Answer: The one that your neighbour puts on when she comes home at 3AM and plays on repeat for the next several hours.

For about six months my wife and I were subjected to multiple episodes of aural abuse from this album. The neighbour in question was a pleasant, single professional woman in, I would guess, her early 40s. She seemed perfectly sane when we met her on the street, or in the condo lobby. But once inside the sanctity of her own apartment, the Grease monster would emerge and demand homage. She played it first thing in the morning, when she woke up (even on, especially on, weekends). She played it when she got home from work in the evening. Did I mention that she played it in the middle of the night, or in the early morning, when she got in? It’s not a horrible album. I’m sure there are many thousands of others that are far worse. But I am now permanently scarred. I cannot bear the thought of listening to Summer Nights or You’re The One That I Want one more time.

Method of Suicide: Greased lightning.

If you listen to it at home, prepare for your friends and loved ones to point out, loudly and often, that your radio isn’t tuned in properly. In fact, rather than buying any of Mr. Hecker’s albums (he released a new one in February) why not just tune your radio to some nice static? Maybe that’s the Radio he’s referring to in the title? I’d say it was pretentious, but really, it’s not the music that’s pretending, it’s the people who claim to like it.

Method of Suicide: Death by static – preferably lightning.

It’s 1911, and you’re up to your neck in the icy waters of the north Atlantic, watching the Titanic slide majestically beneath the waves a short distance away. What’s that you hear? Friendly voices from a passing lifeboat? Sorry, no: just the sound of the band playing on…

A similar sinking feeling sets in early in the Beach Boys’ 1968 Stack-o-Tracks album when you realize that all you can hear is a backing band playing on, and on, and on. Meanwhile, everything that makes a Beach Boys record worth listening to — namely the unique individual voices and incredible vocal harmonies of Brian, Carl, Mike, Al and Dennis — have disappeared without trace. Brian does his best in the liner notes to validate the product (which incidentally was the only Beach Boys album of the 1960s that didn’t make it into the LP charts). “Making a track calls for good concentration …” he spouts. He should also have mentioned that *listening* to these 15 backing tracks calls for heroic levels of concentration and perseverance.

The album cover trumpets a “special 16-page song book with all the words, lead lines, bass lines and chords … plus full-page chart that shows guitar fingering for all the chords used in the arrangements.” Beach Boys karaoke: sounds like it could be fun? Oh, wait a minute: “Unfortunately, the limitations of the smaller CD format make it impossible to reproduce that rare and valuable booklet in a readable fashion.”

Phil Dwyer: A deliciously dreadful pick. The use of the word Karaoke on three reviews of this album on Amazon cements its place on this list.

Method of death: Instruments. Blunt.

About Simon: Simon has an eclectic taste in music. He’s got an experimental bent, an inquiring mind, and a good ear.

Demis Roussos was big in the seventies. I haven’t seen him lately, but I imagine he’s still big now. He looked a little like Luciano Pavarotti and sounded a little like Nana Mouskouri. I was introduced to this album by my twin sister’s fiance at the time. I think he was trying to reform me. He didn’t approve of my musical tastes, and was trying to show me a better way. The Demis Roussos way. I think a saner man would have realized I was not going to give up my Zeppelin, even if Demis could carry off a colourful tent better than any man alive. It sounds unlikely on this showing, but before his solo career Demis was in a Greek prog-rock outfit called Aphrodite’s Child with Vangelis. Yes, the Chariots of Fire guy. The same guy who worked with Jon Anderson of Yes.

Method of Suicide: I’m hitting the red button baby.

Demis, modelling a small tent…

Disco was responsible for so many crimes against music that I hardly feel the need to justify its inclusion as a category here. The Bee Gees inspired a spoof band (The Heebeegeebees) whose song Meaningless Songs In Very High Voices about says it all. I have nothing to add. That leaves soundtracks. I’ll admit there are some soundtracks I actually like (Empire Records, High Fidelity, Reality Bites) and some I can bear (Into The Wild, Monster’s Ball, I Am Sam). But let’s face it, most soundtracks are a money grab. Repackaged pablum for the masses. Another way to sell you Bill Withers’s Ain’t No Sunshine for the 14th time. They should not be encouraged. This one probably did more than any soundtrack in history to establish the soundtrack model for Hollywood, which is reason enough, by itself, to put it on this list. And really, does anyone, anywhere on the planet, need to hear Stayin’ Alive one more time (or How Deep Is Your Love, or Night Fever, or More Than A Woman…)?

Method of Suicide: Death by disco ball.

What’s wrong with it? Not necessarily the songs. There’s a great version of the song (I can’t get no) Satisfaction which was put out by this band called the Rolling Stones in the 1960s. And a guy called Richard Thompson covered Oops… I did it again, and actually made it sound quirky and playful, with a slightly dark side (sounds unlikely I know, but you should check it out if you don’t believe me. It’s on his 1000 Years of Popular Music album). Although I have to admit, some of the songs are pretty awful. My real problem with this album is its emotional depth: there isn’t any. It’s all bright and sparkly, like the jewels bedecking Britney’s padded cell, on the cover. Great production can cover a multitude of sins, but it can’t disguise the vapid, emotionless core of this offering.

Method of Suicide: Removal of teeth by rotary sander.

You are certainly beginning to corral some truly dreadful material.  I thought I should direct your attention to an album which without question deserves a two digit ranking.

Jazz trumpet aficionados will have no problem recognising the name Lynch,  Brian Lynch.  So when he brings his rhythm section – all names that catch the eye -  to back ‘a fresh voice on the vocal jazz horizon’,  it looks like an album worth buying despite the initial warning bells activated by the cover.

The problem with the horizon is that it is too far away for anyone to get a good look.  In this case we soon begin wishing that Earth’s curvature had done her business earlier.

The vocalist is none other than Brian’s Mum.  The Album:  It’s about Time  (Marti Lynch).

Not only the album title but many of the tracks served as warnings which were ignored:  It Could Happen To You,   Nevertheless,  Time After Time,  Change of Plan.

The last track on the album teases the listener and dares him to take what is by now the obvious step:  Will You Still Be Mine?

A search on Amazon gives a brief moment of hope.  Glancing at the Product Description,  the eye is drawn to the phrase “executed by her son, Brian Lynch”  however,  hope is lost when it becomes clear that the reference is to the “great arrangements”.

Method of Death: Executed by her son,  preferably by lynching.

About Robert: Robert is something of a Jazz aficionado – are area where I’m, sadly, a lightweight. I’ve invited Robert to contribute suggestions from time to time as the mood strikes him. I’m sure he can pick out some real stinkers for us. I’ve listened to a few tracks on this album and can confirm that it is wonderfully, magnificently, awful.

The record is something of a cult favourite with the critics, but there’s something shameful about it. Somebody thought it was a good idea to put Barrett into a studio so they could record a dispatch from the very horizon of sanity,  and sell the results to the rest of us. It’s a disturbing and ultimately amoral piece of exploitation by an industry which has pioneered innovative new categories of exploitation.  I can’t listen to it any more, because it makes me feel complicit in the whole thing. Even if the music was transcendent (it isn’t – it’s often just the kind of thing you’d expect from a madman) it would feel voyeuristic.

Method Of Suicide: Posting rude remarks about music industry executives on my blog.

Apparently this was once the state-of-the-art in the soul/funk world. How far we’ve come. It took a special talent to take an exciting, life affirming genre like funk and turn it bad, but in the 19:31 epic Do Your Thing, Hayes manages to make me feel like throwing myself off my balcony rather than listen to another boring note (usually this feeling sets in at about 5 minutes and becomes unbearably oppressive at 8 minutes). Aside from the title track, which still holds its own, the entire set sounds jaded and impossibly old-fashioned. A special shout-out to the horn section for adding another twenty years to this hoary old monster. It is one of the 1001 Albums you must hear before you die. I’ve heard it thanks. I won’t be hearing it again.

Chosen method of suicide: Defenestration

Something else considered cool in the 70s – The Afro – one of the few hairstyles with its own coastline.

Astonishingly, this album also makes it into the 1001 Albums you must hear before you die list, but the authors dosn’t give us any solid reasons why. It was hastily assembled after the duo had a hit single (the title song – Close To You). It’s got about as much edge as Ralston’s knife. Take just one example – Tim Hardin’s Reason To Believe, a song about a man who has been devastated by a cheating partner. Rod Stewart recorded it on his Every Picture Tells a Story album. He sounds like his heart is breaking. Karen Carpenter, on the other hand, sounds like she’s just been given a fluffy little kitten. The chirpy, upbeat MOR production values don’t help.

Chosen Method of suicide: Chewing my own arm off, while trapped under a boulder in the desert.

PS – That stuff at the beginning of the post? Not true.