Nevermind The Posers

TNT’s Top 5
5. 98 Degrees, 98 Degrees and Rising – I feel nothing but shame and embarrassment.
4. Will Smith, Big Willie Style – Guilty.  Hahahaha, all I can think of when I hear the name Will Smith is this:
3. Dashboard Confessional, The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most – I have listened to this album once, from track one to track ten, and vowed to never play it again.  I remember feeling so depressed and that life was not worth listening to.  Sorry Chris Carrabba, your music is definitely not for me.
2. Mariah Carey, Rainbow – Seriously bought this album because it had a 98 Degrees song on it…and to piss mom off.  She banned Mariah Carey from our household because she could never stand Carey’s fake and phony airy sounding notes.  Mama knows best, wish I listened.
1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol. 1 – What the hell was I thinking?  Wow.  I could have just put on the radio at that time and saved 20 bucks.  I remember keeping up with the collection to Vol. 5, but they were so expensive and released way too close together.  RIP Bob Mercer, I will always remember you for signing the Sex Pistols and Queen, but will try to forget that you created the Now That’s What I Call Music! series.

Angela’s Top 5
5. White Town
4. Ricky Martin
3. Hanson, MMMBop
2. Backstreet Boys, Backstreet Boys
1. Titanic Soundtrack

Dan’s Top 5
5. Eiffel 65
4. Lindsay Lohan
3. Quad City DJs
2. Sisqo
1. Soul Decision

Klone’s Top 5
Money should come with a warning label…once spent, you cannot get it back.  Keep that in mind as you buy goods that may seem cool now, but fail to stand up to the test of time.
5. “Original Television Soundtrack: LOST Season 1” composed by Michael Giacchino – Okay…I’m an insane LOST fan.  When this disc was released I was like, “Wow, maybe I could use some of this for the LOST segment on my podcast.”  (At the time I was in full production swing on my podcast “Hollow9ine” (http://hollow9ine.podomatic.com), which would feature a lot of discussion of LOST.  I still listen to this when I go hiking on the Palisades in North NJ.  It kinda makes me feel like I’m on the island…which in itself is embarrassing enough.
4. “Original Television Soundtrack: LOST Season 2” composed by Michael Giacchino – Yeah, somewhat of a continuation of #5.  This volume contained more of the regular themes that weren’t included on Volume 1.
3. “Spanaway” by Seaweed – The 1995 release from the Tacoma, Washington-based band.  The hit single off this disc was a song called “Start With” which was getting a lot of radio play at the time of the album’s release.  It was cool enough that I ran out and bought the CD, only to find that there was one other song worth listening to on the album called “Magic Mountain Man”, the rest was a complete waste of time.  Of all the random CDs I bought for a single song that I liked, this one has always been, hands down an embarassing pick-up.  Can’t believe I bought that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaweed_(band)
2. “The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Stephen King’s The Stand”  composed by W.G. “Snuffy” Walden – Okay, now to this composer’s credit, he scored huge iconic tv shows like  “thirtysomething”, “The Wonder Years”, “Roseanne”, “Ellen” and “My So-Called Life”.  He also scored the TV Mini-Series adaptation of Stephen King’s epic novel “The Stand”.  I ordered this CD through one of the music stores at the local mall (as this was before the days of Amazon.com, eBay and iTunes), and I was expecting it to be a compilation CD of the actual commercial songs featured in the film (including 80s hit “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House).  Instead it was the score.  The CD grew on me, as I refused to let it just become a coaster, but I always had a slight twinge of pain in my heart when I realized I was expecting something different when I purchased this.  Too bad I was too young to realize that I should’ve done something about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.G._Snuffy_Walden
1. “Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities” by The Circle Jerks – Who would’ve thought an obscure cameo on backing vocals by Debbie Gibson for the track “I Wanna Destroy You” would’ve gotten the attention of so many people who didn’t even know who The Circle Jerks were (myself included).  I basically picked this CD up because of a short segment I caught on MTV news in the spring of 1995, where they were covering Gibson’s surprise appearance with the band at their CBGB’s performance in support of the CD release of “Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities”.  I wasn’t even a big Debbie Gibson fan, so the fact that this made me want the CD doesn’t  make sense, and that’s why it is my #1 “I can’t believe I bought that.”  The CD was a total piece of crap, even “I Wanna Destroy You”, the song with Gibson’s cameo backing vocals, wasn’t cool enough to defend the purchase of this disc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_Jerks

Mark’s Top 5
5. Groove Theory, Groove Theory – What made this album purchase so humiliatingly awful wasn’t so much that I spent money on this wreck, but the reason why I bought it in the first place.  I had heard that my first girlfriend (who at that point in 1996 had dumped me for someone else, hooray for the mid-nineties) really liked the song, and in an effort to win her back, naturally assumed that buying her the album featuring her favorite song would do the trick.  Nope.
4. Scott and Todd- Scam-A-Mania ’96, Vol. 5 – This is probably one of the most embarrassing albums that I have ever purchased.  Also a “gem” of the mid-nineties, I was just a casual fan of radio, trying to make the morning easier with a “Morning Zoo” atmosphere to cheer me up, not knowing that better and funnier radio was out there. Featuring lame, hack “phone-scams” and stupid song parodies that thousands of people each day willingly consumed, ignoring the awful puns and insulting humor (with songs about Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Mad-Cow disease, etc.).  I really have no excuse for buying this excrement.
3. Skee-Lo, I Wish – For some reason, nothing seems to cement one’s pure whiteness than to acknowledge that you know all the words to this low-key but catchy mid-nineties hip-hop tune.  Am I embarrassed by this?  Yes, but do I care?  No.  This was actually a great little tune that went with the flow of real hip-hop (back when it had jazz influences) that was the centerpiece of a very decent album.  And the production by Skee-Lo himself showed that he wasn’t too shabby as a producer either.  Where have you gone, Skee-Lo?
2. Quad City DJs- Get On Up and Dance – Who didn’t wanna “ride this train” back in the mid-nineties, as this insanely infectious tune invaded both the airwaves and my heart for a good part of 1996.  But that was then, this is now, and I really have no clue what I am going to do with this decade old dust collector now.
1. The Vengaboys- Up and Down, The Party Album! – Ahhh, yet another album featuring a colossal hit dance song utilizing the art of sexual innuendo by way of transportation references.  Once I was off of the Venga bus, I somehow was convinced to come back to their bubblegum-dance fold with  “Boom Boom Boom Boom”, where those four magical words told you just what would occur if you went into the singer’s room (thank god the singers in this case were women). However, after 1999, I had my fill of the Vengabus and avoided their usual routes (KTU, Z100, WPLJ, the Jersey Shore, Kearny, to name a few) after finally discovering real dance music.