I don't want to bite the hand that feeds and criticise the 1,000 Albums To Listen To Before You Die project. I always enjoy these lists anyway, and as prolific posting phenomenon jasonaparkes has almost single-handedly demonstrated, they're a great way of stimulating debate.
All the same, I have to say that I agreed with Charlie Brooker when he complained this week that life really is too short to worry about listening to so many records. In fact, taking that column to its logical conclusion, surely a more useful list would be one that informs you of 1,000 records you can quite happily die without hearing? That way you avoid wasting time and money, as well as that odd insecure feeling you get when you fail to appreciate something that the critical community has deemed Good.
Plus, let's face it, it's more fun to slag things off than it is to praise them.
So please tuck in with your own nominations below. Let's see if we can get to 1,000 as easily as the Guardian team. To get the ball rolling here are a few of the records I hate, but those foolish critics seem to love.
Parklife, Blur
It was ever thus. You release Modern Life is Rubbish, a stone cold classic and hardly anyone buys it or likes it. You follow up with a watered-down football terrace version of the same themes and critics start saying you're the best band since the Beatles.
London Calling, the Clash In three-minute bursts, the Clash can be awesome. Over the course of an album, it's like being lectured by Citizen Smith, only without the jokes. Just get London Calling the song, Spanish Bombs and Death Or Glory and ignore the rest. Or maybe download Lovers Rock too, just to remind you how much of this album is filled with weak cod reggae filler. "Ridiculous, innit?"
Bitches Brew, Miles Davis Miles Davis didn't just push the frontiers of jazz with this record, he fell off the map and it's a brave soul indeed who bothers to follow him. Critics say: "it's one of the most remarkable creative statements of the last half-century, in any artistic form." I say, you can't listen to it in the car, can you? This album is also responsible for all the jazz-rock fusion drek that followed.
Hotel California, the Eagles If Gram Parsons weren't already dead, seeing the monster he had created in the Eagles would surely have finished him off. Only in a truly sick world could Grievous Angel lead on to this accountant-friendly wedge of plastic rock. Only in a truly sick world would more people buy it and like it... And keep on buying it today. This is music to vote for George Bush to.
I am Kurious Oranj, the Fall "How do you choose one Fall album over another?" asked one of the compilers of the Guardian list. I was faced with the same conundrum when trying to decide which one I hate the most, since they all sound so horribly similar. The answer I realised, of course, is I loath theme all equally. I just chose I am Kurious Oranj much as Mark E Smith writes his lyrics, entirely at random.
King of the Delta Blues, Robert Johnson OK, I know this is heresy and I know he influenced just about everyone you've probably ever loved. I also freely acknowledge that the challenge to "come on in my kitchen" must still rank as one of the greatest, meanest lyrics of all time... But! Have you actually tried listening to the original recordings? For pleasure? They're kind of whiny, aren't they? I'm sorry, but I prefer the Peter Green versions.
Closer, Joy Division All right, I'm not really going to argue about this album, although it's not as good as everyone makes out. But while I'm annoying people, I just couldn't resist a dig at the film Control. Overrated hypefest of the decade? A clever film for people who can't think? A gross oversimplification of a complex life made 'arty' by some cliché ridden black and white photography? Yes, yes, yes.
Houses of the Holy, Led Zeppelin Greatest rock drummer ever? Maybe John Bonham. Most godlike frontman? Possibly Robert Plant. The greatest riff? Perhaps Whole Lotta Love. The worst lyric of all time? Undoubtedly this, from No Quarter: "The dogs of doom are howling more / They carry news that must get through / To build a dream for me and you."
As for D'Yer Maker, let's not even go there.
Up the Bracket, the Libertines Since when was pub rock and mawkish nationalist sentimentality dressed up in the sixth-form poetic guise of lust for Albion revolutionary or even interesting? Never.
Definitely Maybe, Oasis If this album is, as we're so often told, the one that defined the 1990s, then the 1990s was a pint of wifebeater.
New Forms, Roni Size and Reprazent In 1997, I clearly wasn't taking the drugs you need to make this kind of clatter interesting. "It's a Jazz Thing," Roni declared, preposterously, before wrapping some double-bass and squealing vocals in with a tired break beat while the critics stroked their goatee beards in time and gave him five-star reviews instead of laughing him all the way back to Bristol.
Urban Hymns, the Verve When I first heard Slide Away on their first album A Storm in Heaven I thought the Verve were going to be the future of everything and that everything was going to be good. But then, I was 16 and a bit silly. It was the fact that Urban Hymns was so rubbish and so many more people liked it that helped me to see the harsh truth of the world: as the great Jarvis Cocker says, shit floats far more easily than cream rises and we're all forever doomed to be ruled by morons.
It doesn't help that Urban Hymns has since proven to be even more potent busker-fuel than cheap cider. Street troubadours should face reality too. You aren't a "Lucky Man". You're singing for coins on a street in Reading.
Finally, I know no one likes Coldplay anyway, but just in case no one mentions them I had to bring them in. No list of records not to listen to would be complete without a cheap shot at Chris Martin and his musical sludge, the aural equivalent of a Barrett home.
Okay, over to you. Please add your own choices, with reasons.
