70's Bands That Made Me Change Radio Stations When Their Songs Came On (And Still Do)

Well, I think the category for this edition of the Shit List just about says it all. Although as I get older and my mind begins to wander at will, I can sometimes get almost half way though "Goodbye Stranger" before I know what the hell is going on and swerve off the road in a horrible panic. And please take note this list disproves the theory that I'm just a mean old guy who hates today's new music. I'm also a mean old guy who hates a lot of old music, too.

1. Styx
Where do I begin? They've given us so much to hate them for, it's hard to sum it up in just a few words. If "Lady" isn't the most annoying recorded yowl in Rock & Roll history, then I shudder to think what is! That would be enough to get them on the list, but add "Babe," "Come Sail Away" and "Mr. Roboto" and these Chicago boys are number one with a bullet. (Preferably to my temple if I should ever be forced to listen to The Grand Illusion from start to finish!)

2. REO Speedwagon
Wow, another stinky band from Illinois. (Champaign, to be precise.) How Cheap Trick  turned out so cool is beyond me, considering they had to put up with such puke acts like this bombarding their home turf. Yeah, maybe you can tuna piano, but you still can't write songs that don't suck. And why do I get the names of this band's singer, Kevin Cronin, and Scanners director David Cronenberg confused? At least with Scanners the victim only suffers through thirty seconds of unbearable pain before they blow up real good. Once you get an REO Speedwagon song in your head, it stays there and tortures you for hours.

3. Journey
No, despite the title of one of their albums, a Journey song only seems to last for Infinity. Need a good reason to build a time machine? How about so you can go back and stop Steve Perry from being born. Wait, maybe that's a bit too harsh. (Pause to think.) Nope, it's not. C'mon, Mr. Peabody, we need you! Oh, and by the way, I'm probably not the only one who believes that if I die and go to Hell, they'll be playing "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' " on the jukebox in the lobby. File under "just plain icky."

4. Kansas
I once saw Kansas open for the Stones at Cleveland Stadium during the Some Girls tour. "This is the largest group of people we've ever played for," announced one of the band members, to which someone in the crowd enthusiastically replied, "We want Mick!!" Sorry, but even the drunk guy in front of me who shouted out a request for "Sweet Virginia" every five minuets for the entire day was more entertaining than these progressive rockers. "Crap in the wind. All we are is crap in the wind."

5. Toto
Let's see, isn't there a word they use to describe those professional studio musician who play with exquisite technical precision but lack even a hint of soul, passion or emotion? Oh yeah, I believe they're called "hacks." That's Toto for ya, in spades. You know, it's bad enough they cluttered the airwaves with their drab adult contemporary pap during the 70's & 80's, but these snooze producers added insult to injury by ruining two of life's simple but rewarding pleasures. First, by making it impossible to watch The Wizard of Oz without cringing every time Dorothy calls out the name of her little dog. And second, by putting a crimp in enjoying the total hotness of Rosanna Arquette by writing a hit single about her. Bastards!!

6. Boston
More than a migraine is what I get whenever I hear the music of Tom Scholz and his buddies. And to think it only took about twenty years to come up with just four albums of this bombastic poop. That's because Scholz is a perfectionist who will release no poop before it's time. The first album sold like hot cakes, but didn't taste or sound quite as good. It was one of those huge albums that even people who don't normally buy albums went out and bought. But not me. I could tell the difference between Fleetwood Mac and these dunderheads. (As if Boston albums weren't bad enough, a couple of Scholz's sidemen went on to form RTZ, thus producing the worst spin-off since ABC went one step too far with their Happy Days frenzy and gave us Joanie Loves Chachi.

7. Rush
Ah, another one of those "sounds great but less filling" bands that knows all the fancy chord changes but wouldn't recognize passion if it walked right up with a sign around its neck and introduced itself. And is there any lead singer in rock history whose voice is more irksome than Geddy Lee's? "Heavens to Murgatroid, Exit...Stage Left and keep going even."

8. Supertramp
These British fart-rockers began their plodding career of cranking out irritating albums at the beginning of the 70's and finally hit pay dirt near the end of the decade when their Breakfast In America album became the latest long player to fool the American music buying public into thinking it was actually hot stuff. For me, it meant several months of walking around with a cyanide capsule in my mouth just in case I found myself in a position where "The Logical Song" started to play and I was unable to turn it off or escape it's radius.

9. The Marshall Tucker Band
"Heard it in a luh-uh-uh-uh-ve song!" And heard it and heard it and heard it. These southern rockers blended rock, jazz and country music into a single melting pot of audio muck and in the process managed to offend the listener on so many levels at once. "Canít you see?"  Yes, and unfortunately I can hear, too.

10. Nazareth
What this band did to the Everly Brothers' "Love Hurts" is immoral. Eveything else they recorded was just plain boring.