Make It Stop: A Bad Music Podcast

Cowabunga! Today we're taking a trip down memory lane to 1990, when the US was deep in the grip of Turtlemania. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were everywhere, an inescapable vortex of inexplicable SoCal vernacular, mountains of action figures, and cartoon pizzas with really delicious looking drippy cheese. So strong was their hold on pop culture that not even the music world was safe. Coming Out of Their Shells was not just an album but an entire tour with an accompanying concert VHS. The Turtles' rockin' tunes tell the tale of four gnarly dudes who just wanna tube, and The Shredder's dastardly plan to use a machine to destroy music or something? I dunno. Splinter also sings a song about skipping rocks on a pond for whatever reason. Scott Kurland from the Writers Bagel Basket podcast joins us and he and Mike attempt fruitlessly to explain the Ninja Turtles lore to an extremely confused Heather. It's a doozy.   #notallturtles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when one of the biggest country stars of all time decides to slap on a wispy wig and a soul patch and reinvent himself as a hard partying sex addict rock star with extensive reconstructive surgery? And this new persona has been meticulously crafted to serve as a background character in a movie that never even went into pre-production? And this hard partying rock star's music is all tepid acoustic soft rock? The project is buried, obscured, and forgotten for all eternity, that's what happens... until now! On this week's Make It Stop, Lisa McColgan of Bikini Whale swings by to talk about Chris Gaines, the ill-fated alter ego of country megastar Garth Brooks, and we try, with little success, to parse out exactly why the hell this confounding identity crisis even happened. So strap on your flavor saver and dive in with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ziggy Stardust. The Thin White Duke. Jareth The Goblin King. David Bowie went by many names and adopted many personas during his 50+ year career, and in that time he quickly became a rock legend, selling over 100 million records and taking his place at the top of the pop culture pantheon. All accolades aside, we here at Make It Stop take great pleasure in tearing down the infallible, and David Bowie is no exception. On this episode we dig through his catalogue of over 25 studio albums to bring you the bottom 10 worst David Bowie songs of all time. From schmaltzy covers to cheesy 80s synth jams to adult contemporary snoozers, this list runs the gamut of garbage, and is sure to be a dire warning to all Stoppies that cocaine is a hell of a drug. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Make It Stop we're talking about The Big Baryshnikov himself, Shaquille O'Neal. The world belonged to Shaq in 1996. He had just jumped from the Orlando Magic to Kobe Bryant's LA Lakers, with whom he would go on to win three of his four NBA Championships. He had shocked the world with his ostentatious Reebok Shaqnosis sneakers, which featured a psychedelic black and white vortex design, and which remain coveted by hardcore sneaker heads today. And he was in the midst of a flourishing rap career, as the only NBA player ever signed to a multi-million dollar major label record contract. Parlor Sports bartender and man about town Garvey Salomon joins us to discuss Shaq's 1996 opus You Can't Stop The Reign. Interscope rolls out the red carpet for The Big Shaqtus on this record, with lush production from DJ Quik, Poke and Tone and Easy Mo Be, and features from the likes of Lord Tariq, Mobb Deep, Jay Z and even the Big Poppa himself, Notorious B.I.G. But are all these bells and whistles enough to distrac

Strap on a decorative banjo and get out yer picklin' jars, cuz we're prepping for a musical apocalypse on this episode of Make it Stop! The target of our most recent ire is platinum selling, Superbowl ruining, troll-serenading superstar Justin Timberlake's latest gasp at relevancy, his 2018 mountaineering misfire, Man of the Woods. Featuring a cacaphony of ill-placed musical references and clumsy metaphors, this bloated 16 track mistake finds the uncooked ramen-headed heartthrob of yesteryear reinventing himself as a modern day Grizzly Adams. Burning down this forest of bad ideas with us is none other than local comedian Tooky Kavanagh, who has performed multiple stand up sets dedicated to the scientifically accurate claim that JT isn't just a mediocre white man profiting off Black culture and doing Janet Jackson dirty, but he's also a common marsupial. Listen in to hear which marsupial and much more on this episode of Make it Stop: A Bad Music Podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc

Oh Danny Boy, the Peas the Peas are calling. In honor of St. Patrick's Day, we've decided to bless our dear #Stoppies and curse ourselves with a shitshow of epic proportions. Heather and Mike are joined by stalwart friend of the pod Brian Melanson (The Cobcast) as well as our dear friends Jewelz Sherratt (Solo Sexx) and Dave Klotz (cool and nice guy) to dive into the back catalog of the Black Eyed Peas one drink at a time. That's right, we listen to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR BEP and BEP-adjacent albums for the first ever MAKE IT STOP POWER HOUR. With only 60 seconds to talk about each song and a rapidly skyrocketing blood alcohol content, Heather, Mike and their guests have to race against the clock to get their "witty" "banter" in before the buzzer. It's...well, it sure is something alright. So pull up a stool and cry some drunken tears of laughter into your green beer. Erin Go Bragh you bastards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Open up the fucking pit and pick up some fucking quarters, it's hardcore week on Make It Stop. Or rather, it's rap metal by way of hardcore, as we sit down with local comedian and hardcore lifer Ryan Shea to talk about straight edge vegan stalwarts Earth Crisis and their painful 2000 crossover attempt Slither. Ryan walks us through the finer points of the hardcore lifestyle, Mike tries to pretend he was anything more than a cowardly poser during the genre's peak, and we all get deep into the lore of the early 00s Boston Beatdown scene. Probably too deep. We're probably going to get beaten up over this one. Oh well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're justifiably in a position that we'd rather not be in listening to this album. But the cream will rise to the top, ooh yeeeah. Macho Madness, yeeah, has got more to offer than Mike and Heather think that Macho Man's got, yeeeeah, and let him tell you somethin' right now, cards stacked against Macho Man Randy Savage's album Be A Man, let him say it yeeeah, let him say it out loud and let him point to this week's guest Jenelle Valencia of the Boston League of Wicked Wrestlers, The Macho Man Randy Savage is not happy with Make It Stop, yeeah. He is the cream in the World Wrestling Federation and there is no doubt about it, yeeah, you Stoppies know that he's the cream of the crop! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Strap on in #stoppies, because it's time for another hefty dose of White Nonsense(TM) and for this one we're bringing in the big guns. Local rapper and professional fuck abandoner Brandie Blaze joins us this week to take aim at Lil Dicky, perhaps one of the most overhyped and underhanded rapper we've ever discussed on this show. Lil Dicky's brand of aw-shucks faux-self-deprecation is the hallmark of this bloated 19-song flaccid handie of an album, whose culminating message seems to be white people can try on hip hop as a costume and make millions as a shortcut to a comedy career. Isn't that just fucking hilarious? But it's even more wild when Ms. Blaze pulls back the veneer and exposes Dicky for the fraudulent, privileged huckster he is. Plus hear all about the songs on Brandie Blaze's bangin' playlist as an added bonus for making it through this monstrosity with us. Trust me--you don't want to miss it! Check out Brandie Blaze's excellent music here: https://soundcloud.com/brandieblaze  Produced by Heather Ma

Fire up the engine of your old pickup, grab a cold beer and head on down to the cornfields. Throw the radio on and watch as an endless parade of blue jean clad farmhand girls dance modestly in the headlights. Stay away from those downtown boys because they are the devil incarnate and we'd like nothing more than to steal their women, take them out to the cornfields in our old pickup, grab a cold beer, throw the headlights on and watch them dance the night away in their blue jeans to our favorite song, playing on that old terrestrial radio. Local comedian and podcaster (of Dead Last Podcast) Brandon Vallee joins us and he's just swigging a beer, listening to the radio in his old pickup. And we're gonna drive on down to them old cornfields I'll tell ya. Throw the headlights on and dance the night away. We're listening to Luke Bryan's Crash My Party. It's got everything. Songs about trucks. Songs about beer. Songs about cornfields. Songs about jeans. Songs about kissing girls. Songs about dancing in headlights. A

As we ring in the new year, we can't forget to pay the proper (dis)respect to the worst music that 2018 had to offer. From the requisite washed up 90s rockers, to the alt-right anthems, to the shallowest of rappers, we've got ourselves a smorgasbord of shit on this episode of Make It Stop. We didn't think it could get worse than 2017, but we should know by now that we're in a never ending race to the bottom, and just when we think we've reached it, the bottom drops out. So pour yourself a celebratory glass of bubbly and toast to Heather and Mike's misery, you sadistic Stoppies you. Cheers, pricks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ho ho ho #stoppies, we're hoooome for the holidays! We've all been very bad boys this year and have been rightfully cursed with another lump of musical coal in our collective stockings, Smash Mouth's desperate 2005 Christma$ ca$h grab, 'The Gift of Rock'. Joining us to unwrap this precious 'gift' is our very own family, including the youngest Dunn brother Alex, "Dad for the People" Paul Dunn, and in lieu of Heather's actual blood relative we bribed our friend Brian to perform the role of her dad, because that makes about as much sense as this album does! Anyway, it's enough to bring shame upon our extended family and yours, as we hitch up our sleigh and roll merrily along through strained and soulless christmas covers, awful appropriative patois, and a hilariously detailed 'behind the music' history of the band Smashmouth courtesy of the Dunn Research Conglomerate. It's enough to make you throw a whole loaf of bread at Steve Harwell's forehead, which means it's a whole heckuva lot of fun. Merry Christmas! Lea

Part 2 of 2. Check out part 1 here!  Alright #stoppies, I know we say this a lot, but it's true--this episode is our funniest one yet. Seriously, when else have we been able to snag 2 professional comedians (Emily Ruskowski & Jenny Chalikian) and one hysterical burlesque producer/professional babe/future youtube star (Sake Toomey) together in the same room, talking about boy bands? Since TODAY, that's when! We brought our grown ass friends that are also unashamed teenyboppers together for a very special 2 PART THUNDERDOME where they battle it out over whether O'Town's shamelessly sexual liquid nightmare of a debut album can beat out proto-Bieber boyband lil' bro Aaron Carter's early 00s disasterpiece Aaron's Party (Come Get It). Find out who Heather's favorite Backstreet Boy was, why Jacob from OTown had an octopus in his bedroom, and discover which of our panel had no choice but to write a HUNDREDS OF PAGES LONG Aaron Carter fan fiction as a child since they didn't have internet in their room. It's all so fu

Alright #stoppies, I know we say this a lot, but it's true--this episode is our funniest one yet. Seriously, when else have we been able to snag 2 professional comedians (Emily Ruskowski & Jenny Chalikian) and one hysterical burlesque producer/professional babe/future youtube star (Sake Toomey) together in the same room, talking about boy bands? Since TODAY, that's when! We brought our grown ass friends that are also unashamed teenyboppers together for a very special 2 PART THUNDERDOME where they battle it out over whether O'Town's shamelessly sexual liquid nightmare of a debut album can beat out proto-Bieber boyband lil' bro Aaron Carter's early 00s disasterpiece Aaron's Party (Come Get It). Find out who Heather's favorite Backstreet Boy was, why Jacob from OTown had an octopus in his bedroom, and discover which of our panel had no choice but to write a HUNDREDS OF PAGES LONG Aaron Carter fan fiction as a child since they didn't have internet in their room. It's all so funny, we couldn't help but blow our li

It's a trip down memory lane this week as Mike and Heather are joined by their old friend Russell Chisholm. They reminisce about their shared love of The Best Rapper Alive Weezy Baby before diving into the worst thing he ever did -- the massively maligned 2008 rap-rock turd known as Rebirth. Lil Wayne runs the gamut on this album, churning out a wide variety of garbage -- bad punk, bad butt rock, bad ballads, and even bad ska (aka ska). It's all tremendously difficult to listen to and we're sorry you have to share this miserable experience with us. May god have mercy on our souls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pick it up pick it up pick it up... no, please put it down. Today our guest is Andrew Lowery from DIWHY The Show and we're talking ska. Not just ska, but a 33 track novelty opus from CHRISTIAN ska stalwarts Five Iron Frenzy. It's called Cheeses of Nazareth, and it's bad in so many ways. It's irritating, it's racist, it's sanctimonious, and perhaps most eggregiously, it has the weakest "hardcore" screams ever cut to wax. It just might be bad enough for Heather to disown ska for good. Give it a listen to find out!   Check out DIWHY the show at www.diwhytheshow.com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our lifestyle determines our deathstyle, Stoppies, so we're destined to be killed by trash music. For the first time ever on Make It Stop we return to a previously reviewed artist, in this case a now Lou Reed-less Metallica, and their infamous 2003 disasterpiece St. Anger. Maggie and Ashleigh from Rock Candy Podcast join us as we discuss Lars Ulrich's shit sandwiches, Bob Rock's flowing mane, and James Hetfield's fruitless search for self-actualization. We also talk at length about how St. Anger is an abominable blight on the band's career, sounds like it was recorded in an oil drum, and has NO GUITAR SOLOS. WHAT THE HELL. HOW DO YOU MAKE A METALLICA ALBUM WITH NO GUITAR SOLOS??? UGH. Check out the Rock Candy podcast at www.rockcandypodcast.com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Halloween, and that can only mean one thing: It's time for a Danzig review! Comedian Rich Karski joins us to discuss the latest effort from the diminutive, geriatric king of ghoulish tunage, 2017's Black Laden Crown. We go in depth on Danzig's bad politics, his Napoleon syndrome, and his latent homoeroticism. We discuss Danzig's drag name and why the hell he's so goshdarn looooooonely. And we try to get to the bottom of how exactly a crown can be laden with black. It's a spooktacularly shitty album, so beware! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Make It Stop we’re smoking pot, loving peace, and doing sex stuff. We’re licking your teeth. We’re shoving your head into our armpits. And they weirdly smell good. In 2015, the recently liberated pop superstar Miley Cyrus collaborated with The Flaming Lips and Mike Will Made It to produce Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, a 23 track, 92 minute slog through her drug addled psyche. Released independently and free from the confines of her record contract, Dead Petz was meant to be Miley’s grand artistic statement. What it ended up being, though, was a cautionary tale about how weed isn’t a replacement for a personality, and how nobody cares if you like to do a sex. Mike and Heather are joined by local blogger and podcaster Dahlia, and they ask the important questions — does Miley even know what sex is? If she does, are she and Wayne Coyne more than just friends? Who is Space Dude and why should we care? And why? Just, why????!!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of Make It Stop, comedian and dear friend of the pod Katie McCarthy joins us to discuss Montreal's favorite crackhead Chuggo! Arguably the most obscure album we've covered, Chuggo's Act Like You Might Know is a hidden gem rife with gross sex talk, tampon-related punchlines, and constant yelling. Katie, Heather and Mike try to figure out why Chuggo feels it is such a necessity to lie about his sex life, and ponder his criminal record, his current whereabouts, and his propensity toward consuming strawberry flavored lube. Honestly this is one of the funniest albums we've had the displeasure of listening to. And Chuggo, if you're reading this, and you're not already banned from entering the U.S., please join us on the podcast. We'd love to have you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices