The 50 Worst Artists in Music History
December 29, 2006
I typically try to avoid Blender Magazine at all costs. This is a sensationalistic rag (it’s Maxim Magazine’s version of Rolling Stone) that tries so hard to pander to young adults by being hip for hip’s sake it’s sickening. If you happen to love Jesus or prog rock, this is the magazine dedicated to hating everything you believe in and telling you you’re an idiot. Nice. Don’t get me wrong, if there are two groups that cry out to be mocked its Evangelicals and Prog fans! Blender goes out of its way and overboard though. I can only take so much of the elitist god hating, prog hating crap that they spew, but they did get one thing right…people love lists. I’m addicted to them myself so I find myself, from time to time, suckered into Blender’s sensationalistic, intolerant little world because they constantly make up lists…Top 100 albums of all time, Top 500 songs of all time, etc. After reading their lists, you get the impression they purposefully put them together to stir things up and create controversy, not to show us what they personally feel are the greatest, so I take them with a grain of salt. I recently discovered one of their earlier lists however, called “The 50 Worst Artists in Music History,” and it’s pretty funny. There’s a certain validity to many of their picks, but again it’s obvious they were just trying to generate noise with some of their entries. I definitely disagree with a number of their choices and once again they go out of their way to slam prog rock. I will freely admit that I personally love a lot of prog, and I think Rick Wakeman is one of the best performers I've ever seen and he's as nice and as funny as he is talented. Rick does a whole lot more than 'play two keyboards at once' and it makes me wonder if they've ever even seen him perform live. But regardless, he's had his moments of prog excess and the fact that he has a sense of humor about that and would be the first one to point that out kind of takes the wind out of their critical sails. The funniest part about this Blender list is the band quiz at the end. I laughed out loud at that. If you haven’t already seen this one check it out:
http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=466
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And then make sure you didn’t miss my Best of 2006 list… Where I’m not afraid to actually list my personal faves. I don’t list what’s hip with the critics or the kids just to try and get street cred’ or prove how cool I am (I know this seems like a weird concept to the Blender staff).
Here’s a link to my Top CD’s of 2006 list: http://obvious.typepad.com/obviouspop/2006/12/the_best_cds_of.html