Your Biggest Musical Disappointment.......

album, song, artist, genre, live show, whatever.....
when was the gap between expectation and reality the greatest?

I got two:

Bill Haley & His Comets

...not actually that bad, but when I was a kid I think I read somewhere that Mr Haley "invented rock n roll", so I was expecting some hard rockin, raw, high energy explosiveness.....
....after readjusting my expectations and realizing I must have misunderstood something, I came around to enjoying his slightly corny, jumped up western swing (and the album I got had an instrumental called "malaguena" which did kind of rock...)
....years later, when I heard Johnny Burnette's "Train Kept a Rollin", I realized that's what I had thought that Comets album was going to sound like....

------------------

Goldie - Saturns Return

...utter crap

(Timeless is such a great experience on a good sound system, so yeah, my expectations were high.....)

The Rolling Stones. To me they are no more than just overrated jerks who write melodically dead emotionally dry music. The most overrated band I know of, actually. The Rolling Stones receive way too much praise and credit for everything from influence to the quality of their hooks. I'd give them a one at best. That said, there are a bunch of Stones songs that I do like (even a couple that I love) and I can easily say Beggar's Banquet is a really good album, but for the most part they really leave me cold. Sorry, this is just how I feel.

I feel much the same about the Stones; whatever there is to get, I don't (though I've tried, many times). A handful of good tunes, definitely, but I have a more difficult time reconciling their iconic stature with their actual music than any other legendary band I can think of.

My two big answers are the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead. In the first case, I read "avant-garde geniuses" and "inventors of punk" and I heard boring songs by people who couldn't play their instruments. In the latter case, I heard "rock band that improvises" and I heard...boring songs by people who could play their instruments, but couldn't play them together and couldn't figure out when to stop playing.

jesus

i was pretty disappointed when i saw kris novaselic talk to a bunch of college students and he just bitched about graffiti.

Myself

The state of hip-hop outside of the US (perhaps the UK could be the excluded here).

the second strokes album

All music is ultimately disappointing because you expect it to somehow elevate ththe quality of your garbage life and yet it doesn't

― shmurda on da shmorient shmexpress

i haven't heard that, but there's no way it could live up to that title.........

"poptimism"

Weezer green album.

Mouse on Mars - Idiology

MoM was my favourite contemporary act, until this album came out with its awful indie vocals and pointless string interludes. A lot of electronic acts have gone to the shitter when they all of sudden they decide they want to be rockers (see: The Prodigy, 2 Lone Swordsmen, the aforementioned Goldie, etc), but with MoM the disappointment was huge, because they had such an unique and attractive electronic sound before this. TBH the bits from later MoM albums that I've heard have been even worse (the nadir being their collaboration with the mumbling rock band "singer"), but by then I'd already accepted they'd become crap, which wasn't yet the case with this album.

count me in the 'not getting the Velvets or the Stones' club too.

An Aphex Twin album that was supposedly the greatest innovation ever but sounded like stuff I was listening to in 1983. Not a crushing disappointment though tbh.

AR Kane '69' (is that what it's called?) and Arthur Russell's 'World of Echo', both of which I bought when they were released and both of which sailed in one ear and out the other.

Years ago I was just starting to get into reggae music and I found myself rifling around in one of those Our Price racks with CDs that had lost their sleeves. I came across an album called 'Dub Housing' by a guy called Pere Ubu and thought 'that should do'.

Getting back to my uni halls, I was disappointed to find that instead of the bassy Jamaican extravaganza I'd been hoping for, it turned out to be badly-played surf music with a guy singing like someone slowly letting the air out of a balloon.

Nearly threw it in the bin right then and there. So glad I didn't.

An Aphex Twin album that was supposedly the greatest innovation ever but sounded like stuff I was listening to in 1983. Not a crushing disappointment though tbh.

― Letsby Avenue (Tom D.), Friday, November 28, 2014 11:20 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Syro isn't that bad, Tom.

I don't even know what that means.

It Was Written

So glad I didn't.

Happy Ending!

(you heard my "Modern Dance" story?)

no?

OK...

Radio 210 football match, promises local celebs, actually a whole bunch of people that work for the studio, their team. Steve Wright reports back to studio, occasionally chucks out a bunch of singles to keep people interested.

There was a post-match disco, working mens club type of thing, they do a spot-prize for free albums, so loads are doing the rock and roll Grease stuff, or being in the mood for dancing, my lot weren't bothered only there for the beer.

Anyway, the family next to me, their daughter gets a freebie from Stevie, whoa it's "The Modern Dance" Pere Ubu. She rushes back to Granma, who says "Ooo lovely, I like Disco music"

There's a record destined to be unappreciated. What could I tell them? (I didn't even have one myself. Ever wished you did the hucklebuck when you had the chance?)

Actually, that'd be my biggest disappointment: Not getting that, then.

(fwiw, I did get the Max Wall single on Stiff records, that day)

i can just imagine: 'Ermm, actually i think you'll find, ladies, that this is not 'disco' music in the traditional sense of the word, rather Dada-esque proto-post punk from the late seventies. May I suggest that in order to avoid further disappointment you hand over the item to yours truly'.

Would have ended messily..

The 3rd Le Tigre album really crushed me, but I think it was my expectations that were too high. I was a huge fan of the first 2 albums. I'm one of only a few people I know that loves and respects the second as much as the first. The 3rd just felt flat and paint-by-numbers.

actually, my biggest disappoinment as a kid was seeing all the Grateful Dead t-shirts and posters and envisioning the most psyched-out, balls tripping, mind-bending music of all time and then finding out they were a jug band with long solos.

^
That.

t-bomb

One of mine would have been the realization that most "supergroups" suck

post-Eno Talking Heads

R.E.M.'s Green

Going Blank Again

actually, my biggest disappoinment as a kid was seeing all the Grateful Dead t-shirts and posters and envisioning the most psyched-out, balls tripping, mind-bending music of all time and then finding out they were a jug band with long solos.

― ancient texts, things that can't be pre-dated (President Keyes), Sunday, November 30, 2014 1:30 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^
That.

― Hideous Lump, Sunday, November 30, 2014 2:04 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I figured they would be like Iron Maiden.

These are all albums that I remember rushing out to buy and being totally crushed after I first listened to them.

Antony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light (This has grown on me but I thought it was a massive step down after the previous album which was perfect)

Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars (Supposed to be his big pop moment but ended up being incredible bland apart from Going to a Town which is the only keeper)

Divine Comedy - Bang Goes the Knighthood (One of my favourite bands ever. After four years away this is just such a half arsed record. Stop making songs that are just you listing things Neil!)

Magnetic Fields - I (How does this album manage to have more filler on it than 69 Love Songs? It does contain three of his best songs with I Don't Believe You, I Thought You Were my Boyfriend and It's Only Time)

Morrissey - You Are the Quarry (Like many others I was so excited for his return but I remember hearing this on my way home from work and my heart sank a little as every badly produced plodding song went by. The two singles sound great but can't remember much else about it now)

The Streets - The Hardest Way to Make a Living (Had to look up what this was called. Looking at the track list I don't remember a single song on it now)

Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis (Thought this was just such a boring album that made Jarvis sound like he was 100 years old. Could not understand the hype it got at all)

Johnny Boy - Johnny Boy (You are the Generation is one of my favourite singles ever but the album was just so weak all the way through)

Being a teenager in the 70s when Rod Stewart was amazing and so rock and then seeing what he became.

Also, Pearl Jam, Binaural, god do I hate that album (so do they, pretty much).

St. Etienne - Good Humour

The first time I saw that beautiful cover on the insanely priced import my heart skipped a beat. Still, I was broke and the price really was insulting. About a month after, when i had finally managed to save the cash, I grabbed a copy off the shelves and asked to listen to it before buying. I'm glad I did. To this day I can't understand why it is so highly rated by some people.

R.E.M.'s Green

― Brad C., Sunday, November 30, 2014 1:18 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too, at the time, but then I came to like it a lot! Maybe we should also do "Your biggest musical reappraisal."

Built To Spill - Ancient Melodies Of the Future

A quintessential momentum killing album.

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief

Don't think I ever lost interest in a band so quickly. I haven't bothered with them since it came out and don't really care to revisit their past.

Yeah, I only 'got on' with Kid A, Amnesiac I liked as well, but that was it.

The Streets - The Hardest Way to Make a Living (Had to look up what this was called. Looking at the track list I don't remember a single song on it now)

Yes - this album was analogous to the third series of Mighty Boosh in my mind. Too much fame, drugs and egotism stifling all the original charm and creativity that should have been present on the third offering.

I don't understand how anyone could be disappointed by HTTT if they liked Kid A / Amnesiac - it's not a huge qualitative step down or change in style from those records. Maybe a little more rock-y but...?

eephus, i think "biggest reassessment" would be interesting as well....
probly lotsa "loved 'em when i was fourteen" type bands, but curious to see how many "acquired tastes" pop up too.....

i was pretty let down by the Red Shoes (Kate Bush). This was the first album I ever got as a pre-release, a tape via someone who worked in radio months before it came out, and it kind of killed me I was so let down by it. It's grown on me in recent years but I still think it's her worst record.

Funny, you said Good Humor by St. Etienne. I feel the same way. I was very disappointed by it when it came out. Put it on last week to see if I like it better and picked the needle up halfway through track 3, side 1. The first three SE albums are classics though.

I've been thinking on this for a while, still tough, but I think it's gotta be:

Talking Heads - True Stories

brimstead -- you haven't been a bit holier-than-thou

I wonder if there is as much buildup now when it's easier to hear things quickly. I don't read about things for long any more before I go hear them, so there isn't as much chance to be strongly disappointed. But wow, when you had to plunk down nine bucks and get the shrinkwrap off....

As for favorite artists, I did develop a weird tendency to just expect to be disappointed after a few albums by everybody, to kind of a chilling extent. I'm not a very loyal fan. I nearly feel bad about this.

Multiple xp's iow

xps if y'all are cool with it then I have no right to complain on yr behalf, just thought Vic's tone was excessive (not that I am one to point fingers there, but w/e)

when you had to plunk down nine bucks and get the shrinkwrap off....

OTM

sorry for taking offense, carry on.

bring on further disappointments!

It was humorist(horse)'s use of the word "boring" that set me off, i guess. It's a word that drives me up the wall for some reason, maybe because it can rudely imply that people are seeing something that isn't there... which is a fine argument to make! and critics shouldn't be nice all the time. but just saying "boring" by itself is ehhh boring

All's cool.

I'm dealing with so much pent-up rage over Brown, Garner etc and dealing with thinly veiled racism in my neighborhood that to come in here and have someone rail at me for calling a band "power pop" is a positively delightful, heart-warming experience, and I feel nothing but good will to my pop-taxonomically offended interlocutor. I'm dead serious.

"Good will toward..." I meant

And Vic: sorry for assuming you're a "he". Feel free to correct

collardo OTM on all points and yes I am very upset about all that shit as well, sorry again for projecting

I remember being really really bummed out by the Legendary Pink Dots' Shadow Weaver, I was broke in the early 90's and had bought it new for , y'know, probably $16 or so. it's generally rated as one of the weakest albums (otm), and it followed The Maria Dimension which is a consensus high point in the discography. 22 years later and I can still recall the "I could have eaten for a few days on that" feeling, along with the "should I ever buy anything by this band again" feeling

fwiw I still have the fucking thing b/c I am a dumbass completist, plus it does have a few solid tracks which is all I need to keep a CD around

I'm a MANNNN, yes I am & I can't help but love you so....

Yeah very much enraged over cops getting away with murder again and again, and ridiculous excuses for. Which tend suspiciously to get super-micro, as if there weren't some sort of larger patterns or anything.

somebody who is totally into Shadow Weaver should get in here and argue with me, where's jjjusten when you need him

now that I think about it I could probably have eaten for close to a week on $16 in 1992! bread, eggs, beans, rice, greens. CDs really were a scam, weren't they?

Mass disappointment: I think there's a disturbance in the force, or the farce, at the temporal moment when Peter Frampton's "I'm in You" appearance. I don't know how people now feel about the pop juggernaut/endurance test that was Frampton Comes Alive, but that next album & single with its snicker-producing title....I mean, wow. I can remember hearing it: the new Frampton single! (I had been a fan, I was like 13 or 14) and then it goes on: "I'm in YOUUU....You're in MEEEEEE"

What an odd phenomenon that was. "Comes Alive" has to be the album with the least subsequent influence in proportion to its popularity, like, ever.

Btw I always thought of Leo Sayer as the reductio ab absurdum of Frampton, and Richard Simmons as the reductio ad absurdum of Sayer.

I think you are right with the FCA popularity-to-influence level. Although the career winner has to be John Denver. He was inescapable. Now quite escapable.

Richard Simmons always reminded me of Leo Sayer. Sayer though had this oddball appearing in mime makeup thing going on for a while that isn't very Frampton like.

The (fake) rock critic writing the liner notes to Aja mentions at the start he has just completed a "lukewarm review" of a Leo Sayer live concert. Those notes are hysterical, for years I thought they were real.

The albums made possible by In a Silent Way are much better than IASW itself.

which albums do you have in mind?

The Necks discography, for one.

the necks was a big disappointment indeed. everything i heard from them was so bloody repetitive. a positive surprise in this kind of instrumental, calm & slow music was bohren und der club of gore. really sublime night music with a dark undertone.

sorry i think i got it wrong, you didn't cite the necks as disappointment. still i didn't get them.

I have a Necks' album and to compare in any way to 'In a Silent Way' would be laughable.

I have a lot of disappointments about genres not being what I expected or not having enough of the elements I liked best or bands going in a direction I wasn't as fond of, but generally in both cases I don't think I can blame them for not creating the sort of music I want to hear.

xp: About 8,540 results for "the necks" "in a silent way"

It isn't a novel comparison. One could also look at Hassell or late Talk Talk for other interesting directions taken from IASW. It's certainly a great album, but like many great albums, I find its influence to be much greater than the actual sound, in hindsight.

I love the Necks (and have been lucky enough to see them live) and love IASW and am glad I don't have to choose, but if I did have to choose only one to ever hear again, I'd pick that 39 minutes of magic over the Necks entire discog.

I feel sorry for anyone who finds disappointment in the wondrous beauty of The Necks.

never heard of Hassell and have avoided Necks because of the name, but may investigate.....
yeah, bohren & der club of gore are excellent ....
Sanpaku, did you hear IASW after having already heard Necks, Hassell, Talk Talk, etc?

Jon Hassell, in case of confusion.

I don't think I can blame them for not creating the sort of music I want to hear.

Which reminds me, when I finally got a copy of "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", having heard bits and pieces of it over the years, I found it to be pretty disappointing.(xp)

Yeah, me too but again I think its because its influence has permeated a lot of things, it seems less, um, original now.

@MostlyClean

I'm only slowly getting to classic jazz (besides the Davis/Mingus/Coltrane canonical picks). I'd heard modal Miles and electric Miles, but despite having the album and seeing it namechecked for years, hadn't gotten around to hearing In a Silent Way until only a few months ago. I've had everything by Hassell for decades due to the Eno association, late Talk Talk due to Ned (I think), and The Necks (especially Hanging Gardens, Drive By, Quay, and Raab) are my most exciting musical discoveries of 2014.

So while I hear IASW, or some hypothetical album very much like IASW, as a neccessary antecedent for many musics I love, the experience of listening to it was a bit underwhelming, possibly because it was Teo Macero's first complete reedit of Miles sessions. Good selections, but disjointed. Macero perhaps hadn't quite perfected his editing technique with the thematic progression of his electric Miles constructions.

Yeah, me too but again I think its because its influence has permeated a lot of things, it seems less, um, original now.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny

Never watched it, but yeah.

I see Big Star get a mention there, much what I said upthread.

"Eiffel 65 sounds a lot less fresh today after thousands of rappers ran the Autotune gimmick into the ground."

A ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa..

Oh dear.

the new Run The Jewels. College kid music, total turnoff.

Shudder To Think - 50,000 BC

Where do you go after making an incredible math-glam masterpiece?

You make a record that even members of The Rheostatics or The Caulfields would probably dismiss as boring college rock.

I bought a cd of "A minute to pray a second to die" by the Flesh Eaters on the basis of their unassailable singles ("Sleeping Sickness" & "Pony Dress") and decided on first hearing that I had unfortunately bought a goth record. I returned it to Tower and got the Rhino collection of Link Wray, which of course.

But I bet that Flesh Eaters album is pretty good right? If I weren't so in need of getting real musical value out of my $17 or whatever it was, it would have grown on me like some kind of graveyard mold, yes?

MaresNest are you as entrenched in 90s acts as I am, at least when it comes to pop/rock?

Vic, have a listen again and decide!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hbLzz2OXk

I've never gotten deeply into this album, even though it should be right up my alley. Feel like it's got all the right attitude, but not enough hooks.

Thanks! I will.

Pony Express Record has waned in my esteem over the years while 50,000 BC has grown (shrugs).

But like, how do they compare in the end? Are you saying 50,000 has surpassed Pony for you?

Evan, if I knew more about your posting habits beyond our shared love of the Lilys I could comment, but I do like a good LOL 90's rabbit hole, Arcwelder being my most recent.

xpost Maybe? It feels like a stronger synthesis of their ethos, somehow.

Mare- That's all I was really going by myself, that and having opinions about Shudder to Think. I've been revisiting a lot of Poole myself.

Wait I want to revise that to better match the Arcwelder sound/vibe. I've been revisiting a lot of Ultra Cindy myself. There.

XP - 50,000 BC ain't all bad, Call Of The Playground is ace and Red House dates back to before PER, but Pony was singular and rarefied and I had high expectations.

I know nothing about Ultra Cindy, will investigate!

They're great! Not much discography at all but their one LP is very nice.

I love the Flesh Eaters but I am pretty goth so ymmv