Talk to me now:
♦ OLD!!! Text message me
168 characters only, please!
♦ Sign my guestbook
♦ Leave me a note
♦ Send me mail
♦ IM me
Lemme talk to you:
Powered by the magic of
NotifyList.com
Diaryland is calling.....
Who Is It?
10/17/2002 - 6:48 p.m.
Back in the day, some pals of min and I used to have a game called "Who's Worse?" We'd name two people, usually famous, or two rock and roll groups, or the like, and ask, "Who's worse?"
You know, who's worse, Skinny Puppy or Ministry?
Who's worse, Sabbath or solo Ozzy?
Who's worse, The Connells or Miracle Legion?
There were all sorts of people subjected to the Who's Worse treatment, but for a long long long time, the two top offenders were Styx and Kansas.
We would debate this endlessly, and usually, though not always, came to the conclusion that Styx was worse, though not really, because they came out with "Mr Roboto," and that song is unbeatably snazz.
Don't deny it. You know it's true.
Because we're total geeks, we'd also occasionally debate the various worsosities of ELO and Cheap Trick's attempts to sound like the Beatles, as in, Which is worse, "Secret Messages," or "Next Position Please?"
Of course, it's "Secret Messages." It's an effing ELO album, fer the luv of Elvis.
The fun had started to wear off, though, and we hadn't played in quite a while, when along about 1991, some new suspects came on the scene, and we could spend lotsa drunken hours debating the variable badness of - you guessed it - Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots.
As you can probably imagine, STP usually came up at the short end of that stick, and rightly so. Yerg. And yerg again.
But then, around 1993, the death knell of "Who's Worse?" began to sound. At first, we didnt know it was the death knell, we just thought it was a really really irritating song, full of irritatingly sprightly chord changes and irritiatingly awful lyrics. I mean, really bad. Just abysmal. Other songs by this musical conglomeration were almost as bad, but, really, none were worse. In fact, it's hard to imagine a more irritasting song that doesn't involve the voice of Julie Brown.
(No, not Downtown Julie Brown. Penn Jillette's ex-girlfriend Julie Brown. Right. "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" Julie Brown. That one).
We knew we had found the first half of the new "Who's Worse?"
Or at least, we thought we had.
As the year wore on, we wondered, and wondered long, who could come along to challenge these bletchmeisters. It would have to be someone with a truly evil ability to combine notes and chords into musical horror. It would have to be someone who, without provocation, would talk at length about the spirit of music, and how it flows through them, and the songs, well, they just seem to write themselves. It would have to be someone who could never, ever, be beloved of Elvis.
And then, one day, they arrived. Or rather, he did. For though this organization was described as a band, there was really only one person in the band. And when we heard this musical monstrosity, this chordal contagion, this vocal venom, we were struck dumb, and none of us could muster up the strength to ask the question, "Who's Worse?", because we knew, in our hearts, that it was unanswerable. The concept of "worse" cannot apply when you have two examples of ultimate awfulness, with nowhere to go but up. No, we never did ask the question, though every once in a while, I find myself wondering, what would have happened, what could have happened, if one of us had ever asked,
"Who's worse, Hootie And The Blowfish, or Dave Matthews Band?"Shudder.
And shudder again.
Music to compare and contrast by:
Orson Welles - "I Know What It Is To Be Young"
"I know what it is to be young
But you - you don't know what it is to be old
Some day you'll be saying the same thing
Time takes away so the story's told"
See what I did there? I went and moved my diaryring to a rings and reviews page!
about this entry?
Spill it, kitten!!
2 kittens have spilled it thus far!
More Fun with Red
♦ Find out a wee bit about little ole Red
♦ See what state my current contest is in
♦ See what diary rings I am associated with
♦ See my photo gallery
♦ Visit my real-live website (not available in all areas)
♦ Hear some music I wrote (not available in all areas)
♦ More fun coming soon....
Use this ginchy little piece of elven magic to enter the
Wht Th' heck Did Red Mean?!?!?!?Contest!
Make your guess....
Contest status:
OPEN!!!
Enter at your own peril!!!!