Worst reviews? Could be!

Some friends of mine uncovered this gem of a link, and I wanted to share it with you folks.

This isn't any of my own work, and I give full credit to the compiler (apparently, a writer going by the username of schmidtt).

I give you: Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews (click the words).

There's a lot of brilliance, analysis and bile there. It's a great read! You can pick it up and put it down, come back later, read a few at a time ... But it's worthy of perusal!

Let me know what you think!

I offer this as an example of the content you'll find:



The Doors

Strange Days (1967)

Rating: Favorable
"Many people don't care to see Jim Morrison making it with his microphone in the manner of Mick Jagger nor do they especially want to watch him writhing on the floor. If they don't, then they suggest he is selling out to commercialism, has an old-fashioned concept of rock and roll or something. However, what's actually taking place on stage, and what Morrison is doing, is about 3000-years old fashioned and very contemporary in approach." (11/23/67 Review)


No attribution is provided for any of the reviews in issues 2, 3 or 4 of Rolling Stone. So we really don't know who is responsible for this review of the Doors' second album, surely one of the most awesomely inept pieces of writing to ever appear in the magazine. 


Strange Days received 5 stars in the first edition of the Rolling Stone record guide, published in 1979, in what is perhaps the most effusive entry in the entire book ("Brash, courageous, intelligent, adventurous and exciting. The Doors were all this - and more.") 


In an amusing twist, in the second edition of the guide, published only 4 years later, Dave Marsh completely trashes the Doors, bemoaning "the obnoxious and insipid cult that now surrounds Jim Morrison," and gives all but the debut and Morrison Hotel 2 stars. 


In the third edition of album guide, printed in 1992, Paul Evans provides a more sober assessment of Jim Morrison ("he was in the end both tragic and pathetic"), and rates Strange Days (which he describes as "twilit, ominous carnival music") three and half stars. This rating & review were repeated in the 2004 album guide. 


In a special issue of the magazine published on 12/11/03 (around the same time the fourth edition of the album guide was coming to print), RS unveiled its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." Strange Days was #407 on the list.