# Artists who arguably have produced BOTH the best AND the worst in their field **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 4, 2020, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937 "2020-01-04T16:31:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/61 "2020-01-06T03:05:49Z")
I’m with you, I dig Collins totally for what he is. Phenomenally talented POP musician. ---
**Author:** ![Personal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Personal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Personal)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/62 "2020-01-06T03:11:44Z")
Sean Connery as Bond. And then there was Zardoz. Michael Caine has multiples on both sides, by design to hear him tell it. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/63 "2020-01-06T03:52:15Z")
Zardoz was all interstallar awesome. But on a horse. heh. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/64 "2020-01-06T04:00:12Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Hey, I LIKE “A Boy Named Sue.” > So much so that I went and named my son… Bill! (or maybe George?) ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/65 "2020-01-06T04:05:34Z")
I’ll nominate Sylvester Stallone. Rambo is an excellent action flick with interesting characters and a pretty top notch movie. On the other hand Cobra was made because the producers of Beverly Hills Cop didn’t want to give into Stallone’s demand he turn their comedy into something serious. Even by 80s action movie standards, Cobra is a terrible movie. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/66 "2020-01-06T04:10:14Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > So you haven’t seen Episodes 1-3? Yeah I have, I have also seen more than 10 movies in my life, and anybody who suggests those are among the worst movies ever must not have. Try something by Uwe Boll, or just check out a few the 100 worst rated movies on IMDB. And then see if you can make your comment again with a straight face. ---
**Author:** ![lingyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d2c977/32.png) [@lingyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lingyi)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/67 "2020-01-06T04:32:03Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > I’ll enter two performance notes. > > 1. Clapton was a good guitarist. Then I saw him at a 1974 stadium show - after the Byrds, with WAY too much treble! In the next Freddie King set, Slowhand staggered onstage to the mic, muttered “I’m Eric Clapton and I’m bloody drunk,” and fell over. He played for shit too. > > 2. I loved DON’T FEAR THE REAPER. I dashed to a 2017 Blue Öyster Cult casino show. They fucking phoned-in their pathetic 45-minute empty snoozefest. I guess they skipped the stimulants. > > Yes, just as any artists can produce inconstant works, so any performer can have a bod day. But if you’re paid to be on stage, I want you to at least PRETEND you’re trying. I contend that anything Clapton did after _Derek and the Dominos_ on record or live is a pale imitation of what he is (was, as he once said in an interview that he’s amazed at some of his playing in the past) capable of. There were brief moments like _Stormy Monday_ during the Cream reunion when he came close to letting go, but as usual, held himself back. ---
**Author:** ![lingyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d2c977/32.png) [@lingyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lingyi)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/68 "2020-01-06T04:40:49Z")
Heart Went from \*Crazy On You \*and _Magic Man_ to _These Dreams_. When my ex-girlfriend’s brother showed us his CD that it was on (don’t even know the name), I wanted to recommend _Dreamboat Annie_, but realized the band that made _These Dreams_ was completely different. Yes, Ann and Nancy could still bring it live, but the damage was done and can never be undone. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/69 "2020-01-06T05:03:54Z")
Special mention has to go to Sandra Bullock who won an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress within 36 hours. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/70 "2020-01-06T05:28:29Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > And what was his only #1 hit? Doesn’t mean it was good. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/71 "2020-01-06T05:33:21Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > The Who recorded “Baba O’Riley” _and_ “Boris the Spider”. So there you go. I’ve always felt that “You Better You Bet” sounds like the Who imitating their earlier selves. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/72 "2020-01-06T12:43:18Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Pressing on the walls of “any medium”, I’m going to nominate Richard Garfield: the game designer who created the wildly successful _Magic: the Gathering_ collectible card game in the early 90s which laid the foundation for the collectible card game (CCG) genre and is still played by an estimated 20,000,000 people. . Doesn’t _Cosmic Encounter_ (from 1977, well predating _Magic: The Encounter_ count? It was _massively_ popular, was a card-based play system, and had expansion packs. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/73 "2020-01-06T14:47:19Z")
> [@Personal](#): > > Sean Connery as Bond. And then there was Zardoz. > > Michael Caine has multiples on both sides, by design to hear him tell it. The worst film I have seen Michael Caine in is _On Deadly Ground_----a film directed, co-produced and starring Steven Seagal. Here is one anecdote about it: > [@](#): > > Producer and Director Steven Seagal filmed almost forty minutes of footage for the environmental message at the end of this movie, and planned to use it all in the final cut. After pressure from Warner Brothers, and a disastrous preview screening, where audience members booed, laughed, and made obscene gestures for the entire sequence, Seagal cut the final scene down to about seven minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/74 "2020-01-06T14:50:54Z")
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s next musical after Jesus Christ Superstar was Jeeves. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/75 "2020-01-06T14:59:13Z")
A couple of further suggestions: **The Carry On movies** (so the artists are producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas). If you don’t know them, think: the idiot child of Ealing comedies; cheap, but in their heyday they were gloriously silly, smutty and hilariously funny. As British society grew up a bit, the smut became an embarrassment; the budgets got cut and the formula got (very) old. At the end they were beyond irrelevant - simply awful. The great days: [Carry on up the Khyber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNk4SMN6t3A) (sorry about the picture quality) (they were smarter in those days as well - the title is a filthy pun in rhyming slang: Khyber Pass = …) The lingering death: [Carry on England](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjYk7LMqB_c). **The Sex Pistols**. Did any band fall so far so fast? From Lydon snarling for a generation: _[There’s no point in asking you’ll get no reply](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6GDdKrQ8EI)_- to Sid Vicious singing My Way (link intentionally omitted; all you can really say about that is that the singer and the song deserved each other). Made the long list but not the short list: Monty Python - great, yeah, but always viewed through rose tinted classes. There were many, many awful unfunny sketches, played out to forced laughter barely covering the sound of tumbleweeds. David Bowie - Too much greatness to list, but remember The Laughing Gnome? And Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby? {Shudders} - Actually, put him on the short list. j ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/76 "2020-01-06T15:01:52Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Doesn’t _Cosmic Encounter_ (from 1977, well predating _Magic: The Encounter_ count? It was _massively_ popular, was a card-based play system, and had expansion packs. Garfield cites _Cosmic Encounter_ as an inspiration but I don’t believe it had the same tradeable (and marketable) competitive deck-building aspect which is a defining feature of the CCG. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Brother\_1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_brother_1/32/3513_2.png) [@Little\_Brother\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Brother_1)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/77 "2020-01-06T21:10:35Z")
> [@lingyi](#): > > Clapton is God! Proven by his playing in Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos. The original version of _Layla_ is a deserved classic, but the reimagined Unplugged version is utter trash. No angst, no pain, no unrequited love, no soaring solos. Uggh! I don’t follow Clapton’s doings closely enough to know whether rehab had successfully rendered him “clean & sober” when he recorded Layla Unplugged. I’m happy for him if becoming substance-free gave him peace of mind and stability, but it seems to have dulled his musical edge and banked his creative fire-- ironically, pretty much the same way immoderate drug use does. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Brother\_1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_brother_1/32/3513_2.png) [@Little\_Brother\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Brother_1)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/78 "2020-01-06T21:24:39Z")
> [@Lamoral](#): > > Do you feel the same way about Beatles songs like _Octopus’s Garden_? Happy Jack is seriously the “worst in their field?” You _really_ believe that? It’s a tangent, but this brings to mind “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. I find it tolerable; it’s obviously intended as a lightweight snarky, macabre tune in the tradition of Ringo’s “Don’t Pass Me By”. But I was recently checking out some Beatles analysis/criticism on the Internets, and belatedly discovered that some professional critics and fans _hate_ this song with the white-hot intensity of ten thousand burning suns. One critic was infuriated that such utterly tasteless adolescent dreck was deemed fit to include with the rest of “Abbey Road”. Meh. I see where they’re coming from. But I can still listen to it. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/79 "2020-01-06T22:17:39Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > I’ll nominate Sylvester Stallone. Rambo is an excellent action flick with interesting characters and a pretty top notch movie. On the other hand Cobra was made because the producers of Beverly Hills Cop didn’t want to give into Stallone’s demand he turn their comedy into something serious. Even by 80s action movie standards, Cobra is a terrible movie. The first Rambo was sort of OK, if questionable in various ways, but the other two were pure crap. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937/80 "2020-01-06T22:21:13Z")
Some their work is good, I’ll go without the massive enthusiasm, as I am not a huge Beatles fan. Partly because they have a tendency to be infantile. McCartney solo in Wings showed he needed the restraining influence of Lennon to save him from his own worst excesses. But Lennon was also pretty uneven. “Imagine” is a classic, but “Give peace a chance” was just a half-assed dirge with tedious thumping. That said, the classics don’t fare much better. Quite a lot does not get played any longer, and often with good reason. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artists-who-arguably-have-produced-both-the-best-and-the-worst-in-their-field/845937.md?page=5)