So bad its brilliant: Bads and Records so Bad it's Brilliant

I'm sorry, I can find *nothing* redeeming in Ping Pong Bitches. Please, someone explain. How is ripping off Chicks On Speed (who I don't even particularly care for, either) in any way relevant or amusing? I'm serious, please somebody find something redeeming in either their music or their 3rd Generation "punke rocke" shock tactics...? Anyone?

Definately the Divine records. See "T Shirts and Tight Blue Jeans" . Also , the 1992 Suicide album. I tend to love failures in music. fAilure is more sincere than success

ping pong bitches are teh punk rock hear'say

Aren't ping pong bitches just a millenial take on McGee's poorly executed prefab girlie band mentioned in the Cavanagh book? Someone out there probably remembers their name...

I can't think of any 'outsider art' or 'raw music' etc. etc. I like too much. At least not if it's packaged and signposted as such, and if it isn't, who am I to judge how raw it is?

So-bad-it's-good criticism, when not based around ideas of kitsch, tends in my view to be as best based on some pretty suspect ideas about unfettered creativity, the artist-as-outsider, divorcing art from its relationship with society, and at worst ambulance-chasing.

Hasil Adkins reportedly used to get offered money NOT to play.

This so-bad-it's-good criticism -- regarding the Shaggs and Daniel Johnston, at least -- seems to focus on the purity, honesty, etc. of it all, which doesn't make me to care listen to their work with any more care or whatever -- except for the Shaggs' cover of "Yesterday Once More," which I find very moving for exactly those nebulous and cold reasons.

When they get to the part where's he breaking her heart, I have no doubt that the Wiggin sisters cried, and there listening to those songs under their bedsheets or whatever they were so moved by the possibility of pop that they had to experience it themselves regardless of what must have been near-unanimous external (except for their father) and common-sense internal impulses to do the opposite. It doesn't make me believe that "My Pal Foot Foot" is Great Art, but that cover has its own grace and tenderness and, dare I say, honest beauty.

Well, I *like* the Shaggs, Jad Fair, Shonen Knife and (obviously) the Portsmouth Sinfonia before they sold out. But I don't think any of them are "bad".

However, when I was in Shrewsbury last week, two small girls were playing violins on the paved-over "bohemian zone" High Street which has put so many shops out of business over the last ten years. They were playing like any average-to-poor string duo aged 7 and 9 would be expected to play: 'Pop Goes the Weasel' was their repertoire.

In other words, they were pretty terrible, and, yes, I *did* think it was brilliant — and quite rock'n'roll, sorta — that they were playing there. Why? And also I thought of the thing I always think when small children's choirs and recorder groups play "famous" tunes, which is, How exactly do we recognise tunes, even when they're so inaccurately rendered? What's the psycho-physiological mechanism?

But I sure didn't stop to listen.

I hear ya Mark S. Baby Amphetimine. But somehow Ping Pong Bitches are beginning to rate as a junglist shaggs. Brilliant review in the nme.

I, Mark S. am addicted to buying easy listening moog classics of famous songs. Brilliant.

others for your consideration:

napaleon 8th, david mccallum, moe tucker (who I think is brilliant), neutral milk hotel, bobbie gentry, ping pong bitches, bootleg generation x demos I have, northern uproar, flowered up, happy mondays 24 hour party people, the star trek albums.........

Why is this music so brilliant? It's so bad it's good.

and of course happy flowers (should have been consolidating..) can anyone tell me what happened to the flowers?

napaleon 8th, david mccallum, moe tucker (who I think is brilliant), neutral milk hotel, bobbie gentry, ping pong bitches, bootleg generation x demos I have, northern uproar, flowered up, happy mondays 24 hour party people, the star trek albums.......

But what makes you consider them bad in the first place? To me, none of them appear to have much in common.

the factor is: no talent but no talent redeemed them into brilliance.

To me, Moe Tucker and the Happy Mondays have/had talent by the bucketload.

but the first albums are raw as f*ck and not talented in the 'normal' sense of the word. It's like they were capturing something, without the radiohead campaign detours of the current rock scene.

What current musicians/music/bands are similar?

The Dead C.'s Trapdoor Fucking Exit is so raw and bad, it's brilliant. Reach a certain level of transcendance (cf. "I Got Erection", Balabanov's Brother, Dostoevsky's The Possessed, Leone's spaghetti westerns, Argento's Suspiria, Moliere's Tartuffe) and the line between bad and brilliant dissolves. It's one and the same.

thanks for the response...

I am also thinking of bens symphonic orchestra.....

otis, since you mentioned dario argentino, do you know, and if, you can get the soundtrack to his movies. so bad, it's creepy. I think it's a rock band called the goblins. . . any help?

The band is called just Goblin. They have a collection of film music that's pretty easy to find. Their soundtrack to Suspiria is available, harder to track down but worth it.

so get the soundtrack to suspira and forget the rest? I have seen the goblin cd. it's creepier than diamanda galas litanties to satan.

thank you very mcuh sir for the tip.

There is only one answer to this question -- and it isn't raw, but it is all about the Sex Girls. Yes, gentlemen, I refer to none other than the magnificent Gleaming Spires.

The Raunchy Young Lepers are forever the answer to this question. They exist beyond questions of irony and art.

my favourite female artist of this genre is yma sumac. or is it amy camus, only her hairdresser knows for sure.

otis, many thanks, I have been referring to that band as the goblins and that is why I have not come up with much.

Thanks again..

they wouldn't happen to be anything like el f, would they? i doubt that elf are so bad that they'd be good; they seem more like they're really bad, the nadir of tolkien rock.

meanwhile, pat boone's cover of "holy diver" might be so bad it's good.

think that is why i really like poptones. they understand the line between horrible and brilliant. poptones reminds me of a comtemporary revola number, finding out artists, who would fit the revola tradition in twenty/thirty years time.

like tasha lee/hives/elvez.

I would like to put another album into this genre ... Kevin Rowland's My beauty. Only to be appreciated twenty years from now. Same with trashmonk.

real soul without talent.

no fred, I've got the album with frank being swingin' in the nerhu jacket. But napeleon 8. smoke some and try to listen to that album all the way through!

Mark's little incident reminds me of a recent occasion on the London Underground when a busker (being *paid* by some tourist organisation) speaking / singing in a broad (possibly exaggerated) cockney accent complete with acoustic guitar struck up into Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer", rendering it as though it was a Chas and Dave down-the-pub singalong. For one who loves that song like myself, it was an almost unbearable experience, but one which seemed almost surreal as well.

Towns with paved-over heritage-oriented high streets attract street musicians like flies. Easily the greatest concentration of same (there's a Ralph McTell impersonator down every alley) I've ever encountered is in Dorchester.

Oh oh oh: just remembered, in the maze of tunnels round Elephant & Castle tube, my first year in London, a man, so plootered his legs were bending the wrong way, playing the spoons and aggressively/ wheadlingly asking for money for his performance. The spoons when played "properly" by a "talented" spoons-ist are a no-win proposition, entertainment-wise: but this was the funniest thing I think I saw that whole year (= the year Sunny Ade first played: work it out yerself...)

And sad too, in an train-wreck sort of a way.

But still not brilliant. Goblin, on the other hand, are completely fantastic.

old very drunk bloke used to 'play' harmonica in local student pub while askin horrified indiekids for spare change - one night he played THE MOST AWESOME MELODY i had heard in ages before returning to soundin' awful - doubt he ever made much money - the staff didn't kick him out in the rain though

Wesley Willis, anyone?

Rock over London, Rock over Chicago!

Speaking about subway/underground buskers:

Coming home from work one night after I started working in New York City four years ago, I remember hearing some really awful and tuneless harmonica squawking. Hard to transcribe the sound, but it was something like this: "wum-WAMP-wum-WAMP-wum-WAMP-wum-wum- WAMP!!", ad infinitum. Then I finally walked past the guy playing the harmonica -- it was this old guy, who was sort of shimmying rhythmically with the "wum-WAMP!", playing the harmonica with one hand and periodically scratching himself on the head with the other. He looked like a human version of the monkeys that old- time organ grinders used to employ. It seemed so ridiculous that I couldn't help but laugh (though I guess that wasn't very nice). I ended up giving him a buck.

He's still there, on the free transfer between the B/D/E (6th Ave.) and the No. 7 (Flushing) lines at 42nd Street. It sure beats every other NYC subway busker mangling the theme from "The Godfather" on whatever instrument they're playing (I've heard "The Godfather" now on accordian, harmonica, steel drums, Chinese violin, even the didgeridoo).

What about a category for So Brilliant It's Bad? IDM? Magnetic Fields? Elvis Costello?

...as well as Kid Koala, Invisibl Skratch Picklz etc

Elvis Costello so brilliant it's bad - that's insightful! Maybe also Randy Newman, Nick Lowe or am I just thinking that all literate singer songwriters can be explained away . . . I like Nick Lowe.

At school I heard that the pleasure of outsider art was precisely that thing about the line between brilliant/bad being challenged, therefore hierarchies being dismantled, therefore a feeling of pleasure similar to a great joke, to Bakhtin's carnivalesqe reversals. But I don't know if it's true or not personally.

I never thought Jandek was so bad he was brilliant (I hope I spelt his name right.) Or really the Dead C, but the free noise thing is so masculine, as Andy Warhol said about abstract expressionism.

I love ambulance-chasing, myself. I feel no guilt whatever. But if you're ethically squeamish about, I recommend stuff from known bands when they were at the demo stage (sometimes beyond) and barely achieving competence yet. The Germs' "Forming" and 'Live at the Whisky' are among the worst records ever made on a technical basis, great stuff! I also have some Manic Street Preachers demos, pants- shittingly funny stuff, especially the lyrics...an early version of "Love's Sweet Exile" with the fiery agitators singing "Can't be happy without you, ba ba ba ba..." Far more entertaining than their current stodge.

and, I know I should quit this question but oh my god, the early unreleased Devo demos . . . so minimally brilliant.

wesley willis, agreed. though, ethical doubts over american taking advantage of his mental illness.

no one has gone on about david mccallum, man from unkle's albums with string arrangements by none other than david axelrod????????????

manics early stuff...definitely so bad it's brilliant.

also the bloke who plays acoustic guitar on sunday at the farmers' market, excellent 'cept when drunk and then just goes through punk rock versions of 'you are my sunshine, my only sunshine..........'

And what about "Tilt": avant-garde genius or impenetrable nonsense? It's arguably the album by an established performer that bets fits this tread.

The Pracatan woman from the Clive James show - her live CD of covers is drop-dead inspiring.

I have a jones for celebrities albums. Has anyone heard the Fonz's sound montage of his favourite sayings. It's almost avant garde. And it's not even done by the Fonz.

I could also put in dogmanstar just becuase of the 90 degree angle they made there. Brilliant move, really.

and the russian futurists, definitely belong in this catergory.

Back to buskers - there's a guy who plays (barely) and mumbles by the Sainsbury's near Angel Station in London, and the great thing is, he stands near a remote car-park exit so nobody even walks by him, he couldn't even possibly make any money! He's been there at least every week for years in the same spot too.

just thought of another thing: the first primal scream album. punk rock kids doing the byrds thing. got a bootleg of an early show featuring three guitarists and a tambourine player. that and any early jesus and mary chain stuff like vegatable man.

roky erickson and any unreleased syd barrett stuff.

"All we want from you is the skin you're living in..." Those early manics demos are brilliant. I'm waiting for someone to mention Dogstar, but they're probably just so bad it's painful.

Last year on holiday in Cornwell, there was this terrifying disabled guy hammering on a synthesiser and making the most astonishing racket. It was so bizarre he must have been some kind of genius.

I have a record from the late sixties of a gospel singer who was tragically burned 99% over his face and body and scarring his vocal chords. He sings throaty and strange and used to put out inspirational albums.

The busking stuff is fun, but otherwise this category seems hard to get clear.

I don't know any 'outsider art' but from what you guys are saying, it sounds nothing whatsoever like a great joke.

I agree that some things are 'so technically good, in a particular way, that they're a turn-off'. But then maybe it's the way, not the quality, that is really the turn-off? I certainly don't see EC or the MFs in this way. In fact I have a feeling that the MFs are occasionally meant to be 'so bad it's brilliant'. 'Blue You' would be my Exhibit A here.

What does EC and MF mean?

what the fuck is "bad" about Daniel Johnston? or Roky Erickson? fuckin' c'mon.

I don't know any 'outsider art' but from what you guys are saying, it sounds nothing whatsoever like a great joke.

I would have to agree with Pinefox. A cheap holiday in other people's misery, more like.

With all the songs I love, I love them beyond reproach and couldn't even think of them as bad.

In a way it seems patronizing to call it bad; like saying oh I realize this music isn't as good as the Magnetic Fields (or whoever) but it's cool because the singer is crazy.

nothing they are brilliant. read the title, so bad, it's brilliant. they are stars.

again, read the title..

What does EC and MF mean?

Eric Clapton and the Mother Fuckers (NY artcore band)

Trust Dastoor to bring down the tone with needless swearing.

You should be ashamed of yourself, Nick.

mike, dast what nick's here foor.

don't bother saying it: ugh.

Trust 'Michael' 'Jones' to 'bring up' the 'levels' when necessary. But not to the 'point' where they 'clip', obviously.

outsider art works even if the songs aren't as 'good' as the magnetic goddamned fields because, as the name implies, it's outside your field of experience. people who just want to hear pretty songs about their boring lives need to have weird tuneless music forced upon them.

As far as thee original Q goes, I suppose the shaggs & daniel johnston fall into the "naive art" camp, of folks who are attempting to do something which they are just not capable of. A bit like the paintings exhibited @ thee MOBA. I suppose some of the stylistic quirks evident in such work can be interesting, but I often find such stuff to be unlistenable, because it's just too bad for me. I prefer to hear a fairly accomplished artist just overreaching their capabilities, or someone pushed off course by some weird development in their creative world -- IE gary numan finds a mini-moog in the studio where his lame new-wave band are recording - it just happens to have a good sound dialed up, thus "Replicas" and "The Pleasure Principle". That's really good.

As it happens, I've had a different "so bad it's good" experience fairly recently. One of my shop customers talked me into forming a pomp-prog-rock band with him (he's a really good drummer) He did me a CD-r of prog rock stuff he wants to cover, and (oh dear lord) one of the trax was "Sole Survivor" by Asia!!! (Asia were a prog-rock supergroup formed in the early '80's to cash in on adult-orientated- rock in the USA - their first album sold shitloads IIRC) It's goddamn awful - I mean, really terrible, but....when I listen to it...mffff...I feel all light, and my chest swells, and my nostrils flare, and all that.....WTF????? It beats me, but I'm looking forward to working it out, anyway.

As far as P!|\|g-p0ng-biT(h3s goez, they just suck wet farts out of dead pigeons. There's just nothing there. A McGee's adolescent punk rock grrl fixation (cf baby lemonade) is pretty embarrasing, really.

hey! Another thing abt "stylistic quirks" is that they can be quite identifiable, IE if a poster tends to pepper his, screeds with too, many, commas, sends down multiple short posts, and sings the praises ov whatever shiz. Mr McGee puts out, it isn't too hard to figure out who it is, even if they use different names, knowwarramean, like??

x0x0

outsider art works even if the songs aren't as 'good' as the magnetic goddamned fields because, as the name implies, it's outside your field of experience. people who just want to hear pretty songs about their boring lives need to have weird tuneless music forced upon them

Ethan, I think you might be misinterpreting what I wrote. I can't completely endorse the idea of outsider art (for the most part) because a lot of the people who listen to it don't want to hear something outside their field of experience, they do so because they think it's entertaining or funny...at the sake of someone else's mental illness or what have you. I know not everyone who listens to Wesley Willis, etc. are like this, but a lot of people are.

I like a few of the artists mentioned in this thread, but I don't put them in the categories of outsider art or "bad" because I don't see them that way... To me there's only music I like and music I don't.

i wasn't trying to be confrontational, i just think you shouldn't count out the inherent novelty factor of 'outsider music'. if an indie (or any traditionally restrictive music fan format) type decides to like odb or aphex twin or whatever because it's 'funny' that the artist in question is 'crazy', i say better off. whenever i first got into kraftwerk i couldn't get over the fact that they were ROBOTS and sang about COMPUTERS, it was a while later that i realised how amazing the music actually was (please keep in mind i was very young at the time). you can't deny the importance of image in music, and that most people don't objectively listen to everything and decide if they like it or not. the entire focus of this thread is that there's some stuff that you wouldn't normally like but do. it takes novelty (sometimes of percieved mental illness, especially in 'experimental' music) to get most people to broaden their musical horizon. actually that gives me an idea for a thread. hm.

hey! Another thing abt "stylistic quirks" is that they can be quite identifiable, IE if a poster tends to pepper his, screeds with too, many, commas, sends down multiple short posts, and sings the praises ov whatever shiz. Mr McGee puts out, it isn't too hard to figure out who it is, even if they use different names, knowwarramean, like??

How is that relevant to the thread? It's not.

Exactly what do you hate about Mr. McGee? North America laps up poptones while England and Australia laps up hear'say.

'nuff said.

Now go and form that prog-rock band....Mr. Synth.

Have you heard Corky from Life Goes On. At first it's funny and on second listen it's just bizarre.

I would like to nominate Joe Meek's later work to this thread.

PS. It's baby amphemtamine. Ping Pong Bitches are brilliant cause they are bad. That's sometimes harder than being just brilliant.

Always, the king of this thread is Kim Fowley. Anyone up for a discussion?

Ty, we *know* that you and "Paul" DoomPatrol23 share a bedroom. It's cool. We aren't judgmental here on ILM. S'only natural you write like one another: just like Courtney and Kurt! That's cool too!!

But are they cash cows or evil whores?

Then there's Otis and Ally always talking about something or other being great because it's so horrible, and I don't think they mean in an incompetent Shaggs/Wesley Willis kind of way, though I'm baffled as to what it is that they *do* mean (not a putdown, BTW - just curious).

Umm...I'm an evil whore.

I think Kim Fowley's Byrds stuff is terrible and cancer for the byrds but on a solo trip, I think he is allllriighhhtt.....

(PS. I outed myself in an earlier thread.....no, I'm not masquing my posting writing style, cause I thought that it would be really sad...)

Taking sides: Goblin vs Asia

Goblins make me feel like I'm doing alot ALOT of acid again.

Asia? When I was ten I copied the album cover from a stoner cousin and won first prize in school. Early prog rock sensation, that I was.

didn't goblin do the music for dawn of the dead? that stuff was great.

all I know is suspira..........and other argentino movies.

I am a poptones fan. Just the music. I hear ALOT of negativity regarding that. If I could hear some opinions (without mentioning alan mcgee, but of the music itself, and why it is so bad.....) that would be appreciated.

Mind you, opinions regarding the bands on poptones. Not Alan Mcgee.

Personally this is my opinion:

El Vez = belonging into its so bad its an oddity. I love oddities in music.

Montgolfier Brother = pretty ace jazz folk.

Gnac - I love gnac.

a quiet revolution - a sublte record with background grooves.

Outrageous Cherry - so so guitar band, not terribly exciting for me, but it's good guitar pop.

beachbuggy - good bloody fun.

tasha lee - beautiful folk music.

cosmics - great beach boy melodies - don't believe me, check morning sun and emily darling.

hives - punk rock soul boys....check cover of curtis mayfield...

bellrays - blow my fuck off mind ala ilk and tina turner. this is soul.

captain soul - that album would have been a classic ep. sounds a bit rushed but lovin' spoonful very apparent.

oranger - reminds me of a psychedelic la band from sixties that you stumble upon. quiet vibration land is good psychedelic fun without the drugs.

le volume courbe - moe tucker covering my bloody valentine on hank williams' guitar.

and the rest, it's interesting....watching it grow. It excites me. Not all of it is classic but it's going to be a good force for music.

But I like twisted nerve stuff and the tyde, so what do I know?

Just the music. I'm curious. The pooptones lollies secretary does not need apply (ps. I did give her band a listen and I think it's dreadful riot grrl scenester stuff and I had an open mind i.e. before we decided to take a dislike to each other...so...umm...IN YER FACE : - )).

I'm not interested in opinions of alan mcgee but the music. I think it's good that the independant music scene is supporting music when it's obvious it's in a dire state. Why is that wrong?

In england its interesting because the reviews of poptones records are either good or they seem to be reviewing alan mcgee without even listening to the band.

North America is really digging it. And I love retro sunshine sounds (like association along comes mary, millennium, etc..etc..).......

oh shit...

I'm flying to london this weekend to be wtih my girl and i'm not going to be around. should be interesting.

mark s. sorry for the crap before but alan is my friend. I stick up for my friends (and be a bastard if need be) regardless if they are single moms on the dole or own a record company guy. *shrugs shoulders*

So, insult the crap out of me, I will be interested to hear.

S'OK, Ty, no need to apologise to *me*: I actually tht that episode was kinda fun myself in a disgraceful way — cuz I can give out as good as as I get, I'm One Mean Queen When Buzzed — but one-on-one total rage-out war *is* unfair to other board-users, quickly boring and toxic. My original poke-fun-at-McGee story was (a) a joke, and (b) a teensy-weensy bit out of order, obviously. Historically it is a gen-u- wine *rumour*, of course — I remember first hearing it at NME in the late 80s — but as an idea of how things happen in the industry, it's plainly just silly. For one thing, journos totally live on freebies anyway (records, for a start, and trips all over), and I actually REALLY REALLY doubt this affects their judgment much (except maybe by making them jaded, in the end). Secondly, it's totally NOT in an editor's interest to donate frontcovers to people who won't sell copies of the mag. It's more than his job's worth, and the bribes JUST DON'T COME BIG ENOUGH to make him forget that. Of course no editor has to be bribed to put someone on the cover who's likely to be popular (with Hollywood stars and Vanity Fair etc etc, it's almost the other way round: the mag has to bribe the star's publicist — I mean, allegedly, oop, hope you're not buddies with Tina Brown also). I don't think McGee is corrupt: exactly the opposite, I think he's a lifelong idealist. I do think he occasionally comes across (in print) as a totally pompous twerp, also: but, y'know, idealists often do. That's what I think.

As for yr Poptones list, well, I haven't heard ANYTHING on it: cuz I'm not rich, cuz I can't work Napster, cuz my supply of rock freebies dried up many years ago. My guess is, I'd quite like some, maybe love a little, maybe really really hate some bits. That's how it's been this far with McGee's taste and mine. Enjoy London.

There is already a Poptones: Search and Destroy thread somewhere.

that's cool....I leave in a bit and just wanted to pop in and see what havoc I have wrought. But none! Oh well!

'tis funny that the more that I have been exposed to the music industry and it's been little, the more, I really despise it and want to keep out of it as much as possible. It seems more tragic than the sad annoying record clerk....

it's all a bit despairing, but however, I think that coming across in print as pompous? Maybe to the english folks who are more subdued in nature but over here it reads fine. Cultural differences always interest me.

But what has interest me is watching the rise of poptones and the people who are desperate to bring it down in a sad sort of way. I do find it affecting and rather odd the vitrioral that is poured out onto that record company in England. I suppose from what I can figure out about it, it's cause poptones arose from teh depths of a once great indie (anything pre-1994) that turned into corporate monsta' and he has had success and people can't believe in poptones in england because of the death cult of celebrity over there.

I see it all the time, whether dealing with that lollies girl over the internet or just reading the bus in england and hearing people announce their media projects on cell phones very loud. It seems it is the land of the famous and if your not you become very embittered and resent everything under the guise of being hip.

"I must be famous to be me"

I'm an idealist with music, suppose. I find that frustrating meself just 'cause I simply love rock and roll. I have no need to be hip or be part of some inner circle of hipness.

Music is just an odd beast that attracts obnoxiousness.

The amount of hatred poured out on him (re: ned, pooptones secretary, nichole) and for what? Putting out music that has affected people's lives (for me at least, Screamadelic, xtrmntr, giant steps, psychocandy, loveless). It is odd that loveless made it to the top of the list and still abuse abuse abuse. I like to work out a challenge and suppose that is it.

I do agree with about it being boring for other posters. Sometimes I do that to entertain myself or get things moving in the internet world of chat cause it shoves the conversation along. And more than a few posters here are guilty of horrid literary overdrive.

Try bellrays if you ever see it cheap. It's fantastic.

c'ya

'sides...it's rather funny, I often find myself at media shindigs and am hated. However, I have no career in music to ruin. The fun and joy I get out of that!

have to go.........

I like this thread, it's rambling and incoherent. It's the first thread I've read in ages.

Then there's Otis and Ally always talking about something or other being great because it's so horrible, and I don't think they mean in an incompetent Shaggs/Wesley Willis kind of way, though I'm baffled as to what it is that they *do* mean (not a putdown, BTW - just curious).

No need to involve Ally here, she has good taste. I'm the one who likes crap records. I like bad taste, is what it comes down to. The things I mention above ("I Got Erection", Balabanov's Brother, Dostoevsky's The Possessed, Leone's spaghetti westerns, Argento's Suspiria) were all tasteless in one way or another. But tastelessness in itself is worthless, it's only worth something if it has gall. If something takes gall to listen to, I'm just as into that too. Dolly Parton, Leif Garrett, Teena Marie - you gotta have gall to listen to them.

Tilt is one of my favorite albums, for what it's worth.

taking sides : Dread Zeppelin vs. El Vez

re: dan johnston - does anyone seriously consider him so-bad-it's- good as in, whaddaya call it, kitsch (my understanding of what that means - something like "this fails to meet any of my normal aesthetic aesthetic criteria but it's poignant/funny/or something precisely because (etc)"?)???. man i hope not. BUT, maybe something more like "i have to suspend certain of my normal aesthetic criteria to get to the kernel of real good stuff here (i.e. it's recorded badly, his singing's shaky, that type stuff)", OK i could understand that. 2 pretty different categories of stuff (aren't they?) If I like, say, a Radiohead song (i don't, but maybe if i knew more of their stuff i would) i'd have to suspend certain of *my* aesth. crit. like y'know, oh somewhere behind that horrible singing style & that miserable gtr style & that drizzly production (*my* standards, like i said) is (whatever)...y'know,...but if i just rolled up to normal regular people who like radiohead & went, Oh yeah Radiohead, so bad they're good, they'd be like , HUH?
you know?

I think, having a lack of aesthetics in the song, and with the right person it can be brilliant. I think Daniel Johnston is so bad its brilliant because through the wrongs, his soul comes out. Being off is his aesthetic and it's more human. Sort of like hearing acoustic demos of blood on the tracks..........or martin denny.