It's pretty much an article of faith among music geeks that the popular music canon is deeply flawed. "Oh yeah," we'll say, " 'Trying to Get To You' is way better than 'Jailhouse Rock,'" or "Nirvana is nothing but a third-rate Squirrel Bait," or "Too Tough to Die is really the best Ramones album." etcetera, etcetera. I believe I actually committed a few of these to print in It Takes a Worried Man (still available! Buy buy buy and keep it in print!). Of course, what anybody is saying when they say something like this is "I have better taste than the rest of the world," or, more simply, "I'm smarter and better than everybody else." Gosh, it seems kind of pathetic all boiled down like that, doesn't it?
Ahem. Anyway, my asssumption that the canon is usaully wrong was challenged recently. I noted that Belle and Sebastian lifted the "Been Caught Stealing" bass line, and this made me seek out that song for download, so I grabbed "Jane Says" and "Pets" while I was at it, and I realized that, in the case of Perry Farrell, the canon has it exactly right. Those are the only Jane's Addiction or Porno for Pyros songs you ever hear, and, strangely, they are the only Jane's Addiction or Porno for Pyros songs that don't totally suck. So, in this case, the canon is exactly right. And this got me wondering if there is any other artist with such a wide disparity in the quality of their songs. Because all three of those are really great, brilliant songs. And the rest of the output is just awful. Not a lot of middle ground there.
This got me wondering if there are any other artists with two or three songs that you might consider essential and a whole bunch of other ones that you might consider unlistenable. Hmmmmm....
