The Snivelling Shits. I Can't Come.

I feel like I should just be able to point out that these guys named themselves The Snivelling Shits and that their signature song spends six minutes detailing all the many ways in which their lead singer can’t achieve an orgasm, and leave it at that. But that would mean leaving out mention of Crossraods, wherein they take the piss out of Lou Reed by turning Waiting for the Man into a Bowie-esque vamp about impatiently waiting for their favorite British soap opera to start. Or bludgeon the French language to death. Or lament their inability to become samurai, question god’s gender and daily grooming rituals, and write a song for The Damned.

Anyway, as Maximumrocknroll once said, this album is "essential for music lovers and music haters alike". Formed as a bit of a lark in 1977 by music journalists Giovanni Dadamo and Dave Fudger (Zig Zag, Sounds, and The Face), they recorded Terminal Stupid (backed with the aforementioned I Can’t Come) and sent it anonymously to their rivals at NME, who made it single of the week. With a lineup rounded out by members of Eddie & the Hotrods and eventually legendary producer Steve Lillywhite, the Shits recorded a total of nine songs that, through utter devotion to being as magnificently stupid as possible, manage to be as good as or better than most of the bands they were supposedly mocking.

If you can dig a viciously unholy smash-up of the Velvets, The Damned, Bowie, and the Sex Pistols, then this is a criminally forgotten classic of punk-as-fuck snots who couldn’t even take themselves seriously (thank god).

Shits