Music Banter - 25 Things That Make Music Dire

Saw this in the paper today , thought it was worth posting here.....

25. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: It led to concept albums, progressive rock, musicians taking themselves more seriously than heart surgeons... And is there anyone who hasn't lost the will to live after listening to When I'm Sixty- Four...?

24. Decency Standards: It began in 1967, when the Rolling Stones agreed to change the lyrics of Let's Spend The Night Together to protect the sensitive American public watching the Ed Sullivan show. And now, in 2006, the Rolling Stones are dropping five "offensive" songs so they can play a gig in China.

23. Rock Poets: Despite what Jim Morrison believed, disturbed Freudian ramblings while waving your manhood around on stage is not, alas, poetry.

22. Long Syllables: No matter how hard soul singers try, words such as "girl" and "baby" do not have 25 syllables.

21. Aids: As well as causing many deaths, including that of Freddie Mercury, the most significant damage done by the disease was the demonisation of sex, without which rock 'n' roll becomes pointless.

# 20. Sting: Sex and drugs and... rainforests?

# 19. Gilbert O'Sullivan: Back in 1991, suing Biz Markie for sampling his 1972 chart-topper Alone Again (Naturally) opened the doors for dozens of similar court cases.

# 18. Sean Combs: Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Diddy... Just like many actors, through the years, musicians have routinely changed their names to broaden their appeal. But Sean seems to have upped the ante. If the abbreviations keep going at their present rate, hopefully he'll soon disappear completely.

# 17. Jazz fusion: Any music that uses jazz as a prefix will make you want to saw your head off in boredom. But none is as tedious as the genre that thought what rock needed was month-long bass solos.

# 16. Popopera: Main culprits include Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andrea Bocelli, Il Divo and the people who wondered what it would sound like if Puccini jammed with Meat Loaf. Shame on you.

# 15. "Jukebox" musicals: Why is crowbarring classic rock tunes into a play with a "plot" apparently written on the back of a beer mat so disturbing? We Will Rock You, featuring the music of Queen - that's why. And despite recent flops in the genre, there is no end in sight.

# 14. Mark David Chapman: The man who shot John Lennon.

# 13. Woodstock '99: A lame attempt at multi-cultural harmony featuring such joys as Rusted Root and the braindead Insane Clown Posse. It quickly descended into a free-for-all of sexual assault, arson, overdoses and robbery. Not quite the Summer of Love revival it was intended to be.

# 12. Nearly every hiphop video: Yes, we all know you live in a mansion, drive a pimped-out car and can have tons of scantilyclad ho's pouring champagne down your gullet while you kick it in the hot tub. But how does a generation of hip-hop video producers manage to make decadence seem so... boring?

# 11. Synthetic drums. The lowest point of the 80s.

# 10. Electric violins. Three words. Electric. Light. Orchestra.

# 9. Soprano sax: Kenny G, you know who you are...

# 8. Replacement lead singers: AC/DC's impressive recovery from singervomit-asphyxiation is the honourable exception. Think Paul Rodgers fronting Queen... it makes the skin crawl.

# 7. CDs: First, the record companies made us rebuy our entire collection on these plastic discs they promised would never scratch. Then they scratched. Then the companies complained because CDs quickly became a great medium for illegally copying and distributing music.

# 6. Light air craft: Responsible for the early retirement of Patsy Cline, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Denver, Ricky Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and - on the day the music died - Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. There's a good reason the tour bus is still so popular.

# 5. "Colonel" Tom Parker: The Slobodan Milosevic of artist management. Getting his hooks into Elvis in 1955, the Dutch con man artfully steered the King away from making great music and towards the 30- odd largely forgettable movies he made.

# 4. Madonna's "British" accent. Michigan's finest export.

# 3. Ecstasy: Guilty of convincing a generation of young adults to cram into filthy warehouses, wave glow-sticks and bounce along to the same monotonous groove for hours on end.

# 2. Neverland Ranch: It's not as if everything was OK before Michael Jackson moved there but taking up residence at the llama-stocked, Ferris wheel-equipped 2,600-acre southern California ranch did something very strange to him. A superstar went in... and a sad wreck came out.

# 1. Kids today!: Snivelling whipper-snappers who have no idea of the pleasures of cycling for miles to the local record shop (uphill both ways) to hear the latest releases - because they have already downloaded them on to the iPod cameraphone hanging from the ring in their lower lip.