It's been a while since I posted something. My job has been driving pine cones up my ass, and I've been trying to get my new workspace finished which will probably never be finished at this rate. Anyway, here's some crappy albums. Unfortunately for you, most of these artists play country music. Sorry.
Kenny Parrott - Favourites
NONE of these songs are my favourites.
This is the first Kenny Parrott album I ever purchased (around 10 years ago) and I'm only getting around to it now. I've since reviewed Vol.2 and Vol.3. I think it's absurd how many people from Manitoba (the city of Brandon specifically) are willing travel to Branson Missouri, see Kenny Parrott live, and buy his crappy albums (this one is autographed. Watch me rake in the dillies when I put it up on ebay). I believe this album predates Vol.1 which makes me question Kenny's ability to count.
You know what else is crazy? Kenny's been recording albums since the mid-1980s. You'd think that each one would move him an inch closer to superstardom, but unfortunately Kenny doesn't have a ruler (nor can he count) so he's stuck playing music in Branson Hell for all of eternity.
This tape is nothing but mundane country and adult contemporary garbage. There's no stand out tracks here, but I'll let you guys have one anyway...
Listen to There's a Tear in my Beer
Travis Barre
When my kid was in grade four, he had a teacher named Mr. Barre. Imagine my joy when I found this at the thrift store! Apparently he's just an elementary school teacher by day, but he's a terrible country music artist by night. I think I would have been happier if this album was full of songs about bratty kids who smell like Cheetos. Yes, 60% of all children smell like Cheetos. If you don't believe me, just walk into an elementary school and take a whiff (and then get kicked out like the creep that you are).
On the back of the album, we see that Travis is staring longingly at the guitar's neck, hoping to nibble on it and get it in the mood to play. We also notice that it's an HDCD just in case you crave some extra bits of Travis. Also, why the hell is there a "radio version" of one of the songs on here? Who the hell would want to put this on the radio? He's not singing about fucking someone in the ass, so I don't know why there's a problem with the original version other than it being a lousy song
Listen to Grow Old With Me (the non-radio version)
Lorne Power - My Yellowknife Home
There's no power in this music. It's just wimpy imitation Newfie music with a really bad mix. The rhythm section is brought to you by Casio. I'll give the guy credit though... Nobody else wanted to write a song about Yellowknife.
Mark Prindle - Smilehouse: The Tragic Remains of an Abandoned Masterpiece
Whenever I'm working on an album that I'm reviewing on Classical Gas Emissions, I usually skim through each of the songs to make things go faster. With each of the songs on this album averaging one minute in length, I was forced to listen to it from front to back, and it's a VERY difficult listening experience.
So here's how I got this CD... Mark Prindle has a music review site where he used to review entire discographies. I sent him one album he needed to complete a discography, and to show his appreciation, he sent me a copy of this album. It made me question his level of appreciation. If you've ever heard the sound of a garbage truck emptying itself, there's no need for you to pick up this album. It is without a doubt the musical equivalence.
If my memory serves me correctly, the song titles are just the descriptive file names that Mark used on whatever piece of equipment he made the music on. Then he went back years later and wrote lyrics based on the file names. Here's a few amusing quotes...
Xylodark: "This is the song of Xylodark, Hi everybody my name is Mark"
Popviolin: "My pop plays a violin. He plays it all day! He plays it all night! He plays it for you! He plays it for me!"
President: "Assassinate the president" (looped)
60snoisx: "Let's Put The "60s Noise X" back in "Sex""
8riffs: "This song has 8 riffs and all of them stink"
Keybord: "I was typing on my keyboard. Typing an important word. Along came a bird. And yeah he dropped a turd."
Every song title has a comment in parenthesis at the end of it. Some examples are "country version", "with orchestra" and "karaoke". There's quite a few songs about violins and you get to hear the occasional nice harmony, but most of it sounds like 12 dogs vomiting at the same time.
Jack Nelson and Country Line - Recorded Live
So what could be worse than the noisy Mark Prindle album? Well, here's an album that apparently has some sort of a noise gate on it. You only get to hear the loud parts of the songs while the quiet parts are almost completely muted. It's not even a nice and clear loud sound, it's a distorted pile of muddy shit. It also doesn't help that it's country music. I find it hard to believe that these assholes said "Yes! This is a quality product! Let's release it for everyone to be annoyed by it." If I had a recording of my band that sounded this bad, I would keep it for myself and record another live show to hopefully get a better recording. My only guess as to why this thing sounds the way it does is that there was a bunch of hum, hiss, or crackling in the recording, and they filtered the piss out of it to make it sound "better". They should have filtered the whole goddam thing and threw the master recording in the trash.
Well, that was fun! I'm thinking of doing another entry on recorded records fairly soon. I've been finding a ton of them lately, and I'm curious to see what kind of ancient recordings are on them. However, I also haven't done any knock-off albums lately, so perhaps I should put that in my sights. Be back soon!
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