About six years ago, I did an article about bands and musicians that I thought were overrated, “Your Favorite Bands Are Mediocre“.
Upon re-reading the article now, I want to make the following changes/corrections:
- AC/DC and Pink Floyd get reprieves. AC/DC isn’t too bad if you’ve been drinking, and you’ll never struggle to figure out the names of any of their songs because they repeat the title about 50 times in every song. I decided to listen to more of Pink Floyd’s songs than the same two or three those condescending cunts at WMGK play every day on the radio (MM ARMY REPRESENTIN’, SUCK IT MGK), and they’re honestly not that bad. Yeah, they have a lot of pretentious fans, but I’d be a hypocrite to hate something simply because of its fanbase. Holy shit, I’ve just called back to three old articles in two paragraphs.
- Metallica gets a partial reprieve (even if they screwed over Dave Mustaine). James Hetfield is a pretty good guitarist, and their music isn’t honestly all that bad. My main issue is with Lars Ulrich, their piece-of-shit hack of a drummer who pitched a little pissy fit about people downloading music and publicly encouraged the lawsuits against Metallica’s own fans. Lars Ulrich is a crybaby bitch, a pussy, and a fucking douchebag. Lars also earns the distinction of being the only celebrity who I would actually punch in the face if I saw him in public. I’m not joking or exaggerating for effect on this one, I would really risk jail time, a lawsuit, and an asswhooping from his bodyguards just for the chance to give that untalented crybaby whiny sack of Danish shit a black eye. No, I’m fucking serious on this one, fuck you Lars Ulrich, I hope you get diagnosed with cancer.
- My opinions of Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson are a little more favorable.
But most importantly, there were two omissions from the list that should have probably been at the top. In fact, these two should be at the top of a different list, “Bands that suck ass”. I’m talking about Lynyrd Skynyrd and George Thorogood and the Destroyers.
I don’t give a fuck if Skynyrd is designated as the best of southern rock, and honestly if they’re the best I’d hate to see the fucking worst. They’re a shitty band, everything about them is shit right down to the origin of their name. For reasons that allegedly don’t involve child molestation (I’m skeptical on that one), they named their band after their high school gym teacher. Most bands at least put a little bit of thought into their name, but nope, not these guys. Take a teacher’s name, change some letters to “Y”, and boom, instant band name. But the letter “Y” is very appropriate, because I often wonder why exactly people like this shitty band so much.
I’ll spare you my longstanding gripe about how long and drawn-out “Free Bird” is, and instead talk about another one of their popular songs, “Gimme Three Steps”. For those of you playing along at home, this YouTube link will self-destruct in 3… 2… 1… COPYRIGHT CLAIM BY WMG.
The song tells a story of a man who’s dancing at a bar with a girl named “Linda Lou”, when Linda Lou’s boyfriend walks in and catches the two. The boyfriend is some big tough guy, and is now angry at the main character. The guy pulls a gun on the main character, who promptly pisses his pants in fear and asks the guy to give him “three steps”, so he can run out the door.
Okay, first of all, who the fuck is actually named “Linda Lou”? Did Dr. Seuss write this shit? No, because if he did it wouldn’t suck as much as it does. What an ugly name. If I had to guess, I’d say that Linda Lou is some hambeast country bumpkin that I’d see on Jerry Springer. Until I have an actual depiction from Skynyrd of this lady, I’m just going to assume she’s some fat ugly redneck bitch, and that makes the rest of the song that much funnier.
So this beta bitchboy that is the main character is at a bar going cow-tipping, not because he has beer goggles, but because he’s just that much of a beta bitchboy. He starts trying to go Captain Ahab on the whale that is Linda Lou when her husband/boyfriend storms in, seemingly already tipped off by someone else that his prize pig is dancing with another man. Welcome to the south, folks. Down here Linda Lou’s fat ugly ass is the pinnacle of beauty, and men will fight to the death for her like Spartan gladiators.
I can’t decide who’s more of a pussy, the guy singing the song who apparently pissed his pants in fear (seriously, listen to the lyrics, he pisses his fucking pants), or the guy who was “mean and lean, big and bad” but still needed a gun to deal with the pantywaist who pissed his pants. Congratulations Lynyrd Skynyrd on making a song where all of the characters suck.
But enough about Skynyrd, let’s move on to George Thorogood.
George Thorogood has a very simple recipe for success: Redo other peoples’ songs.
That’s it, that’s all he fucking does. He gets sloshed then gets up on stage and plays other bands’ songs. The closest thing he has to an original song is “Bad to the Bone”, and even that song is pretty much a rip-off of several other songs. George Thorogood managed to rip-off several songs in one song. That’s actually pretty talented when you stop to think about it. I wish I could rip-off a Dead Kennedys song, an Iron Maiden song, a Billy Joel song, and a Black Sabbath song all in one go. I wish Jello Biafra, Bruce Dickinson, Billy Joel, and Ozzy Osbourne crashed a George Thorogood concert and beat the living shit out of him with empty liquor bottles.
And he doesn’t even do the original songs any justice. He found a way to make “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” about 80x worse than it already was by drawing it out to 9 minutes. I have actually had fights with people over this song, because I will violate my policy of “Only the driver can touch the radio” to change the station when this song comes on. I’m not going to sit for nine fucking minutes listening to George Thorogood ramble on and on like a drunken jack-ass. And you know what, that’s another thing that pisses me the fuck off. George Thorogood took something as awesome as the singer of a band getting trashed on stage and fucked that up too. How do you fuck that up?! Ozzy Osbourne knows how to do it, Grace fucking Slick even did it. Now I know why his band is called “The Destroyers”, because they can fucking destroy anything even remotely music-related. They destroy other peoples’ songs AND they destroy a time-honored tradition of getting fucking tanked on-stage and bringing down the house.
Look, it’s okay when one band writes a song and another band plays it better. There are several examples of this, my favorite one being “Because the Night“. Patti Smith took what could have been another shitty Bruce Springsteen song and turned it into gold. Any time there is one less Bruce Springsteen song in the world, that is a good thing for the human race as a whole. Patti Smith is an unsung hero of classic rock. Unfortunately, George Thorogood isn’t anything like Patti Smith, instead turning everything he touches into shit. Kind of like Midas. Midass. There you go, he should call himself “Midass” and his band the “Shitlords”. Midass and the Shitlords.
I found a quote on some web forum that sums up George Thorogood pretty damn good:
“George Thorogood is great for when you want all the “bad-ass attitude” of the blues but don’t want to be troubled with pesky things like emotional intensity or Negroes.“
If you want some real blues music check out the works of the late B.B. King. B.B. King is infinitely more talented than George Thorogood will ever be in all of the realities in the entire multiverse put together. If you want to get drunk and go searching for a dick to suck, check out George Thorogood and his shitty band.
Before I wrap this one up, I want to give mention to two more songs that have always bugged the shit out of me, neither of which are by Skynyrd or Thorogood (though there’s always the chance Thorogood might try to plagiarize them too because why the fuck not).
“Don’t Bring Me Down” by the Electric Light Orchestra (what another dumb-ass name for a band). The song itself only warrants a “Aw man, they’re playing this tired shit again?” from me just like everything else on WMGK’s bullshit short playlist, but there’s one aspect of it that pisses me off. I’m talking about the infamous misheard lyric. For the longest time I thought this guy was saying “Bruce”, as did many other people. It didn’t make any sense, because who the fuck is this Bruce? Then I read the official explanation of the lyric:
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Yeah that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard. So he’s saying “Don’t bring me down, greetings!”? Jeff Lynne is a retard. Don’t just throw random words into your lyrics simply because they rhyme, that’s the hallmark of someone with no talent. Even B-Rad from “Malibu’s Most Wanted” can rhyme better than that. I’d listen to an album by B-Rad before I’d listen to an album by this shitlord.
Another song that gets under my skin is “I Like it Like That“. The song is repetitive enough to give AC/DC a run for their money. They repeat the chorus about a thousand fucking times: “Come on, come on, the name of the place is ‘I Like it Like That’!” That’s it, over and over and fucking over. What kind of hang-out is named “I Like it Like That” anyway? Is it a gay bar? The song has just the right amount of suckage that I’m surprised George Thorogood hasn’t tried to steal it and make it his own.
I’ll close this one on a positive note. The 60s through the early 80’s did produce a lot of great music from talented artists. If you want some hidden under-played gems, check out the discography of bands like Blue Öyster Cult, Deep Purple, 10cc, and Jethro Tull. Widen your palates beyond the same two or three songs your local radio station plays, you’d be surprised just how good some of these bands really are and what kind of range they have. I used to put down bands like KISS and Guns n’ Roses, but then I decided to check out their entire discographies. While I still think Gene Simmons is a scumbag and Slash is the most overrated guitarist of all time, they really do have a lot of good songs that go beyond the scope of “Rock and Roll All Night” or “Welcome to the Jungle”.
Stick it to the shitty radio stations everywhere by expanding your tastes.