"Nickel" is to "back" as "Suck" is to "ass"
Word Magazine recently published the results of a survey to determine the worst band of all time. The winner by a landslide was Nickelback who received 19.8% of the vote, followed by Lighthouse Family with 14.3%. I’ve never even heard of Ligthouse Family, but I go out of my way to avoid listening to horrible music whenever I can. Sometimes, though, it’s impossible.
Today, for instance, I was in a grocery store that was playing the local AM radio station and a Nickelback song came on, confirming that Nickelback are indeed the audio equivalent of rancorous b.o.
I didn’t have a chance to vote in Word’s poll, but I definitely would have cast my vote for Canadian-psuedo-grunge-suburban-baseball-cap-constipation rockers Nickelback when given the other choices on the ballot.
Nickelback deserve to win for this ode to being an obvious, over-consumptive, marketing victim douchebag alone. And Chad, dude, get some fucking fiber in your diet.
Here are the complete results of Word’s poll:
1) Nickelback – 19.8%
2) Lighthouse Family – 14.3%
3) Toploader – 11.8%
4) Razorlight – 9.8%
5) Savage Garden – 8.4%
6) M People – 7.5%
7) Maroon 5 – 6.6%
8.) 4 Non Blondes – 5.5%
9) Snow Patrol – 5.2%
10) Spin Doctors – 3.6%
11=) Beautiful South – 2.0%
11=) Sleeper – 2.0%
13) New Radicals – 1.1%
14=) Lightning Seeds – 0.9%
14=) The Troggs – 0.9%
16)Crowded House – 0.5%
As I mentioned, I’d never heard of the Lighthouse Family but I’ve also never heard of Lightning Seeds, M People or Toploader. I have heard of Snow Patrol, 4 Non Blondes, Razorlight and Beautiful South but I’ve never heard their music. I’m also not really sure what the Troggs are doing on that list. I don’t actually own any of their music, but I seem to remember they were a decent 60s garage band who did “Wild Thing” and “I Can’t Control Myself”—nothing to really get up in arms about. Also, The New Radicals “You Get What You Give” doesn’t even qualify as a guilty pleasure, just a pleasure. What are they even doing on that list? But man, did Savage Garden ever suck the big one—I’m surprised they only got 8.4% of the vote.
Anyhow, Word Magazine is a good publication, but they are mainly devoted to writing about good music, whereas World-Class Shitty’s purview is shitty music. Therefore, I’ve decided to conduct The World-Class Shitty Shittiest Band of All Time Poll. Any poll with prompted choices like this will no doubt leave off bands you think should be included while including bands you think don’t belong on a shitty band poll. The parameters for choosing candidates in The World-Class Shitty Shittiest Band of All Time Poll are that the band must have been featured on this blog at some time and must be a band and not a solo “artist”. Also, of course, they must suck ass. Get voting or the terrorists have won.
As it’s Wednesday and I’m feeling the work week pretty heavily, I’ve decided to lift today’s post directly from Rolling Stone Magazine’s useful and informative “Random Notes ” section. If you want to know which pop tart du jour received an award from the American Association of Condiment Retailers, hit the clubs with Colonel Sanders, or was inducted into the Fast Food Vat of Bilge, RS’ “Random Notes” has got you covered like a greasy napkin. The following photos and text are all Rolling Stone’s. Look. Read. Learn. Better yourself.
“Rihanna receives a special cake made in honor of her new LP Rated R from the Quiznos Rat at the Juliet in New York City on November 24, 2009.”
“Jennifer Lopez takes flight with a little help from Grimace during rehearsals for the American Music Awards in Los Angeles on November 19, 2009.”
“U2 perform with the Burger King at a concert for the MTV European Music Awards in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, on November 5, 2009.”
“Mariah Carey grabs some assistance from Dominos’ Noid during a shoot in Malibu, California, on November 4, 2009.”
“Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert and Mayor McCheese sit down with Barbara Walters as three of “2009’s Most Fascinating People” airing on ABC on December 9, 2009.”
“Ashlee Simpson gets a hand from the Colonel as she makes her Broadway debut in “Chicago” at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on November 30, 2009.”
Album Review:
Karl Wolf
Nightlife
LW Records
With his video displays of douchetaclar avariciousness, it’s hard not to vomit a little in your mouth when you see Karl Wolf. Everything about the guy lacks authenticity but his smarm and lameness—both of which he comes by honestly. Nightlife is Montreal’s most execrable homie, Karl Wolf’s, latest merde baguette—which no doubt sucks more ass than the product he shilled for upon discovering that “Karl Wolf douche” was the most commonly used search term for him:
In accordance with strict WCS guidelines, I haven’t listened to Nightlife but I did watch the first couple of minutes of Wolf’s video for “Yalla Habibi”—which I believe is the Arabic gag name equivalent of “Heywood Jablome”. Mercifully, the beginning of the video is devoted to setting the “story” and doesn’t contain any of Wolf’s fifth rate music. As always, I caution you against watching the video but did include the link in the interests of thoroughness.
The video begins with Wolf attending some kind of meeting in Dubai.
Though the nature of the business arrangement is not made clear in the first two minutes of “Yalla Habibi”, I can only assume that Wolf’s talents in putting together a shit sandwich have lead to a job offer at a local fast food chain.
The Karl Wolf Extra-Wack Value Meal: Shit with a side of shit
The video then goes on to parade forth conspicuous consumption with a relentlessness that only someone with the intestinal fortitude cultivated by a rigorous diet of Karl Wolf Shitwiches could stomach.
With Dubai’s poor record regarding the treatment of foreign workers, I’m not sure why Wolf would prefer to work there rather than in the McDonald’s on Saint Catherine St., next to the place where he gets his chest waxed. Perhaps he sees a certain symmetry in the fact that the only thing that measures on a comparable scale to his talentlessness is Dubai’s crushing debt load.
As this is supposed to be a review of Nightlife and not just the video for “Yalla Habibi”, let me address the rest of Wolf’s latest release: It sucks.
Or, if you’re the type who likes their criticism to be a little more in depth: It sucks major ass. I give Nightlife *an unprecedented 5 shit sandwiches with mirrors on either side so the shitwiches go on for infinity.
(*a little research revealed that I actually gave Fieldy’s book, Got The Life, 5 shitwiches with mirrors on either side as well.)
Some time ago I did a breakdown for Karl Wolf’s ridiculous video for “Africa”. As much as it seemed that Wolf had achieved the holy grail of ass-sucking with that, he may have topped it with “Yalla Habibi”—it’s hard to say since I didn’t watch it past the point where the music started. I did, however, take five minutes or so to create my own video for “Africa” and will impose on you by posting it here.
Vince Neil risks a cramp by hitting the stage while still digesting the meal he ate at Pirate Pete's All-You-Can-Eat Buccaneer Buffet
In my search for blog fodder today, I was surprised to discover a story over at Rolling Stone’s site about the 20th anniversary of Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood. It seems like just yesterday that “Kickstart My Heart” was all over Much Music and I was constantly having to rush to turn off the TV.
It’s likely the band and their label will re-issue Dr. Feelgood with a bunch of bonus tracks that are even lamer than the ones that made the cut the first time around in an attempt to lure people who’ve already bought this shit—some of them on cassette, vinyl and CD—into forking out for it again.
While it’s certainly true that I’ve mocked the Crue at every opportunity on this blog, in honour of this auspicious occasion I’ve gone ahead and produced a video in tribute to their hair metal majesty. In keeping with the band’s decrepitness, I decided to cast an elderly gentlemen to perform “Kickstart My Heart”. Unfortunately, the site I used to make it did not furnish me with the option of having my actor perform in drag, which was really the foundation of Motley Crue’s 80s artistry. I was, however, able to set the performance in a cafeteria—the unmistakable inference being that the kitchen does indeed serve up a mean shitwich.
Liam Gallagher Vows To Keep Sucking
Liam Gallagher's fruitless search for gainful employment ends with decision to reform Oasis without Noel
According to the NME, Liam Gallagher has got together with the guys he and Noel hired to replace the original members of Oasis that they fired to put together an album of new material. The new material will be recorded without, of course, Noel Gallagher—which is like Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose driving Clint Eastwood’s truck instead of just signaling right turns.
"Right turn, Liam"
The NME quotes Gallagher as saying, “We’ll do it in a different kind of way now….and I’m feeling confident about the songs. I’m feeling a million per cent confident that they could be better than Oasis.”
It’s good to see that Liam is confident, but confidence—unlike talent—has never really been something he’s lacked. It’s probably fair to say that if anything, Liam Gallagher is over-confident and that’s what has lead him to believe that he can lead some kind of Noelless version of Oasis.
The fact that he claims to be only a “million per cent” confident and not a “billion percent” or “infinity forever per cent” does suggest, however, that Liam has been doing some soul searching and re-evaluating of things since Noel’s departure last summer.
I don’t know whether the new Liam and the hired Oasis hands’ project has a moniker as of yet—and I can’t really be bothered to find out—but if they’re in need of suggestions, how about Suckosis?
Just as a reminder of Liam’s songwriting ability, I’ve made a music video for “Little James” which he wrote for 2000’s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. The shitwiches on the menu in the caf may look familiar to you. Bon appetit!
Album Review:
Bon Jovi
The Circle
Island
It has been sometime since I posted anything here at World-Class Shitty and if I had any regular readers before, they’ve doubtless moved on to other blogs where people post regularly.
I actually returned home from my vacation in Japan almost two weeks ago, but needed time to recover after seeing a display in an HMV over there for J-Pop band Glay.
Glay: The removal of one letter is all that stands between them and a more accurate band name
Though I didn’t listen to the latest Glay CD on offer, just a glance at the cardboard cutout on display was like gazing into the abyss of suckitude and enough to make me lose my lunch—which I had eaten at Japanese fast food chain Mos Burger.
"Extra moss and lichens on mine, please!"
East meets West: Mos rice burger sits along side a saucy Mos cheeseburger
Now on to new business—the review of Bon Jovi’s latest sonic turd, The Circle. By all accounts The Circle is a fitting name as the CD finds New Jersey’s lamest returning to their paint-by-numbers stadium rock roots after several records of shitty, soulless new country.
World-Class Shitty has strict review guidelines which require that I not listen to the CDs under review, but for today’s post I bent the rules slightly by actually watching the video for Bon Jovi’s latest single “We Weren’t Born to Follow”.
The title tells you all you need to know about the hackneyed lyrical content while the video shows the band playing on a rooftop Beatles-style and is intercut with uplifting footage of Martin Luther King, President Obama, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lance Armstrong, the Space Shuttle etc. Tearing a page straight out of the Leni Reifenstahl propaganda playbook, the video’s director tries to manipulate the viewer by juxtaposing these iconic images with Bon Jovi’s pedestrian, lowest common denominator snoozefests. But as the Supersuckers wrote, “You can only get that shit so shiny/When you polish a turd”.
Here are some screenshots from “We Weren’t Born to Follow”. This one shows the band on the rooftop. Jon Bon Jovi waves his arms around throughout like he’s the high priest of dullard rock testifying at a Wal-Mart shareholders meeting—which he pretty much is.
The following screenshots go only a small way towards depicting the sheer degree of fulsome smarm contained in the video. Even Bono would consider it over the top.
Somehow I doubt Martin Luther King's dream had anything to do with cynical millionaires trading on his image in order to shift units
"Yay! We now have the freedom to buy Bon Jovi CDs and eat Big Macs. We weren't born to follow!"
Apparently the brain trusts in Bon Jovi saw no contradictions in the following two images.
Saving the environment: Good!
The wasteful expenditure of fossil fuels on vanity projects: Good!
No doubt the rest of The Circle sucks just as much ass as that video does. “This ain’t about no apology”, sings Jon Bon Jovi in “We Weren’t Born To Follow”, but it really should be. Or maybe I’m just expecting too much—no one’s got any fucking manners anymore.
Hit!: Gene Simmons (left) looks simply divine in a lemon yellow ensemble equally at home in the boudoire or whipping up a shitwich in the industrial grade fast food kitchen
Whoo wee, girlfriends!—you know there’s nothing more satisfying than dishing the dirt on celebrity fashions. It allows you set aside such trivialities as the quality of an artist’s work to focus instead on their wardrobe choices as filtered through the lens of your own bad taste. The World-Class Shitty sales & marketing department suggested today’s post, believing that it would “dovetail” well with WCS’ already established mandate of reviewing CDs we’ve never listened to by major label shit-floggers. They also used the word “synergy” a couple of times, but by that point I was paying more attention to the heartburn I had contracted from the sickening 99 cents a slice pizza the cheap fucks at WCS Corporate served at the lunch meeting.
Axl Rose—Diss!
Axl’s get-up of white nut-hugging bike shorts topped with a matching white leather jacket with the sleeves pushed up Sonny Crockett-style seems like it should be a winner. Unfortunately, this photo was taken in mid-September and wearing white after Labour Day is a serious fashion faux pas.
James Hetfield—Hit!
If you follow the world of fashion as closely as Hetfield and I do, you’ll know that black is the new black. You’ll also know that sculpting your facial hair to look like a flying v is unimpeachably metal. When you factor in Hetfield’s increasing resemblance to the hillbilly who showed poor Ned Beatty some some ’southern hospitality’ in Deliverance, you know he’s got it goin’ on!
KFC’s Famous Bowls—Hit!
The most hygienic thing about the KFC Famous Bowls is probably the matted dreadlocks, and the t-shirt with the weed-smoking rasta skull is stone class.
Liam Gallagher—Hit!
Liam Gallagher actually has his own fashion line, which is like Coco Chanel having a Brit-pop band that wrote sing-a-long anthems for lager louts. Here we see Gallagher modeling a fetching Mao-esque smock. The Mao-smock also doubles as an apron and is available with “Kiss The Cook!” emblazoned on it for whipping up shitwiches at weekend backyard barbecues.
I’m going to be on vacation for the next 10 days or so, so consider this video my out of office auto reply:
Welcome to World-Class Shitty’s Extra-Value Meal Blender, where I strive to give you more heat lamp damaged music news for your fast food dollar. Of course, I do realize that you’re paying exactly zero dollars for it and keep that in mind when it comes to quantity, quality control and hand washing. Today’s exhumation of the week’s music news was carefully culled from the Internet after literally 15 or 20 minutes of exhaustive research at sites such as rollingstone.com and nme.com. So, for your music news nourishment I serve up for you this week’s Extra-Value Meal Shitwich Smoothie—bon appetite!
Jim Morrison’s Ghost Haunts Bearded Dude
Ghosty apparition appears in this 1997 photo taken at Morrison's grave site in Paris
Rock historian Brett Meisner had this photo taken of him at the site of Doors’ singer Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris’ Lachaise cemetery. An unmistakeable image of a man in leather trousers with his arms out-stretched can be seen on the right of Meisner. According to The Daily Express the photo is not a fake.
Meisner believes that he is now being haunted by the ghost of Morrison, and says that since his visit to the cemetary his marriage broke up and a close friend died of a drug overdose.
You may discount this chilling and compelling evidence, but I personally have experienced something similar to Mr. Meisner. Here’s a photo of me and the ghost of Jimi Hendrix:
Tony "Player Hater" Powell haunted by the ghost of the right-handed guitar playing Guitar Hero avatar of Jimi Hendrix
Now you may find this hard to believe, but shortly after this chilling photograph was taken, Hendrix’s avatar’s freaky ju-ju caused me to get a speeding ticket from the po-po and ingest day old sushi which gave me the runs something fierce. Not sayin’, just sayin’.
This Just In: P. Diddy is an Asshole
P. Diddy effortlessly causes a global pandemic of the douche chills
Hip hop mogul P. Diddy lost a ring he claims (for insurance reasons—nudge nudge, wink wink) was worth $20, 000 while he threw fake hundred dollar bills into the studio audience at BET. Apparently, Mo-Money-Mo-Problems P. Douchey had mixed in a few real $1 bills with the photocopied crap and the audience went wild. In the melee, Diddy lost his ring and had the building shut down and entire audience searched in an effort to get it back, which he never did.
If I had caught any of P. Diddy’s bullshit money or found his ostentatious ring I would have, like Andy Samberg, thrown it on the ground!
Album Review:
Kiss
Sonic Boom
Roadrunner
Getting excited about a new Kiss album is like getting excited about a new Stephen King novel. Even if you thought books such as It and The Dead Zone were pretty wicked, by the time Gerald’s Game and Needful Things came out it had become obvious that reading the barcode on the jacket was more entertaining than anything between the covers.
And so it is with Sonic Boom. In accordance with strictly enforced World-Class Shitty review guidelines, I have not suffered through the indignity of actually listening to Kiss’ latest steaming aural shitwich but it’s obvious to anyone who hasn’t spent the 33 years since the release of Destroyer huffing Pam cooking spray that creatively Kiss is a spent force—a force that could at its best be spent on a 4-pack of Chicken McNuggets®. Indeed, Kiss’ artistic quality has always been inversely proportionate to it’s financial success much as McDonald’s culinary quality has always stood in diametric opposition to the company’s financial health.
Even visually the two corporate entities have a lot in common:
Lick It Up!
Like Journey, Foreigner and other washed up bands that nobody cares about anymore, Kiss have signed a deal to sell their latest CD exclusively through Wal-Mart, which seems like a match made in heaven—so long as your idea of heaven looks like this:
Sonic Boom is no doubt a huge serving of soulless corporate bullshit ladled out 30 years past its best-before-date with a careless slop onto a styrofoam plate. It is indeed fitting that “Kiss” is an anagram for “Shit”, or would be if the “k” in their name were a “t” and one of the “s”es were an “h”.
Harper: "I am the dufus/Goo Goo Ga Choo"
As a band, the Beatles have always been pretty much unassailable. As songwriters and musical innovators, they paved the way for much of the best of modern popular music. Their approach to recording and the idea of using the studio as an instrument changed the way people thought about records and recording and raised the bar to a height that has rarely been matched, let alone exceeded, over the past 40-odd years. Culturally, as well, the Beatles were at the vanguard of the Swinging Sixties and marked a shift from the more socially conservative post-WWII years to the more libertine attitudes of the Sixties.
So it was with awareness of all this musical, sociological, political and cultural baggage in mind that I viewed the video of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s performance with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of “With a Little Help from My Friends” at the National Arts Centre Gala in Ottawa on October 3rd. As traumatic as the incident may have been, I am pleased to report that despite Harper and his televangelist hair’s best efforts last weekend, the Beatles’ legacy is still intact. Here’s a video of the performance:
Harper’s performance appears to have been well received despite the glaring irony of a neocon stooge to the power elite co-opting a tune by a band who were once considered to be at the forefront of the counterculture. Then you’re hit with the whiplash reverse irony of the song he chose to sing being “With a Little Help from My Friends”, presumably because “Baby You’re a Rich Man” lacked subtlety. I’m sure the fat cats in the banking industry which he bailed out to the tune of $25 billion and those in GM which got another $9.5 billion of taxpayer moolah were chuckling knowingly as they listened to Harper while lighting their Cuban cigars with thousand dollar bills.
Harper protests for the right to have game-show-host hair and the right not to live up to his country's Kyoto commitments
Now, Harper isn’t the first soulless neocon parasite to try to soften his image with a musical publicity stunt. You may recall when the Iron Lady herself, Maggie Thatcher, was short-listed as a replacement for Scott Weiland in Velvet Revolver.
Thatcher:"Libertad---both the VR album and the general concept---is highly specious"
Thatcher was never officially confirmed as the new VR vocalist so I can only assume that things didn’t work out and maybe that’s for the best. Although she hasn’t been Prime Minister since 1990, there’s surely still an essential role for a woman of Thatcher’s stature to play in fucking over the people of Britain.
Sweet Sue's Chicken In a Can is slated to perform Sweet Home Alabama. "There's good chicken in Alabama, I think Mr. Young knows that, too"
Fall officially arrived yesterday afternoon and with it comes the new fall TV season. I assume there will be a new season of American Idol coming down the shit pike, but truthfully I don’t really know as I’ve never watched the program and have no idea what their broadcast schedule might be.
But for the sake of this blog post I’m assuming that the lowest common denominatorization of music that is American Idol is soon going forward to pollute the airwaves once again with their kitschy, cloyingly saccharine shit-taculars. And what’s a shit-tacular without a preview at World-Class Shitty? Nothing, that’s fucking what!
Sweet Sue’s Chicken In A Can
As already hinted at above, Sweet Sue’s Chicken In a Can will be performing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”.
A disturbing harbinger of what will likely happen 20 minutes after ingestion
The authenticity of the chicken’s performance of the legendary long-haired Southern rockers’ hit will no doubt be bolstered by the long strands of hair clinging to the gelatinous canned bird.
Arby’s Beef ‘N’ Cheddar Sandwich
Enjoy a beef 'n' cheddar sandwich at your local Arby's gastrointestinal disorder pub
In an unorthodox musical choice, Arby’s Beef ‘N’ Cheddar Sandwich will be singing G.G. Allin’s “Pussy Summit Meeting”.
Wendy’s Chicken Club
The cheese in the chicken club looks a lot like the slime that Dr. Peter Venkman got covered in in "Ghostbusters"
Wendy’s Chicken Club will be performing a version of Ray Parker Jr.’s 1984 hit “Ghostbusters”: “If there’s something weird/And it don’t look good”. Yeah, pretty much the whole Wendy’s menu, Chicken Club.
McDonald’s Sausage Burrito
"Do the Tijuana two-step without ever leaving your God-awful suburb"
McDonald’s Sausage Burrito is scheduled to be performing “La Coca Rocha”, which is so obvious it’s bloody brilliant.
So check your local listings and tune in to the next season of American Idol whenever and where ever to get your much needed dose intestinal distress.
Tony "Player Hater" Powell