We’re Definitely A Long Way From Home: The Worst Song I Know (As Of Right Now)

noah | September 20, 2007 1:01 am
nitro.jpg

So tomorrow we’re going to have a guest-blogger, and just now she was asking me if she should do anything special for the day–you know, sprinkling her keyboard with holy water, etc. Generally my typing in IM is crap (I save the good stuff for the blog, of course), so I told her that she should “write a nitro” so that our audience could get used to the fact that Jess has abandoned them for a day. And given that my head’s on a Benadryl trip at present, that typo made me think of the one band from the hard-rock era that was so lousy, not even the fact that they were in on their joke or a cameo from frequent Monkees foil Rose Marie could save them:

Ah, Nitro. Yes, the band that was half-joke, half-serious shredding, and all the way unlistenable. Most notable for the glass-shattering voice of Jim Gillette, Nitro was obviously taking the piss at least in part–their 1989 bio has a quote from guitarist Michael Angelo explaining how he added a high A string to his guitar so that it would be “super fast and wild, in the mandolin range”; the album the above clip was taken from was called O.F.R., for Out Fuckin’ Rageous–but even the “funny” aspects of Nitro’s attempt to be a real-life Spinal Tap were torpedoed by the fact that its music was pretty godawful, even when compared to, say, Hericane Alice. Gillette’s voice could jump as many octaves as Mariah Carey’s, sure, but his enunciation would never fail to crap out, Fergie-style, at around octave two; Angelo’s guitar playing is pretty nimble, but the rest of the band sounds like they wandered into the studio where Nitro was playing by accident, and were actually meant to be tracking a Shaggs tribute album. (Also: Gillette’s dancing! That has to be part of the joke, right?)

Anyway, given that Jess posted the worst song he’d ever heard last week, I figured that I’d one-up him with Nitro’s attempt to rewrite “Can’t Find My Way Home,” which I would say is definitely worse, Linda Perry “ay-ay-ayyying” aside. And think about the fact that Gillette and Angelo are actually working on music together, no doubt to capitalize on the fact that the current era wants to turn as many people as possible into a parade of Jesse Camp nonlebrities; I’ll bet you that soon enough, they’ll be inviting Carrie Underwood onstage for an octave-off, and that we’ll be posting the grainy cameraphone footage.

Nitro – Long Way From Home [YouTube] Nitro [Encyclopaedia Metallum]