Better When They Sucked - Suicidal Tendencies

Suicidal Tendencies released one of the most important West Coast punk albums in 1983 with their debut album.  They steadily went downhill after that, and in 1993 decided to re-record the entire album in Mike Muir's crappy new voice.  At the time I thought this was a big FU to the fans of the original, but it turns out they didn't have rights to re-release the original, so they just re-recorded the whole thing.  Kind of like 1990's Night of the Living Dead.  Which also pales next to the original.



Listening to it now, it's not as bad as I remember.  At least Mike Muir hadn't gotten into funk yet.

Better When They Sucked - TSOL

But then, sometimes punks get artsy, put on eyeliner, and learn to play piano



This is the only good version of this song, and gets us as close as we'll ever get to a punk rock Meatloaf.  I so want there to be a punk rock Meatloaf.  This is also as close as TSOL gets to being listenable.  The rest of the album (including the album version of this song) is horrible.  But it get so much worse.

Better When They Sucked - Human League

I'm operating from memory, so forgive me for butchering the history here.  Human League started of as being a titch more artsy avant garde before the real musicians of the group left and they turned more pop.  Their first album under this incarnation had a little ditty described by frontman Philip Oakey as a "poor quality filler track", and ended up being:



Which, I don't care how cool you think you are, is one of the best pop songs ever.  So let's move all creative control away from the band to Janet Jackson's producers:

Better When they Sucked - We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It

Now people try to sound this lo-fi on purpose.  Get a better contract, some producers, a professional studio, and...

Better When They Sucked - Warsaw/Joy Division

Never got into Joy Division until well into the 21st century, and even then it was only due to seeing live performances on retrospectives.



I went back to listen to the official releases and was reminded why I didn't like them - Martin "the guy Dead Kennedys made fun of on Nazi Punks F Off" Hannett producing the soul out of everything.

But they were even better before, when they were Warsaw: