God, Music Sucked in the 80's...

They even found a way to make Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins sound lame:

Rating My CD's: A Boy Named John

12. Johnny Cash -- The Legend Box Set

In a lot of ways, Johnny Cash was just like Elvis. Both were sons of the Mississippi Delta; both grew up poor as dirt; both wandered in to Sun Records in Memphis in the middle of the 1950's hungry and talented; both achieved international fame and became legends in their own time. Up until 1968 or so, their career arcs show suprising similarity.


After that, they break apart to an almost perpendicular degree. The King's '68 Comeback ended up not re-vitalizing Elvis' career so much as eulogizing it nine years ahead of time. He sank down into drugs and debauchery and became just another sacrifice offered on the altar of Fame, apotheosized in mystic sightings and velvet portraits. Only now, 30 years after his death, are the cognoscenti prepared to take him seriously again.

Rating My CD's: I Hear the Train A-Comin'...

11. Johnny Cash -- At Folsom Prison

Johnny Cash is the Country Crossover King, the Miles Davis of the Genre. People who run from Country like it bore Bubonic AIDS still dig Johnny Cash. Kids who wouldn't know Hank Williams from Willie Nelson still think he's the bees knees. Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that he got his start as part of the Sun Records rockabilly revue in the mid-50's; Cash never lost that boom-chika-boom R&B that highlights his early records, that cross between the plain rural folk of Country and a more percussive urban music.