By: Ben Johnson
We’re the internet. We makes lists. That’s what’s
up, and that’s what is happening, and that is the story. We know this. We go on
the internet, we make lists of things, we click on other people’s lists of
things, we say “I don’t like this list of things” or “check out this list of
things, I think it’s pretty cool,” and then we read the lists and say “OMG #9”
or “LOL, no” and then go on the fuck about our day. That’s what this is and
that’s what we are doing.
I found the worst list.
It’s this list that an MST3K enthusiast on rateyourmusic
made of the most
common LP’s you’ll find while picking through the record crates at a thrift
store or an antique mall. Do not read it. I urge you not to read it. I read
it. I’ve read it several times in real life, out in the world, with my fingers,
looking through some old records in a Goodwill. And then I clicked on it and
read it online now too.
This list is exactly what it claims to be.
Spoiler alert: there are no spoilers in this list. If you click on it and read
it, and I recommend you don’t, you are going to look through it, and you are
going to see exactly the amount of Johnny Mathis you would expect. You are not
going to be surprised, not even once.
If you have a lot of experience digging through
crates of records at a thrift store or antique mall, you might say something
like “hmm, I guess I would have included the first Monkees album on this list,”
and then you will look through the entire list to see if it has the first
Monkees album on it, and then when it doesn’t you will realize that you’ve just
been tricked into going through a 158-item list because you hoped to see a
first Monkees album in it, even though seeing a Monkees first album in some
list online would not cause you to alter your actions in any way. This will almost
exactly replicate, mentally, the sensation of looking through a crate of
records in a thrift store.
Looking just at the title of this list, “the
most common albums you’ll find in thrift stores,” (do not click on it) lets
you know for a fact, just like you also know for a fact in real life when you
are looking through actual records in an actual thrift store, that you are not
going to find an original pressing of Relatively
Clean Rivers in there. And yet, compulsively, that’s the hope, right? That
you can find a record in this list and be like “wrong!” And then you can get
that and you can know that and you can hold that in your brain. But that is not
going to happen. This list is a list of the things in the list. It’s exactly
only those things.
You know about wasting time? Like how being on
the internet and reading lists of things is a waste of time? Or in the real
world like how it’s a waste of time to be in line at the grocery store while
somebody argues for seven minutes about a coupon for 79 cents off dish soap? Or
how sometimes it’s pleasant to waste time, like how Otis Redding talked about
wasting time in “(Sittin’
On) The Dock of the Bay,” which seemed like, okay, this guy is homeless and
hopeless and he lives on the dock of a bay but at least he’s pretty chill about
it. He’s even whistling. That sounds like a nice, if also racially charged and
deceptively complex, way to spend time unproductively. That’s at least not
hurting anybody.
Looking through records in a thrift store can
be like that kind of wasting time. Reading internet lists of Top Sixteen Camels
Who Are Fresh Out Of Fucks can be that kind of wasting time. Human beings have
figured out all kinds of shit to make sure that time isn’t so precious you can’t
waste a little of it.
When was the last time you ran for your life,
for example? Never. Maybe once ever. The rest of it is like “I want to be able
to run for my life if needed” training. We invented treadmills. Machines
designed to replicate the experience of running for your life. Just in case you
get chased by a wolf some day while listening to Cher, or whatever they have
playing at the gym. Running on a treadmill can be a pleasant form of wasting
time. It gets your blood pumping and makes you appear slightly more fuckable during
times when you’re not on a treadmill. But running on a treadmill when there is
an approximately zero percent chance of applying the run for your life skill is,
technically, a waste of time. Really, our entire species is just wasting time.
Just playing out the string. If you get down to it.
So why is this list of most common albums you
find in a thrift store the worst list? It certainly did not waste my time any
more or less than any other list I could have read, or amount I could have run
on a treadmill. It actually saved me a little time, considering how reading
this list is effectively the same thing as going to a thrift store, looking
through the records there, seeing only these records, not buying any of them,
and then going to take a shit at Starbucks before heading back home. The
virtual experience version had no actual records in it, but at least I didn’t
have to go anywhere or take a shit in a Starbucks.
I think this list is the worst for the
following list of reasons:
1. Its extreme accuracy
does not offer any surprises or ignite any real debate, so it is not a
particularly entertaining list.
2. Since it is so accurate
and therefore dull, reading it replicates the experience of repetitive, unwavering
disappointment inherent in the activity which this list is a representation of,
but with a chance of reward which is actual zero and not “technically some
infinitesimal number above zero wherein depending on extreme luck it is
theoretically possible to find a decent copy of Iron Maiden Number of the Beast for less than $10, really
the ideal amount for me to spend in order to be able to play ‘Run To The Hills’ on
vinyl instead of an mp3 whenever I get the urge, which probably is about $10
worth of sometimes, lifetime, and not a penny more.”
3. This list is on the
internet, and the entire point of looking through record bins in thrift stores
is to search for something real which only exists in the analog world and is
only available through ritualized pilgrimage into the communal nightmare of
American poverty which finds its purest spiritual representation at the Salvation
Army, a process which unites, briefly, the human animal’s dim distant hope for humanity’s
survival in the grim circumstances we bring to bear on each other with the much
more selfish dim distant hope a record collector has for finding a butcher
cover, and even if thwarted constantly by the insane, needless former popularity
of Herb Alpert and Glen Campbell, this temporary unison of selfish and
unselfish hope can be edifying, whereas the internet version, represented by
this list, is all thwarted hope, all disappointment, exactly as advertised, and
involves no sacrifice or understanding of communal longing of any kind.
4. It doesn’t even have anything
remotely encouraging on it. Not even The Cars Heartbeat City or a James Taylor Flag or a Jackson Browne Hold
Out or anything like that. I mean, Jesus. This is just the absolute worst
stuff. There’s not even a glimmer of hope on this list.
5. I’m gonna look at it
again, just to see.
6. Yeah, that list sucks.
7. Let me just make sure
one more time that there’s nothing on this list that’s secretly good.
8. Carpenters Singles is okay, I guess, but this one
is trashed.
9. How about B.J. Thomas?
Is that on there? No.
10. I need to take a shit
now. Is there a Starbucks near here?
11. I am going to die one
day.
12. We are all going to
die one day.
13. One time I found a clean
Love Forever Changes at an antique
store for $8. That was in Montana, though. Seven years ago.
