Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Elite of Just Alright

A few months ago, I posted an entry about Animal Boy by the Ramones. While it has some of their well known hits (so to speak), it's definitely an album that most punk rockers would reject from their libraries but I still defended it as one of the stronger entries in the Ramones discography. I titled it "Punk Rock Confessions" and I kind of hoped that it would become a more recurring theme in future entries (that being, taking albums that are largely dismissed by fans and defending their better qualities) but then it quietly died off without a trace.

But now it's 2012 and I've decided to resurrect it in a manner of speaking. The actual premise is the same, but I've given it the new headline "The Elite of 'Just Alright'" (if you think that's a Sum 41 reference, you'd be correct) and I'm going to make a real effort to blog more about albums that really just need to take their time for their impact to be felt.

I've compiled a list of albums I hope to cover in this feature, if only to give readers an idea of what the hell I'm talking about. Maybe once you see some of these titles, you'll understand what I mean by discussing the finer points of lesser albums from an artist's catalog.

Sum 41 - Underclass Hero
Alkaline Trio - Agony and Irony
Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
Less Than Jake - In with the Out Crowd
The Offspring - Conspiracy of One
Rancid - Indestructible
Taking Back Sunday - New Again
Weezer - The Red Album (anything post-Pinkerton, really)

And so on and so forth. Quite possibly some of those late-90's Bad Religion albums, too. Or maybe just a band's newest album because that's usually the most fashionable one to hate. Of course these albums will have their fans, but these are generally the albums that fans will cite as the worst and this series aims to give them their spot in the limelight.

No comments:

Post a Comment