Our First Class:
1. Sting “All This Time”
I have to admit, it seemed good enough; A live Sting CD featuring a few classics from Sting’s solo career and classics from The Police. The original concept was redundant, but catchy; Get together a small studio crowd of adoring fans, have Sting play a rocking show of classic hits, and release a live CD of it. Then, on September 11th, 2001 a bunch of hijackers ruined the concept. Killing thousands, traumatizing millions, and ruining the concept of January-only Super Bowl’s, the events of September 11th changed the album concept completely. Well, almost. I think Sting’s conversation with his PR director went something like this: “Let’s just cancel the gig” “But you can’t, Sting…..There are thousands of dollars, I mean people, at stake here…. “ So, unfortunately, the show went on. But, with a HUGE CONCEPT OVERHAUL! “Let’s do everything exactly the same: (see above)
Get together a small studio crowd of adoring fans, have Sting play a rocking show of classic hits, and release a live CD of it
But, let’s just edit out the word “rocking” and replace it with “morbid”, and replace the phrase “adoring fans” with “funeral attendees”.
PRESTO! You now have perhaps the “Worst Live CD Ever”. Someone should have called the paramedics in after Roxanne, in case anybody fainted from lack of excitement. One of amazon.com’s top 500 reviewer’s stated that this album was “Profoundly Influenced By The Day's Tragedy”. I was proudly influenced by the tragedy of this CD also. I traded it in to folks at FYE. Those people gave me $4 in store credit for it. suckers!
2. Counting Crows “Across A Wire: Live in New York”
This is the album that you buy, and you think “I should know better than to do this, but…..”….And you know how that one ends. I distinctly remember this purchase. I had just got it bad for two Counting Crows songs…”Hangin’ Around” and “A Long December”. I went to Wal-Mart (which was undoubtedly my first mistake) and decided to see which albums those songs were on. Well, being that Wal-Mart usually has the worst CD selection ever, they had only two Counting Crows CD’s. This CD, looking as the lesser of the two evils, had a little promise. It was a 2-disc show with one disc being a live performance on “The 10 Spot” and the other being a performance on “Storytellers”, if I remember correctly. When it comes to singing live, Adam Duritz’s singing of musical notes has a similar pattern to that of a blind man taking target practice. The performances of “A Long December” on both CD’s could make God hate music. And it was not just those performances alone, the other performances on the two CD’s were pretty much along the same lines. 3. Bon Jovi “Bounce” 4. Nirvana (Box Set) 5. Madonna “GHV2”
Let’s congratulate these honorees for their countless hours of tireless effort to bring forth to us, the listener, albums that aren’t worth the plastic they are pressed on. The uninspired performances that these albums bring have been such a huge influence on years of miserable, apathetic artists including: Henry Rollins, Sinead O’ Connor, and Amy Lee of Seether.
Sorry for not updating in so long. We'll be back. It'll be better. I'm on spring break right now (Thank God!) so, I'm going to work on things to get everything moving smoothly again.
