The 4 Least Anticipated Albums of the Week
Plenty of sites will tell you about all of the great albums that you should be formulating a plan to illicitly download without your Internet Service Provider finding out and telling the RIAA this week. But what about the albums you should avoid? Who speaks to those consumers who just wander into a record store, randomly grab a stack of CDs and bolt out the door with no consideration for what they're purchasing?
Well, for one thing, those people probably don't exist. But if they did, here are the albums they should make a conscious effort to avoid this week.
Kenny G - Namaste
There are a lot of factors standing in the way of Indian music's hopes of ever achieving anything resembling popularity on a global scale. A lack of tunes featuring Kenny G wailing away on his boredom horn is not one of them.
Nevertheless, not content to have finally driven the final nail into the coffin of jazz music years ago, Kenny G has released an album of Indian music. It's a collaboration with musician Rahul Sharma that features irritating tenor sax everywhere you'd expect to hear a sitar in Indian music and trademark Kenny G boredom everywhere else.
Casey Abrams - Casey Abrams
American Idol is like any other reality show in that every contestant plays their role in a preconceived idea of what a "diverse group of musicians" would look like. On the show's 10th season, Casey Abrams played the always popular role of the "bluesy rocker" who seems like the second coming of Joe Cocker when he's standing next to a 15-year-old chick screeching her way through a Motown song but becomes exponentially less entertaining when left to his own devices.
It's a tough role to capitalize on, but Casey Abrams is going to give it a shot. Be sure to catch him on tour with special guests Bo Bice and Taylor Hicks at a grocery store parking lot near you in like two years or so.
Everclear - Invisible Stars
Holy shit ...
... Everclear is still a band? I had no idea. If we were on Jeopardy right now, my answer would have been "What is the alcohol that caused the midget from the Geto Boys to shoot his eye out."
The photo op made it totally worth it.
Asia - XXX
Asia is a fine band and I have no gripe with them. They've made some great songs and are a talented bunch of musicians and I don't include them on this list as a means of downplaying the quality of their music. Rather, I'm including them here to teach Asia and any other baby boomer aged band like them a valuable lesson in the importance of understanding how the Internet works.
Let's say you're a fan of the band Asia and you hear a co-worker mention that they have a new album out. It's called XXX and it's Asia's first in a long, long time. Great news! Not wanting to wait a second longer before hearing new tunes from one of your favorite bands, you rush back to your desk and head to Youtube, the one source where instant gratification is all but guaranteed. You enter "asia xxx" into the search box, hit enter and, of course, this happens next ...
New. Favorite. Band. Ever.
Congratulations. You've just been fired, and you have a 1980s rock supergroup to thank for it.
