The author, with some of the offend­ing articles

Chalkills, the XTC fan­site, wants to help you sift through the detri­tus of your music col­lec­tion, pronto: One Hun­dred Albums You Should Remove from Your Col­lec­tion Imme­di­ately (spot­ted on DGM­Live).

I own (or once owned) a whop­ping 26% of these over­rated (so they say) canon­i­cal clas­sics! Hey, Chalkhills, what did I ever do to you? I love XTC (Apple Venus and Wasp Star being two of my all-time favorite albums, hands-down), so my tastes can’t be all bad, can they? But hav­ing read your list, I find that for every one of your selec­tions that brings steam out of my ears, there’s another with which I have to begrudg­ingly agree.

So here’s my anno­tated list, includ­ing, for fun, the for­mat in which I pur­chased each offend­ing title and whether or not I even­tu­ally dis­carded it:

2. U2 — The Joshua Tree
20^th Anniver­sary Edi­tion boxed set
U2’s true mas­ter­piece Achtung Baby was yet to come, but the com­plex depth of that record wouldn’t have been pos­si­ble with­out the unironic earnest­ness of The Joshua Tree. And yes, maybe I’m a snob (not to men­tion old) for upgrad­ing to the remas­tered anniver­sary edi­tion, but just the other day I lis­tened to the revived record­ing of “Moth­ers of the Dis­ap­peared” with my jaw lit­er­ally hang­ing open and the prover­bial chills run­ning up and down my spine.

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3. Nir­vana — Nev­er­mind
cas­sette (dis­carded)
It was a gift, I swear. While I intel­lec­tu­ally under­stand what the mass-market break­through of Nir­vana did for music (basi­cally, spark­ing a fresh explo­sion of so-called “alter­na­tive” music com­pa­ra­ble to punk’s effect on a stag­nant world of disco and sta­dium rock in the early 1970s), I always pre­ferred the rock ‘n’ roll songcraft of Pearl Jam to the loud ‘n’ sloppy depres­sion of Nirvana.

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5. The Bea­t­les — Let It Be
cd, The “Naked” ver­sion
Any antipa­thy towards the Bea­t­les seems a bit strange com­ing from an XTC fan­site — surely Andy Par­tridge and Colin Mould­ing are acolytes. Do I still have to dis­card Let It Be if I own the McCartney-approved “Naked” edi­tion, as opposed to the orig­i­nal with Wall-of-Schmaltz orches­tral over­dubs by Phil Spec­tor? Let it Be is not my favorite Bea­t­les long-player (that would def­i­nitely be The White Album), and obvi­ously one the lads tossed off at the tail end of their (actu­ally quite brief) asso­ci­a­tion. But how is that any dif­fer­ent, really, from their early quickie LPs recorded in mere hours with the aid of amphetamines?

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7. The Police — Syn­chronic­ity
cas­sette (dis­carded)
I agree with Chalkhills’ assess­ment that Syn­chronic­ity is a sur­pris­ingly dark album for a main­stream plat­inum hit, but I believe that’s exactly what makes it spe­cial. What other band, at the peak of their com­mer­cial suc­cess, released such a para­noid, neu­rotic album? OK, maybe Radiohead’s Kid A.

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8. Lou Reed — Trans­former
vinyl
Agreed. “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Satel­lite of Love” are both mas­ter­pieces, but I couldn’t name a sin­gle other song from the album. Am I redeemed by own­ing the vinyl edi­tion? It must be said that it earns extra Cool Points for being pro­duced by David Bowie, but the back cover pho­to­graph of Lou with the boner in his tight jeans is just plain gross.

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9. Miles Davis — Bitches Brew
Com­plete Bitches Brew Ses­sions boxed set
Yes, I am that poseur that owns the Com­plete Ses­sions boxed set. I have to very, very strongly object to Chalkhills’ dis­missal here (and I do I detect a strong anti-jazz bias?). Miles changed music for­ever when he plugged in to rock, fusion, and funk. Try­ing to pre­tend Bitches Brew never hap­pened is as fruit­less as still com­plain­ing about Bob Dylan going rock (or coun­try, or Chris­t­ian, etc…) or The Sex Pis­tols giv­ing the world the fin­ger. The dif­fer­ence is that it still sounds fresh and new.

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12. Led Zep­pelin — Phys­i­cal Graf­fiti
vinyl
I love me some Zep­pelin, but I have to agree that Phys­i­cal Graf­fiti isn’t a keeper. It is, how­ever, bet­ter than its follow-up Pres­ence (but that’s not say­ing much).

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19. Beck — Mid­nite Vul­tures
cd (sold)
Agreed. I lis­tened to it once, and then sold it as quickly as I could. Blech!

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21. Derek and the Domi­noes — Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
cd (sold)
I could not agree more: two bril­liant songs in “Layla” and “Lit­tle Wing,” padded out with a for­get­table batch of filler. Leg­end has it the substance-abusing Clap­ton lit­er­ally does not recall record­ing the album.

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22. The Who — Tommy
vinyl (triple gate­fold with lyric book­let)
I don’t dis­agree that Tommy is loaded down with a lot of silli­ness and filler, but hey, it’s a rock opera, and the first one at that. What do you expect?

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26. U2 — Zooropa
cd
I firmly, absolutely dis­agree. Zooropa may be a prod­uct of its time (the cut ‘n’ paste post­mod­ern media over­loaded 1990s), but it includes some of U2’s all-time best songs, includ­ing the title track and Stay (Far­away So Close). The mul­ti­lay­ered pro­duc­tion by Flood and Brian Eno may make the songs “sound weird,” but it also rewards a life­time of repeat listens.

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32. The Flam­ing Lips — The Soft Bul­letin
cd
I regret­tably agree. Give me Yoshimi Bat­tles the Pink Robots any day, but I just can’t get into this one.

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34. Dave Brubeck — Time Out
cd
Blas­pheme! Blas­pheme! Again with the jazz hate! I was not aware any­body dis­liked this album. What’s wrong with you? If you had included Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on your list, I think I would have had an aneurism.

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39. Wilco — Being There
cd (sold)
Like the rest of the world, I loved Yan­kee Hotel Fox­trot, so I sought out some older Wilco albums. And I sus­pect like most of those peo­ple, I got rid of them.

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42. The Police — Zeny­atta Mon­datta
cd
Dis­agree! Zeny­atta Mon­datta is my favorite Police album. Granted, “De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da” is the epit­ome of pop silli­ness (except for maybe “Louie Louie” and R.E.M.‘s “Stand”), but the rest of the album is full of clas­sic reggae-inflected new wave pop.

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44. Jane’s Addic­tion — Nothing’s Shock­ing
cd
As Perry Far­rell him­self once sang, “Stop!” Jane’s Addiction’s debut stu­dio album Nothing’s Shock­ing is a fan­tas­tic batch of songs. Perry Farrell’s wild per­sona and Dave Navarro’s famously louche lifestyle got all the press, but my god, haven’t you lis­tened to the rhythm sec­tion? Jane’s Addic­tion proved that prog could live with­out shame in a new world after Led Zep­pelin, and they got even bet­ter in their next album Rit­ual De Lo Habit­ual (before self-destructing, alas).

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50. Cocteau Twins — Heaven or Las Vegas
cd
I don’t have a really strong opin­ion about it, but I enjoy lis­ten­ing to it from time to time. I didn’t even know it was espe­cially pop­u­lar. Sorry, jeez.

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51. Radio­head — I Might be Wrong
cd
It’s a fair state­ment that most live albums begin life as con­trac­tual oblig­a­tions. But what actu­ally does bother me more about I Might Be Wrong is that it’s basi­cally an EP sold at LP prices. That said, the per­for­mances are strong, and prove that the weird, arty music on Kid A and Amne­siac can and really do come to life on stage.

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54. Tori Amos — Under the Pink
cd (sold)
I loved Tori’s offi­cial solo debut Lit­tle Earth­quakes, but I sus­pect my sen­si­tive teenager self may have been crush­ing on the cute & quirky red­head at the piano.

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55. Arrested Devel­op­ment — 3 Years, 5 Months, & 2 Days In The Life Of…
cd (sold)
”…non-threatening rap-lite for sen­si­tive white lib­er­als who want to “keep it real” and expe­ri­ence hip-hop safely.” Zing! Busted.

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64. Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon
30^th Anniver­sary SACD
Again, blas­pheme! Yes, enough copies of Dark Side of the Moon exist on this planet to form their own con­ti­nent, but don’t you think there is a rea­son for that? Mere momen­tum alone can’t be enough to explain its appeal. If you want to sin­gle out one Pink Floyd album for being over­rated and over­pur­chased, please allow me to direct you to The Wall, which unlike most other Floyd albums, appeals to sullen imma­ture teenagers but does not grow in sophis­ti­ca­tion as they do.

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65. Sarah McLach­lan — Fum­bling Towards Ecstasy, Sur­fac­ing
cds (still on my shelf but I really ought to sell them)
Ouch! You got me here. I once liked both of these, but quickly fell out of love with them. I main­tain there are some decent songs under­neath the slick adult con­tem­po­rary overproduction.

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69. U2 — War
vinyl
U2 charts no less than three times on this haters list, rival­ing the Bea­t­les and the entire genre of jazz for rais­ing Chalkhills’ bile. I sug­gest revis­it­ing “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day” and tell me if the drums don’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

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80. R.E.M. — Out of Time
cd
OK, maybe it’s not their best, and it is espe­cially dis­ap­point­ing for hav­ing come right after the leg­endary, essen­tial album Green. But “Shiny Happy Peo­ple” is maybe the best 3/4-time pop song ever, and the whole sec­ond half is superb.

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83. Grate­ful Dead — any album
Reck­on­ing (lp) & Infrared Roses (cd)
Yep, I picked up a sec­ond­hand vinyl copy of Reck­on­ing for pen­nies and it’s pretty loose and ram­bling, even for the Dead. But I do dig the crazy elec­tronic jams on Infrared Roses, man.

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90. Sting — Ten Summoner’s Tales
cd (sold)
I’ll cop to lik­ing “Fields of Gold” back in the day. Oh god, did I just admit that out loud on the internet?

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There, done. Finally, I just want to say that yes, I do have a sense of humor and I get the point of Chalkhill’s rant. Respond­ing to their List of Hate was just an excuse for me to scrib­ble out a few words about some of the dusti­est old arti­facts from my music col­lec­tion. Thanks!

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