Keith Jarrett, "All Right"

One of our founding principles was to avoid smack talk. There's too much bad music out there already and too many other people more than willing to bash it on their blogs.

But some things, like a Shaggs record, are so bad that you have to share it.

When I was looking up a minor point in Keith Jarrett's discography, I came across an entry that simply said, 'Keith Jarrett with String Quartet'. Sounds killer right?

Well, it's not.

It's a singer-songwriter album. Yes, that Keith Jarrett, and yes, 'singer-songwriter', as in Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell. And not only is Keith singing songs that he wrote, he's also playing all the instruments himself, except for the string parts (hence the description that caught my eye). Drums, guitar, harmonica...everything is played by Keith.

The results are jaw dropping, but not the kind you can turn away from. It's the kind of train wreck that you can't help but listen to. Many of the songs are catchy, but the playing, aside from the piano, is farcically bad. I must have listened to Keith botch the drum fills at the end "All Right" a couple of dozen times by now.