Here at The Afterword we pride ourselves on our good taste, our fine musical ears and on the fact that we just know what’s what.
But just as yin needs his yang, as light needs darkness, as God needs Satan, so we need to know what’s bad just so that we know what is good.
Amongst this small group of people, in this unregarded corner of the internet, I am vaguely known for my hatred of U2. The truth is, I don’t hate them because they are terrible, my hatred is there because they are mediocre, a far worse crime than being terrible, especially if this crime is abetted by strange popularity amongst the public at large. See also Adele and Ed Sheeran. Most things are terrible because they are mediocre and popular.
But can we define and recognise what is actually terrible? So terrible it acquires a strange grandeur? Provoking a realisation in the listener that only an actual genius could be this uniquely terrible?
I would say that Jim Morrison’s “Lament For My Cock” falls into this category wholeheartedly. It’s shockingly awful, from his unspeakable “poetry” album An American Prayer, which many years ago I paid actual money for in a shop but quickly got rid of. I wish I’d kept it now.
This is not “so bad it’s good.” That category does not actually exist because if something is good it is by default not bad.
This is terrible. Genius.
Are there other examples?
Deary me…….The remaining members of The Doors should be held accountable for releasing that….One thought though, there used to be a thing called “Wyatting” whereby you would walk into a pub and put on he very worst track on the jukebox to watch the punter’s reaction. I would love to do this with Jim’s horrible lament.
Considering how great Forever Changes by Love is it has to be said that Arthur Lee came out with some complete shit too. I remember a solo album he released that I too jettisoned pretty quickly. There was one track with the repeated chorus ‘Oh what a dish, she smelled just like a fish’ .
Truly awful.
POST THIS RIGHT AWAY! Or it does not exist…
@ganglesprocket. Took a while to find but your wish is my command. Perversely hearing it now, it isn’t as bad as I remembered it to be:
“Hamburger Breath Stinkfinker”
Wow. I think I need to listen to this in a flotation chamber to do it justice!
This is ASTONISHING! And look at that cover!
Steve, this is an authentic forgotten CLASSIC! And it’s also AWFUL.
THE THREAD OF SHITE has been justified just by allowing me to hear this amazing thing. Thank you for posting.
This is where we should start. Surely a gold standard and yes it is unutterably awful and strangely compelling. Grandeur maybe a step to far though.
@Bargepole is on backing vocals!
Dear God. The humanity of it all…
Now that takes me back! It was on one of those K-Tel albums we always got for Christmas. Disco Fever I think. The album was full of rubbish, but it had one of my favourite songs on it, Silver Lady by David Soul.
I’ve had enough. Why spend time espousing about mediocrity when you should be (not you Paul Wad, this thread in general) celebrating the brilliant music there is out there.
The times we live in and people have to moan, groan and drone on about shite.
For the fun of it?
Think you might have missed the point here…
In that case, enjoy!
I don’t usually recall shite. I immediately forget it.
This is the one exception.
Ok I’m thinking about the epic grandeur and utter seriousness of Jim and little Jim. I think the songwriters behind Joy knew it was a shite novelty hit (it is). But this. It’s EPIC GRANDEUR and UTTER SERIOUSNESS alright:
I hate to say this, but this strikes me as actually good. Did Toploader cover this? Or is it the other way round? This is prime camp joy and is therefore unwelcome on THE THREAD OF SHITE.
You;re just a sucker for a flute solo.
The song was a significant US hit in 1972 by a group named King Harvest, who were a bunch of ex-pats living in Paris. Even then it was a cover, as it had been written by the brother of a King Harvest member, and recorded by his group, a couple of years earlier.
I became aware of Mathilde Santing in the days before Spotify and enthusiastically bought a few albums. The first one, however, well, judge for yourself. Production by Bontempi.
This is, quite special, indeed.
For many of us (me), thread like this is catnip, as it allows grandiose dismissals of those articles of faith held dear by others. In truth, I am more kindly disposed to those pitiful enough to kneel at the altars of excrement than I might seem. More to be pitied than despised, you know, all of that. So, who, Matthew, will it be tonight? Do you know, I think it may be the Jim-dissers? Because they fail to appreciate the full glory of his muse? Nah, Lament for My Cock, a gap in my aquaintance if truth be told, is likely just the load of old, um, cock it sounds, along with Horse Latitudes and all the other bilge he spewed in spoken word. But my wrath is that the other three, a glorious drummer, an eloquent guitarist and a magnificent keyboardist when behind him, without him were just an empty shallow racket. Jimbo was shite without his band, but they were shitier still without him.
Ok no camp. Dreadful production. The desire for fame so desperate you can smell it, lowest common demoninator in every aspect going. This really does offend the ears:
I think this is worse but maybe I’m biased as I spent hours on a scaffold tower in the Music Machine in Camden running the 16mm projection you can see for a few seconds in the video.
Oh indeed they were poor. But The Sun loved printing whatever gubbins Wendy James said, so there was actual method to their crapness. And Elvis Costello dug them.
Sadly I have to chuck them in the bin of “acceptable”
NOT SHITE. I HAVE SPOKEN!
Seen ’em live (twice).
First time they were short of material and played I Want Your Love 3 times.
Next time was pure pop fun.
Not really Shite (but not exactly “Classic” either)
This is not a million miles away from World Shut your Mouth by Julian Cope
A pretty shite tune and I do love the drude.
Nah, not having that. WSYM is a singalong belter.
And here’s thetrifecta:
I like this one. It’s fun, throwaway pop.
She’s supporting the Psychadelic Furs later this year. I have no idea what to expect.
I’d never heard it before now – it’s brill!
What is that dickpole on the drums doing with his arms???
Except…I Want Your Love is an absolute banger. At that point in the 80s there were a lot of music critics who were more than happy to sneer at 70s pop (especially if it tended to the glam) because it didn’t fit with their preconceptions about the clash and thé ramones. So any band that clearly liked T Rex were always going to get a kicking. So it proved.
I’m sure I’ve seen some admiration expressed here in the past for the late experimental guitarist Derek Bailey.
I am not in that number. His avant-garde improvisations I cannot fathom and actively dislike.
I’ve never heard play a tune end to end, but to be fair it does seem that he is a capable player. He’s hitting some precise harmonics here, he knows scales and chords yada yada yada
But it’s fucking awful. He annoys me because he sounds like me, and I’m shite on the guitar.
He’s great, inee? At his best with David Sylvian singing his “tunes”.
He sort of lost the plot for a while there…hopefully he’s now on his way to a complete recovery
This has a certain Skip Spence style charm which redeems it a bit more than I’d like.
Which is not the same as “being good” But I think David Sylvain is being deliberately bad here, rather than bad bad. My suspicions are raised folks and it’s the only reason that this does not cut the shite mustard I demand.
Fuck. That’s genuinely appalling. I am genuinely wondering if it’s worse than the OP. It actually might be.
Free-jazzer Paul Dunmall – “Solo Bagpipes”
That actually made me laugh..file under “unintentional comedy music”
Comments are disabled for that video on YouTube. Can’t think why.
It’s three kittens having a fight on a piano keyboard, then transposed for guitar, isn’t it?
I would occasionally listen to Jazz on Three on Radio 3, and material like this would occasionally pop up. One act, who I forget the name of, I likened to Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band falling down a stairwell. Another featured someone playing a banjo whilst hitting it with sticks, whilst someone else did something that sounded illegal to an accordion.
Greeeat!
What the actual fuck? Is there an audience for this? I’ve made better tunes getting my guitar out of its case.
I think we don’t really need a thread. There is nothing sh*tter than this and there never will be:
I humbly disagree. This is merely a sixties band being mediocre in the 80s and selling a shit ton of records. While the song is rubbish, I simply don’t accept that it comes close to ascending the Everest of shite that is “Lament For My Cock.”
I just don’t begrudge a large payday for Grace Slick and co. I mean, they were actually good once, then they “went shite” got paid, then fucked off. But not before “Nothin’s Gonna Stop Us Now” And is that really better than “We Built This City”?
Well paid mediocrity ain’t gonna cut it on this thread folks. TRY AGAIN!
I do begrudge a large pay day, and this is not mediocrity it is much much worse than that. And as it is the worst record ever made then Nothing is Gonna Stop Us by definition must be better
I’m sorry but dai is right – the song is resolutely, wall-to-wall, 100%, no-holds-barred shit. It’s really, really shit no matter what context one spins. Even if it was created by a one-day-old baby it’s still shit. Even if was recorded under sniper fire in war-torn Bosnia, it’s still shit.
I listened open-mouthed when I first heard it thinking it was a try-hard euroband trying to copy The Thompson Twins. When I learned it was Starship that made it worse because the slurry pouring out of my radio was intentionally bad.
I agree. It’s unadulterated, satanic diarrhoea.
Yes that is truly terrible…..yet it is used by American Fm stations to show how “Rawk” they are…..which says a lot about the state of commercial radio
I am with @dai too on this one. Have always loathed this song. Crap tune, awful guitar, terrible words – no redeeming factors whatsoever.
Total shite.
Re: “Crap tune, awful guitar, terrible words”
And let us remember, Afterworders, that the words for Starship’s “We Built This City” were written by none other than Bernie Taupin. Oh yes. That Bernie Taupin.
Those lyrics ….. Yikes! …. they’re not exactly of the same standard as “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” or “Sweet Painted Lady”, are they?
Bernie has form though….lots of crap lyrics sprinkled throughout his career
“If I was a sculptor, but then again no …”
I have no problem with this song. There are loads worse
And WH*RE DID THOSE *STER*SKS COME FR*M?
C*WARDS! FL*BB*RTYG*BB*TS!
If the word Sh*te offends you, I have a m*lkshake with your n*me on it pe*ple.
🙂
Very good!
I apologise for this in advance. This was my go-to for Wyatting back in early 80s St Albans. Neil from the Young Ones, B side to Hole In My Shoe, Hurdy Gurdy Mushroom Man. Very deliberately very very bad.
He was also complicit in the whole “Bad News” thing.
They actually actually had a proper slot at the Donington festival in 1986.
It was toe curling.
Is it wrong to admit owning a copy of Neil’s Heavy Concept Album (on both vinyl and CD).
And almost putting his cover of My White Bicycle on the recent Afterword CD Swap offering.
And owning both Bad News albums.
And seeing Bad News at Donnington, at the Reading Festival, and at Hammersmith Odeon
?
(Did I just say that?)
Hole in my shoe was the fifth single I purchased and so I know, at a push, every word to Hurdy gurdy mushroom man. The B side of the first single I bought was, however, SHITE.
O Sanity
This is the tune (!) I used to reach for when it was time for my friends to leave the hospitality of my teenage home. No further hints were required…
I love that Anton Corbijn photo of the Good Captain in the Mojave Desert.
Kylie Minogue uncovers the latent 80s synth grooves in ‘Help’. Backing dancers express the existential anxiety John Lennon was feeling:
Did I mention the rap?
Oh man! That rapper is visibly dying inside! He wants to be anywhere but in front of thousands of people rapping to a slap-bass cover of help sung by Kylie! I hate to say this but existential anxiety is pouring out of this, unintentionally perhaps, but it’s there.
I was thinking simply NOT SHITE till the rapping began and it SOARED LIKE SHITE CARVED INTO THE SHAPE OF AN EAGLE FIRED FROM A CATAPULT, ALSO MADE OF SHITE.
The THREAD OF SHITE comes up trumps again, good work sir.
I am too tired to think of something terrible from some artist I respect, so, I will choose one of those musicians who would do an interprétation of some famous pièces of music and pack it up in an album, lp or cassette transforming it in some kind of muzak. A french singer called him “le Mozart du Walkman”. At the time, anyone without a knowledge of classical music would show of its taste by playing those fragments.
Once at a relative’s place, when every cassettes were played , I put this cassette as a background music. In the castle’s garden , close to the swimming pool, I suddenly felt transported in a lift or in a medium-sized supermarket.
Ones get used to everything, then, at the end of the cassette came mr clayderman’s own composition I couldn’t describe it well at the time, but thanks to Father Ted I have a good exemple, it reminds me of a variation of “My lovely horse”, but more kitsch. Ping pong under the trees will stay in my unmusical hell together with chili con carne by this choir that calls Itself a group.
I very nearly became a 6 o’clock News item about an airline passenger going berserk because of him. Singapore Airlines (my favourite still), on the tarmac, delayed at the gate, the same god-awful Clayderman track played on repeat for about 20 minutes. I was ranting at this poor hostess and looking like a complete loony.
Needless to say, I have never gone anywhere since on a plane without a device containing Lou Reed’s New York album. Very, very seriously.
More kérosène to your forest fire:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=950.0
That is quite indescribable. I will be honest, I lasted maybe a minute.
Shite is expressively more shitey if it plops from a golden buttock, viz Starship above. This has way way more stench than that, as, despite the idea being average and the execution OK, it is the joke that spins it into the shitosphere. (Reader, I laughed when I heard about it, smiled as I heard it, told a couple of people about it, played it to them and then, embarrassedly, smelt the error of my ways.)
He hasn’t been to Bonn, though.
There’s some serious rubber on the runway at 3.23…
The thing is, I love the Hank Snow song. And I heard some dude at the Edinburgh festival do this once but using only the names of cities in Asia. It was quite a thing to hear.
This is meh, but it’s not SHITE.
A friend had moved to Palmers Green in north London, so one evening I and a few others went up to see him.
We went to his local, which was very much a suburban pub, with a very white, middle aged, middle class clientele. Nonetheless it had the novelty of a video jukebox.
I was browsing the contents, when I spotted this was available. I had the album Jugula, so I knew the song was pretty bad. I didn’t know until that moment that a video existed, so despite knowledge of how bad it was I had to play it. As the full horror was revealed, I don’t think anyone dropped their pint, once awareness of it seeped into the collective consciousness, but for half a minute or so jaws dropped and there was a stunned silence.
Roy Harper, with Jimmy Page, presents Advertisement. (The live footage was taken from a gig in Battersea Park, which I was at – I haven’t been able to spot myself in the crowd shots, but it would have been nicely symmetrical if I could have been seen both on the video and there in the pub).
BLOODY FLAMING NORA!
That is just appalling. It’s something that 14 year olds drunk on cider for the first time would think was amazing and literally anyone else with ears would just faint with horror. But featuring the Kashmir hitmaker? Dear God! My wife almost came down the aisle to Kashmir you know. The sheer horror of this makes me glad she didn’t.
This may have stolen the thread thanks to the proximity of Page. Shite from a golden buttock indeed.
Watching the infamous Page/Harper/Mark Ellen item from Whistle Test at the age of 12 made me see, having been too young at the time, the necessity for punk rock.
Ooh, you little beggars…there are too many to mention.
Honourable mentions must go to the following songs:
More than Words by Extreme: long-haired, sixth-form rubbish. Foul harmonies and a teenage boy’s idea of romance: “Well, if you actually did like me, you’d sleep with me.” Run, dear lady, run. Makes you want to burn your stereo.
MOR by Blur: little more than a limp cover of Boys Keep Swinging by David Bowie, but without crediting him. My mum, who isn’t even a Bowie fan, noticed the blatant rip-off. This song does not need to exist.
The Only Thing that Looks Good On Me is You by Bryan Adams: I think he’s done some good songs, but this one actually contains the lines: “Yes, it’s you/it could only be you/nobody else will ever do/yeah, baby, it’s you that I stick to/Yeah, we stick like glue.” Lyrics by Little Acorns Nursery Group, ages 2-5.
What did Bill Bailey say about the “You know it’s true/Everything I do/I do it for you/And I will be true to you…”etc lyrics?
Could easily do better with a 4 pack of Stella and a rhyming dictionary.
MOR is now co-credited to Bowie I believe
Now I’m a die-hard remainer, but our continental cousins do have form in this area. Italians this lot are apparently. The soundtrack of a million pools and campsites.
You BASTARD.
This has triggered me. Too many shite holidays. Too many occasions drinking fishbowls full of some horrendous cocktail called something like “I Suck Your Cock” in Falaraki or Magaluf or similar because I thought it would be funny to get a mate to ask for that from a bar man.
My early twenties were awful. They were like this. I am amazed I am in my forties, and indeed married.
This is a deep, deep well my friend. I broke you in easy, now let’s really find out what’s down there… while in the UK this is chiefly heard at parties for the under-7’s as a man in a smelly monkey suit urges everyone to dance along, on the continent in summer it’s as inescapable as Japanese knotweed.
And following up on @retropath2‘s comments about the golden buttock dropping a steaming one. Here’s the Dee Dee Ramone rap single you never ever want to hear again:
Yeah, that’s a good shout, moles.
Absolutely abysmal.
I was tempted to post the Brian Wilson rap song (promo only) I know of, but it probably falls under the ‘poor care of the vulnerable’ rather than the more straightforward shite criteria.
If Bobcat Goldthwaite from Police Academy tried to rap, it would sound like this.
VERY good shout.
TOTAL SHITE.
I realised not a long ago that the real reason I could never like U2 is that they take themselves far to fecking seriously. They don’t have an ounce of fun in them. Ffs lighten up guys.
Check out their appearance on Graham Norton, someone who is usually guaranteed to get anyone relaxed, they’re vibe is that of a stagnant pond.
Only 3 words required for the ultimate pile of utter shite masquerading as music.
Manic Street Preachers.
Ooo … Each to their own
The Manics debut album was a triumph of hype over substance (with added 6th Form Poetry), and by the second they looked like they lost there way. The Holy Bible is not their best album (but is still darn fine). After Richey Edwards, they softened their sound in pursuit of commercial success (and got it).
There’s that mid-period when the albums were “OK” – I really wanted them to be better.
Since Send Away The Tigers, I think they have started to consistently deliver.
My view: Not Shite
I quite like that one that goes “REPEAT AFTER ME FUCK QUEEN AND COUNTRY” because listening to it made me look all hard and dangerous.
So NOT SHITE
I actually like Generation Terrorists.
I first had it on cassette, and the amount of time I spent listening to it while depositing 10p coins into either Star Force or Legendary Warrior…
There’s a reason second class degrees have two divisions, and in my case it was arcade games. Arcade Games and Beer. Arcade Games and Beer and Football.
Absolute nonsense, The Holy Bible is one of the greatest albums ever made, Everything Must Go is awesome and they have had a remarkably consistent career over more than 25 years.
If you don’t like this, you don’t like great music:
I love great music. That isn’t great music. It’s their default: huge production used to cover the complete lack of tune and melody. Definitively SHITE.
Well, each to their own. To my ears that is a wonderful tune.
They just used the same trick as Simple Minds around the time of Sparkle In The Rain. All production, no song. Still, if you enjoy it, then carry on doing so.
Oh but surely you like the song… Nope, can’t think of one.
Bollocks…they are marvellous.
The Manics are good as well!
Mediocre for decades, not shite enough
While they are one of the paradigmatic greatest hits bands – bar This Is My Truth that is not the same as
Shite
Shite is an easy one to fall back on – often it comes down to “stuff I don’t like”.
For me that would be: Ed Sherran, Sam Smith, any of those X Factor-ish singers that think getting 200 notes into a single phrase is what makes a record, Dance Music, Dub Step, Contemporary R&B (as wkipedia calls it).
All this stuff shifts units, and is therefore not shite to someone
(I’m still not convinced by Talent Show warblers)
Having said that …
Thinking about my past listening enthusiasms, I would be hard pushed to defend:
Hardcore Thrash Metal (Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower, Extreme Noise Terror …) – what was I thinking?
But
Maroon 5 – awfully bland, don’t you think
I attempted a definition of SHITE in the OP.
I am also a man who saw Napalm Death, Nuclear Assault, Kreator, Lawnmower Deth, even fucking Xentrix. I also used to have a tape of the hellish piece of shite “Speak English Or Die” by S.O.D.
I cannot defend any of this.
I saw Xentrix too. Why?
Onslaught was another retrospective “Why?”
Still sometimes listen to Lawnmower Deth – but Metal Duck on t’other side of that debut is complete ollocks
“Watch out Grandma here comes a lawnmower” for some reason still makes me laugh.
I read something about when Extreme Noise Terror teamed up with KLF for the Brits, the guitarist was having difficulty remembering the chords to 3AM Eternal.
Chords? Don’t remember many of them in ENT
Bon Jovi – can’t be doing with all that pretty boy Heavy Metal/Hard Rock stuff
See also Poison – Unskinny Bop really is incomparable tosh
… and then I admit to buying and wilfully continuing to own albums by White Lion, Great White, Warrant, and other Hair Metallers
But when I was a teenager in the eighties you had to pretend to like them. Because for some reason, girls who didn’t like chart music all seemed to like them. And usually girls get this stuff right. So I decree hair metal as NOT SHITE even though I never got it at all.
Ok, what about David Cassidy, The Bay City Rollers and The Osmonds? Girls didn’t do so well there. Specially my little sister.
“only an actual genius could be this uniquely terrible”…
Going out on the ledge here a bit…
I genuinely hate Mariah Carey and Whitney. They’re bad for music.
Technically, I grant you, wonderful. But absolutely no passion or feeling or warmth into their songs. It’s all technique and melisma. They are directly responsible for – and I will never forgive them for this – American Idol, BGT etc etc.
Better version of “I will always love you”? Well, not fucking Whitney’s, that for sure. None of the insecurity in Dolly’s. And Bobbie Gentry can outsing both of them. (OK, not difficult since Whitney probably has a dry voice now, but you get my point)
I’m totes agree, can’t imagine either of them ever pleasing my ears. But… I watched the documentary about Whitney last year and while it didn’t make much of an impression on me (I can barely remember anything about it apart from the facts we all know) it did introduce me to her mother’s group, The Sweet Inspirations, and particularly this amazingly brilliant song (shouldn’t be on this thread at all, but any excuse etc). I’ve probably played it most days since first hearing it. Just knocks me out with its superbness.
This. Absolutely. The curse of melisma
Melisma is not in itself “a bad thing” – in moderation it can be undoubtedly impressive. But since Whitney’s enormo-hit and (moreover) the advent of Maria , its become the modern gauge of “proper” soul singing for a generation. Witness any TV talent show…the audience always go knee-jerk nuts at any note held and mucked around with for more than two seconds.
Whitney was a very fine talent but with a generally poor choice of material. But I find Maria deeply irritating and self-indulgent to the point of being unlistenable.
Clearly Coldplay. The colour beige in audio form: pedestrian , insipid, mannered mid-paced plod so mediocre that it was easy to forget some songs even while they were in progress. They continue to be offensively inoffensive, not bad as such, but almost Zelig-like in their transience, with tunes that slip away from
You almost as you hear them, They did do a good job playing the Paralympics to be scrupulously fair, so they do get a bit of credit.
But are they not just mind-bendingly average. Whereas this – if you can make it to end of the song you deserve a medal:
You bastard!
That’s something that had been erased from my memory. I recognised neither the bandname nor the song title.
Then 15 seconds, like a zombie from the grave, it’s back. The horror, the horror.😖😡😱😤
Unfair! It’s a mid 70’s Eurovision Song Contest winner. And it’s Dutch. There’s much, much worse than this. What do you expect? It may not be “Waterloo”, but then neither is it “Save All Your Kisses For Me.”
As covered by the otherwise great Edwyn Collins
But you get a bit of the grandstand theme tune for free. So no, disqualified!
“I Want To Break Free” by Queen is SHITE. Freddies voice set at peak screech. Brian May’s guitar interlude so fucking twee and grating. The video is supposed to funny? Just awful. I’m not Queens biggest fan, it’s just Freddies voice I can’t get past but I accept their appeal and there are a couple of absolute bangers. IWTBF must therefore have been a giant piss take. Awful no redeeming features at all. SHITE. I don’t need to post it because you’ve all heard it at least once open mouthed and subsequently reached for the off button surely…..
Excellent inoffensive pop song. I like it.
I’m agree with Davide. Have always loathed that awful guitar break
The very essence of SHITE:
Well, you might remember Andre Carilho: