time the kids realize the joke's over and things have gotten very sad very fast. For The Hold Steady, though, it was just the beginning; "Boys and Girls in America" isn't even their first album -- yes, somebody for some reason let them make more than one of these. Having a better sense of humor than Graham Parker (hey -- call The Hold Steady "Graham Parker & the Humour"!) means about as much as saying you dress better than Jack Johnson. And just because your vocal delivery is overtly verbose and you dabbled in some drugs once upon a time, that doesn't make you Phil Lynott (and honestly, how much of a compliment would it be if you were?). These guys sound like Bill Cosby on mushrooms fronting the Counting Crows, writing endless vignettes about outdoor rock festivals for some reason. In a suitably hokey Weird Al context it might even have worked, but these guys' E Street pretense is a dead end with a brick wall.

Happy Mondays "Pills 'n Thrills and Bellyaches" [1990]

The Manchester rave scene produced easily the most boringly repetitive dance music of all time, and the pathetically atonal Happy Mondays were at the top of the slag heap. (Clearly, no rock sub-genre more desperately needed all the drugs they took.) On "Pills 'n Thrills and Bellyaches" they pulverize their two-chord vamps into snortable dust (that turns out to be mostly dirt) while Shaun Ryder neither can sing nor rap nor generate anything comprehensible but still makes a lot of noise with his fart-gun of a voice. And I don't care if he's so far whacked out he's beyond control -- even that chickenshit felon Jim Morrison could manage to carry a tune at least as far as the end of the stage, and he was blotto 24-7. Overall, Happy Mondays are a sort of hybrid between indie suckmeisters Dinosaur Jr and pastey whiteboy approximations of James Brown grooves. As progenitors of the "Madchester" scene, it may be the first time in history a musical style's barriers to entry consisted of an actual hole in the ground. Thus, stumbling into the marketplace were plenty of other joke-of-a-bands, like the Stone Roses and Charlatans UK. Key here is probably that these bands aren't from anywhere you could call worldly; Manchester is in the middle of fucking nowhere, and sheep make horrible music critics -- especially ones who take a lot of ex.