I never need to hear anything by Led Zeppelin ever again. I heard them too much back in the day when played by almost every guy I knew in high school, and then you couldn’t get away from them on most of the radio stations I liked. Not that I actually dislike the band that much. They do need to be taken to task by more people for how much they stole from the blues pioneers before them, but many other bands of their ilk are just as guilty.

I never need to hear anything by Oasis ever again. Another group I don’t necessarily dislike, but overexposure to them sometimes has me thinking I do. There are some solid tunes in their catalog, but almost always with extremely daft lyrics. It is inevitable they are always compared to Blur, but I feel comparing that band to the other is like a dichotomy that is The Beatles versus Gerry and the Pacemakers.

I hate The Smiths. I listen to lot of wuss-rock and even I find them insufferable. And you don’t want to get me started on solo Morrissey. The only intelligent thing he has ever done was coming up with the title “Girlfriend In a Coma”, but then he didn’t even know how funny that was. Years ago, my wife realized you can take the title of a great many songs and even movies and shows and sing it to that tune. Take that, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

Animals is one of Pink Floyd’s worst albums. Funny how it has what is rightly and largely regarded as one of the best album covers in the history of the form. Musically, its best moments recall earlier Floyd tracks, such as “Have a Cigar”, but these feel derivative here. Lyrically, this platter shows the first signs of just how insufferable Roger Waters would soon become.

Pink Floyd’s The Endless River has more of merit than seemingly acknowledged by anybody. Still, I can’t imagine it being anybody’s favorite PF album. I wouldn’t place it in the top half of my ranking of the band’s catalog, but I like it vastly more than The Division Bell or The Final Cut. Frankly, I like it even more than Animals.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers were only even occasionally good up through Blood Sugar Sex Magic (and even that was padded and overblown). They were completely useless after that. I am astonished bassist Flea is still in the group, as he is more intelligent and musically adventurous than the others combined.

I will never get the big deal about Roxy Music. Lord, how I have tried. And I like many of their songs. Heck, I borderline love Country Life. But to hear them sometimes spoken of in the hushed tones normally reserved for The Velvet Underground will never stop leaving me bewildered.

I hate The Doors. But it isn’t like I absolutely hate every song of theirs. “Moonlight Drive” is probably the best of their songs that is still full of their zeitgeist. “People Are Strange” is truly a great song, but it was even better when covered by Echo & The Bunnymen. No, I hate them because Morrison is so grossly overrated. That such a lousy person is revered by many to the extent of almost being a religious icon. That his consistently horrible lyrics are often regarded as “poetry”, even published like some sacred text, though seeing them in print only allows one to see, without any ambiguity, how inane they are. What a lot of pseudo-mystic bullshit, and yet another example of why one should always avoid people with messianic delusions, even if that image has been bestowed upon them by their fans–perhaps especially because that image has been shaped by their fanbase.

Duran Duran was, is, and always will be a completely crap band. I thought I loved them when I was kid. I was wrong. And young. And stupid. As further proof of how bad my taste was, I used to be a huge fan of Styx.

I hate hate HATE Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. My feelings regarding that album have resulted in a great deal of conversation in the past. First, I find almost everything about it to be superficially annoying. If I wanted somebody to screech “I LOVE YOU JEEEEESUSSS” in my ear, I would take more bus rides outside of commuting hours. Even worse, it is so precious, with a smarmy smugness hanging over the whole thing. The most damning thing I can say about it is from the 33 1/3 series book devoted to it, where the author poses this question: “If Anne Frank was alive today, what would her favorite pop song be?” Way to trivialize a victim of Nazi Germany who died in the Holocaust! Fuck you. No, really, fuck you.

I hate Pavement. And this is the other thing that comes up in conversation that makes jaws fall so hard as to risk damage to floors and foundations. This one is complicated and even I find it hard to put into words. I even like some of their songs. I had the “Cut Your Hair” CD single back in the day. I love “Spit on a Stranger”, but more so the cover by Nickel Creek. My beef starts with Slanted and Enchanted, a CD I bought with very hard-earned money in its original release, per a ridiculously enthusiastic recommendation in Spin. Not since Trout Mask Replica have I struggled so hard to appreciate an album. It not only failed to grow on me, but I found myself more irritated with each additional listen. I wasn’t intrigued by the cryptic lyrics, which all scanned like inside jokes (and this coming from a fan of Ween’s The Pod which is all inside jokes). I wasn’t charmed by the lo-fi recording, and this is coming from a Guided By Voices fan. Perhaps my problem is I never felt they came by any of this naturally, and it seemed to be by design. When one makes an album so deliberately awful and random as Wowee Zowee (or just names an album that), it feels like trying hard to appear to be slacking. And, similar to Neutral Milk Hotel’s fanbase, a great many Pavement fans have rubbed me the wrong way. In the 90s, it seemed nearly every person I encountered who proved to have an unearned belief in their intellectual superiority turned out to also be a fan of this, the band that was too cool for school.

I prefer the studio Dead over live Dead. I’m not a fan of live music, and my tolerance for noodling and jamming is rather low. But, go figure, my favorite album of theirs is Anthem of the Sun, which has a singularly distinctive sound achieved by mixing together studio and live takes of the tracks. At times, they even bleed into each other. So, you have the energy of live improvisation combined with the sonic quality and restrictions of recording in a studio.

The allure of Bruce Springsteen continues to elude me. And, by this point in my life, I will never get the big deal about him. Supposedly, you have to see him live to become a convert, while I believe his recordings should do that job on their own. It is like how some albums are supposedly only enjoyable when on the right pharmaceuticals, which brings me to…

Sleep’s Dopesmoker is complete shit. This, coming from somebody who finds great merit in, and has listened multiple times to, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. The Sleep album might have grown on me with additional listens, but I wasn’t about to find out, as the time spent with it only once was one of the dullest and interminable stretches of time I can recall outside of waiting in line at a bureau of motor vehicles. As I will never smoke pot, I asked around before springing for a copy of the vinyl (with which I parted ways shortly thereafter), asking if lighting up was critical to enjoying the disc. Terry Cole of the Colemine label said, “Dude, it will get you high!” That was incredibly funny. Alas, it also proved to not be true for me.

I never need to hear anything by Nirvana ever again. Yes, they were great. Yes, they brought the watershed that was grunge, completely changing the trajectory of music in the 90’s. I know, as I was the perfect age at the exact moment Nevermind hit. I bought all the associated singles. I bought the Japanese Hormoaning EP CD. It is all committed to my memory as if I have a digital recorder in my brain. And now I never have to hear it again, thank you. But it is funny how Mudhoney, who was the grunge band, seems to be doomed to be barely remembered by most people (and I assume that is how Mark Arm and company actually prefer to have their legacy remain). You can say that band’s Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is not the best grunge album, as it is a free country and so you have the right to be completely dead wrong.

I’m on the fence as to whether rap is rock. Notably, however, nobody has ever asked if rock is rap.