I was having a conversation a few days ago about music. It started off with the usual 'who do you like' and then moved on to something a little more interesting. What albums have you owned that you're a little ashamed to admit now? What quetionable music choices did you shell out good money for? What do you still have in your collection that you'd rather get caught listening to? I'm going to exclude single songs that have been downloaded, unless you happened to download the entire album. If it makes you feel better, a friend of mine actually admitted to have owned not one, but two Vanilla Ice cds (I was unaware there was another album). So here's some of my gems....
Embarassing music I once owned
House of Pain (we all loved Jump Around)
Richard Marx
Hootie and Blowfish
Music I still own and listen to occasionally
Falco's Greatest Hits (beacuse Rock me Amadeus and Der Kommisar are so much better in the original German)
Daft Punk
Every Metallica album (yep. All of them. Even ReLoad. And I still listen to them.)
Garth Brooks - No Fences
Romeo & Juliet Soundtrack
Blood Hound Gang (One Feirce Beer Coaster and Hooray for Boobies)
Skidrow
Eminem - Eminem Show
8 Mile Soundtrack
a hole bunch of Ultravox (and I listen to that a lot too)
Butt Boy - now here's a cd with a story behind it. Actually, if you can get past the name, it's actually some good newage/trance music. Good for background music. Although it' s a little embarrassing explaining to people why you own something called Butt Boy.
3 comments:
That's a great discussion question!
Most embarassing:
Culture Club - Colour by Numbers and Waking Up With the House On Fire. I can't believe I just admitted that.
Duran Duran - Seven and The Ragged Tiger and Arena (LIVE). You know, I remember these guys being really good. Then I listened to Seven and the Ragged Tiger last year - what a bunch of gosa.
That same stupid Richard Marx album.
Chicago 17 - Eeeeewwww. What the hell was I thinking.
John Denver's Greatest Hits - Ok, this was for a woman. And not the one I'm married to right now. Aside from a fondness for "grandma's feather bed" (The Muppets version ROCKED!), it was a damn fool thing to do.
Music I still own and Occasionally listen to:
Dokken - Under Lock and Key
Ratt - Out of the Cellar
Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
Prince - Purple Rain & 1999
Billy Joel - Nylon Curtain
We need to get Yomper to give us HIS list!
Mule
This is more difficult for me to answer than you may expect. The first two bands I got into were Kiss and AC/DC; since I was in kindergarten Kiss was understandable, and AC/DC just plain showed good taste on my part. Also, pretty much all music I found embarassing was purged from my collection for the low low price of $1.50 trade-in per album or cassette. (Thanks for the rip-off, Pure Pop!) But there's still a few gems that stick out in my dusty memory:
Saturday Night Fever soundtrack - Yep, I owned this one back in the days of polyester and coke spoons. (Not that I had either. I was 7.) Double vinyl with the gatefold sleve and all that. Although thoroughly embarassing, this was a *killer* late-night headphone album, back in the days of the over-ear 5-pound 'phones that made your ears sweat profusely. Last seen these albums (and the one other disco album I owned--some compilation with YMCA and Macho Man being the only songs I remember) were spitting chunks of themselves in all directions while rolling at high speed down Main St. in Enosburg. I perfected my technique for disposing of unwanted records from a 2nd story window that day. It's a lost art.
The Eagles--The Long Run - This came to me at Christmastime from an uncle who didn't always know what I liked for music, so he tended to buy me whatever was popular. While not an especially bad album, it's the fuckin' Eagles, man! Ack! That same uncle also gave me a Merle Haggard record, but I never really warmed up to it.
Motley Crue--Theatre of Pain - I fell hairspray-over-spandex for the Crue when Shout At the Devil came out, back in a time when that was considered a pretty heavy record. I tried very hard to like Theatre, played it a bunch of times on my crappy little off-brand Walkman, but it was pure weakness, and in my heart I knew it. Pure Pop took it off my hands and I was $1.50 closer to a Celtic Frost import.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood--Welcome to the Pleasuredome - Frankie say snoodling: hide yourself! Had this on cassette, and it was a bit of a standout in a collection full of Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, and Judas Priest. (OK, not so much of a standout from Priest now, but it was the '80s then and nobody even *cosidered* that Rob Halford might be gay.) The title track, Relax, Two Tribes, and War are great early '80s pop, but the rest of the album was pure crap; it sounded like a bunch of very obviously gay men forced by their record label to churn out weak filler. They did a version of "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?". Need I say more? At least I didn't have a collection of the 12" dance mixes. That was my friend Dwayne, who also sported a jacket covered with "Frankie say..." pins. Ah, junior high!
Those albums and tapes are all dead and gone. There's not much in my current collection to embarass me, except...
Metallica--Metallica - An embarassment for obvious reasons. What's even more embarassing is that I also have a large collection of EPs and CD singles from that era of Metallica, so anyone looking through my CD collection would think that I really love that time in the band's history. Why I thought I needed to pay $12 for a demo recording of "Wherever I May Roam" is totally beyond me.
Styx--anything - I have Paradise Theater and some greatest hits compilation on CD. I used to have The Grand Illusion and Killroy Was Here on vinyl. The schmaltz and cheese are undeniable (As a diabetic I cannot listen to "Babe".), but so is the fact that these guys could rock when they wanted to. They take me back to the mid-to-late '70s and expanding my music collection via the Columbia House Record Club. How can I sell a CD that has "Renegade" on it for $1.50?
Oh, two more I forgot to mention:
I wore out a copy of "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. In truth, this was a pretty good album. "Beat it" even feratured Eddie Van Halen playing lead guitar. But it is Michael "would you like to touch my monkey?" Jackson, we're talking about here.
I also had a copy of Journey's "Frontiers". Rife with tripe like "send her my love", "faithfully" and "separate ways" this album was one of my early 80's favorites. Now it's only saving grace is that guitarist Neil Schon didn't suck. Except when he did the album "Schon and Hammar" with Miami Vice Soundtrack king Jan Hammar.
Oh, and I had Theatre of Pain, too. While no Shout at the Devil it was still better than Girls, Girls, Girls.
Mule
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