Everybody’s up in arms about this list of One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately. Personally I find it pretty funny. I love that U2’s The Joshua Tree is at #2. “Oh, to be earnest, politically correct, Christian, and filthy rich. It’s been 15 years since the birth of this critical and popular favorite, and U2-worship still hasn’t been eradicated. When will it stop? When you do the right thing and retire this pompous collection of religious rock songs, that’s when.” HA! Anyway, I’ve got eleven of these, and I pretty much agree with his assessments. At any rate, I hardly ever listen to them, with the exception of REM’s “Out of Time”. And I can’t even argue with his criticism of that; the rap with KRS-ONE was heinous. How many have you got? Do you cherish these albums, or are you now embarrassed that you bought them in the first place?
adam
July 22, 2002 — 10:45 am
Hello, from a fellow Domer. I googled ‘Notre Dame weblog’ and ended up surfing to you. and that list…man, where are all the boybands??
Kris
July 22, 2002 — 11:16 am
Hi Adam! Nice to meet you. I’ve been arguing about this list on lots of people’s sites. Basically, I don’t think he was trying to come up with the “100 Worst Albums EVER!” or anything. It’s more like, “these are the albums everybody has in their collections because they think they should, even though they never listen to them anymore”. Which I think is pretty much spot on. I mean, yeah, I partied to the Offspring in college, but who the hell is going to listen to them afterwards? 🙂
Kris
July 22, 2002 — 11:19 am
Now that I’ve read your bio… Wow, another Hoosier/Domer film major! It’s like lookin’ in a mirror, buddy. Be sure and take Jil Godmilow’s “History of Documentary Film” (if she’s still teaching it). Probably the best class I took there.
Dan
July 22, 2002 — 2:11 pm
I have an amazing 14 of those albums. I few of them I don’t really listen to, but a good 10 of them are comfortably in my iPod rotation. Five or six of those would definitely get replaced if I ever lost them. The ones I owned are all seem to be the ones that got the most shallow, profanity-laced blurbs possible so I’m not exactly kicking myself (see #91 Sublime, #35 Hello Nasty.) I experienced the same frat-boy music abuse phenomenon that these folk hate so much, but you can’t let that go to your head. You can’t let the others take the music away from you. The one blurb that really bugged me was the trashing of Beck (#19 Midnite Vultures). “Indie set” fascism is the plague of the “indie set.”
TD
July 22, 2002 — 4:37 pm
Oh YEAH, well get this f-ing Sh*t – I’ve got TWENTY FIVE! (I have a lot of cds as a former member of BMG, however 🙂 ) I don’t think this list is that crazy, I can see his points on quite a few. Unfortunately for me, I am a rap fan (Beasties being my #1 favorite), so about ten albums were immediately compiled to my list. I believe that he is wrong about them, but pretty darn right on about some. Although, you know, it’s funny- quite a few albums he mentioned I didn’t really care for at the time they came out/liked them okay, but now view them as milestones or music-changing, and I wouldn’t put them on the list by a longshot (see: Nevermind/Nirvana, Tori Amos, etc.). I laughed out loud at No Doubt, though- they’re fine, but what an accurate call.
TD
July 22, 2002 — 4:39 pm
Oh, and I gotta second Adam and Dan – Dan, yes, you can’t NOT like something because many masses like it; Adam, where ARE the boy bands? This guy picked things he knew that would piss people off. I mean, where’s Manilow or like, Milli-V?
Kris
July 22, 2002 — 5:46 pm
But nobody actually HAS that crap, TD! I think he was trying to point out the ones we all have, mostly because of stuff like BMG. That’s how I got all mine anyway. And I don’t think he’s dissing on people that actually like this stuff. It’s more like people that just own it because they think they should own it. I’ll confess – I only bought Sarah McLachlan’s albums because every other girl in the dorm had them. Sure, she’s good and I listened to them occasionally, but I haven’t cracked those suckers out in months. Ditto with the No Doubt… and Oasis… and Macy Gray. *shudder* And you should’ve seen the U2 worship that went on at ND, just because they’re Irish. So are the frickin’ Pogues, and they’re ten times better! Argh. See, the music industry thinks people aren’t buying albums because we’re stealing them all off the Internet, when in reality folks like me have sworn off buying them because we inevitably realize that all the ones we buy are CRAP! I swear, I will not buy anymore CDs unless the “fad” for the artist is over and I know I’ll listen to them for more than one song.