Albums I’m Ashamed to Own: Volume Two

Last week, I wrote this article (to admit it’s a blog it to admit defeat) about albums I wasn’t exactly proud were in my collection. In it, I promised a second installment. Here we go.

Pungent Stench-Been Caught Buttering
Some bands might as well change their name to “Fuck You, Mom and Dad!” for the sake of time and convenience. Take three guesses if Pungent Stench, whose Been Caught Buttering features the severed head of an elderly man cut in half so it could kiss itself on the album cover, falls into that category. As a kid, I listened to some pretty out there metal (acts like Cannibal Corpse and Deicide spring to mind), but they were the Osmonds compared to Pungent Stench. The album opened with the toe tapper “Shrunken and Mummified Bitch” and only went downhill from there. To this day, I still don’t know what the hell “buttering” is, and I get the feeling that, if I ever did learn, my face would melt like I’d just opened the Ark of the Covenant.



Blood of Abraham-Future Profits
Blood of Abraham was a Jewish rap duo produced by Eazy-E. The album’s top cut was titled “Niggaz and Jewz (Some Say Kikes)” and featured not only Eazy-E, but the rap debut of will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame. Let that sink in for a minute. Eazy-E. As the creative force behind two guys who rapped about nothing other than being Jewish. It sounds like one of those comic book Bizzaro World plot lines where Spider-Man keeps mutating until he has eight arms or Superman is a Chinaman, but it was real, all right. And probably one of the best insurance policies ever in the world of entertainment, come to think of it. (Mandatory weekly reference to the Jews running Hollywood – check.)


So how bad is Future Profits? Well, it’s a rap album from a bunch of Jewish guys who aren’t the Beastie Boys, so I don’t think you need to be Hercule Poirot to figure that one out. Which begs the question, “Why did you purchase Future Profits to begin with, John?” Well, despite being pretty universally panned, The Onion‘s Nathan Rabin gave it an enthusiastically positive review, and I figured his impartiality in the matter could be trusted because Rabin is a good Catholic name. Maybe I’ll never know why he was so off the mark…



Limp Bizkit-Three Dollar Bill, Yall$
I’ll conclude with the crowning shame-jewel of my collection, Limp Bizkit’s Three Dollar Bill, Yall$. What’s most embarrassing about having the album is that I was never a Limp Bizkit fan to begin with, given how awesomely counterculture I tried to be back in high school and their status as the mainstream devil. But there was a contest at Chantilly High which allowed you to win Tower Records gift certificates for the best lip synched performance in front of the school, and my friends wanted to perform “Faith.” So we all chipped in for a copy of the disc, schlepped our instruments on stage and mock-jammed along with the track to thunderous applause from our classmates at the end. It was almost like an episode of Happy Days. Except we lost. And later that night I fingered an underclassman who thought I “looked cool” on stage.