Private Parts: The Album

The soundtrack for Howard Stern's cinematic debut Private Parts was bound to be a hodge-podge of styles designed by marketers to reach the most listeners, but it's still surprising to hear how uneven the album actually is. Divided between contemporary hard rock and classic hard rock interspersed with snippets of dialogue from the film, the album never really builds up speed. Half of the new songs are worthy -- particularly Porno for Pyros' "Hard Charger," which is more focused than anything they've previously released, and LL Cool J and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' collaboration, "I Make My Own Rules" -- but there is also dreck like Ozzy Osbourne and Type O Negative's awkward cover of Status Quo's "Pictures of Matchstick Men." The classic rock -- "Smoke on the Water," "I Want You to Want Me," "Cat Scratch Fever," "Jamie's Cryin'," a live "You Shook Me All Night Long" -- is good, but almost too familiar. Still, no one is going to Private Parts for creativity, and it delivers what it promises -- good, old-fashioned hard rock with lots of attitude. It's a lot like listening to an AOR morning show, as a matter of fact.