Chinese Democracy exists and i'm happy about it

Guns n Roses album Chinese Democracy is released
Guns n' Roses album Chinese Democracy is finally released

I had this conversation in the office today with a colleague (let call him M-Bone) that went like this:

  • M-Bone: The new Chinese Democracy album totally sucks
  • Me: Really?!
  • M-Bone: Yeah – it’s totally horrible
  • Me: hmm
  • Me: Hey – did you like Use Your Illusion?
  • M-Bone: No – i hated that album too

And there you have it.  I keep hearing from lots of people who didn’t like Guns ‘N Roses to begin with that the new album Chinese Democracy is garbage.  Of course it is – you don’t like the Guns N’ Roses‘ music.   Me, on the other hand, happen to really like GnR and think that the new ablum is really interesting.  Of course the music isn’t as good as Appetite for Destruction – nothing will ever be.  But it is good.  And even more than that – it is nice just to have it exist. It’s a moment, an event, something worth listening to.

The Phantom Menace

I would argue the same for Star Wars Episode I or Rocky II.  Are they good as the originals? No, definitely not.  Am i happy they exist? Absolutely.  Whether you love them or hate them – it just makes the world a better place.

I don’t think i’ll know how good the music is until all the hoopla dies down.  Probably sometime in mid 2009 i’ll have a sense for how good the songs are.  Right now i really like them and really enjoy just experience more GnR.

There is also a good review by Chuck Kloseterman about the new album.  As a fellow fan and probably the most qualified man in America to review the album, he also appreciates the album but brings up some good questions that it raises.  I’ll leave you to the article. It’s here in the AV Section of the Onion: Chuck Klosterman’s review of Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy

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Welcome to the Jungle….

As Axl Rose purportedly makes final preparations to put out Chinese Democracy any minute now (we hope!), Stephen Davis, the rock biographer behind 1985’s classic Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, is releasing his long-awaited Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N’ Roses. In it, Davis traces GN’R’s illustrious history all the way back to Rose’s origins as a disaffected Indiana kid named Bill Bailey. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction:

Some think the legend of Guns N’ Roses began in the nighttime Los Angeles of 1985, a distant echo of West Hollywood’s neon-lit Sunset Strip. Others think it should begin ten years earlier, at the confluence of two Indiana rivers, the Wabash and the Tippecanoe, in the 1970s. But in this telling, the GN’R saga begins in gritty New York, in upper Manhattan, on a sweltering, run-down street in the late afternoon of a summer day in 1980

Continue reading “Welcome to the Jungle….”