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Music: Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy (Onion AVClub)

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      CommentAuthorthom_wong
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008
     (4245.1)
    This is all over the interwebs but thought I'd put it here to see what people thought. Favourite quote:

    What finally made [Axl] decide, “You know, I’ve weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I’m going with the Mexican vampire accent”?


    Complete review here.
  2.  (4245.2)
    I haven't heard it yet but the general consensus seems to be that the record is pretty good. So.. the album is coming out and it doesn't totally suck?? WHAT??? My brain hurts.
  3.  (4245.3)
    I can't explain why, but I have a weird feeling that I'm going to go to Best Buy next week and buy this. I haven't bought a physical CD in years, and it is a Guns N' Roses album, but for some reason I just know that next week I'm going to black out for about an hour, and when I wake up in my home with no pants on and in a puddle of my own piss, I'm going to have this CD in my hands.
  4.  (4245.4)
    Feels like an Onion headline all itself "Colossal Douchebag Enjoys Work of Other Colossal Douchbag."

    Klosterman ranks up there with Harry Knowles in terms of ability to give a positive review that drains all my interest in the subject.
  5.  (4245.5)
    I’ve listened to the album half a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. It’s a good pop album. I saw pop because Chinese Democracy is the most self-indulgent studio album I’ve ever heard. Some of these songs will not be reproduced live without using prerecorded tracks and drum machines. And some of it becomes ridiculous: sampling Martin Luther King worked in the rough versions of Madagascar, at this point it’s just gold-lamé on the candles on the icing on the eighteen layer cake.

    If you can get through all of the layers, if you can handle a really rich aural meal, it is a good album. Rose still has an amazing voice, and contemporary computers make it sound better than ever. And the lyrics are great, Rose even manages to spit vitriol at the people who have been mocking the album in it’s long journey to the stores. The best song on the album is the stripped down balled This I Love, which is all lyrics. I don’t know if it’s about Erin Everley or Stephanie Seymour, but they’ll both cry when they hear it. If you’re the kind of person who loves to pick at studio recordings, if you listen to Ziggy Stardust or Disintegration at insane volumes just to hear every tiny flute part, you owe it to yourself to find out what an album that took fifteen years to make (and contains some twenty-five year-old songs that finally got recorded) sounds like. If you thought Use Your Illusion 2 should have been left in the vault, you’ll hate it.
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      CommentAuthorjoe.distort
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008 edited
     (4245.6)
    i read this last night and was stymied by the assumption that this is the last "old media album where people will care about buying the actual physical product". i find that ridiculous because of the fact that people will either
    a)always want the whole physical package
    or
    b) have already given up on it and arent going to care more about owning this album in a non-digital way

    i cant imagine anyone out there that downloads exclusively deciding that THIS is the last thing they will go out and buy.
    EDIT: i guess shawn did just disprove my half-assed theory...
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      CommentAuthorFauxhammer
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008
     (4245.7)
    If you thought Use Your Illusion 2 should have been left in the vault, you’ll hate it


    Heh--I though "GnR Lies" was overblown.
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      CommentAuthorSt.Wanger
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008
     (4245.8)
    Listening to the complete album stream on myspace right now.

    Well, let's be honest: The problem about this is, that it has "Guns N' Roses" on the cover. Because it isn't Gun N' Roses at all. It's the dork who sang in GNR back then with a huge cast of weird people who came and went to work on an album with him, tryin' to do something like "Rock'n'Roll up to date".
    I really dig Rock Music with electronic bits in it, but that's not what I wanto to get from an album with "Guns N' Roses" on it.
    As for the song material itself, as far as I can tell at this point: It's quite okay, nice Rock Music, but then again, just nothing mor than nice Rock Music. Do you want GNR to bejust nice? No. It's lacking some balls.

    I guess the best move would have been to label it as an Axl Rose solo album or something like that. Really.
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      CommentAuthorrickiep00h
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008
     (4245.9)
    See, and that's exactly what I've been saying since I saw them on their abortion of a tour in 2003 or whatever the hell it was. It's not Guns n Roses, it's a GNR cover band with a really good singer. Which is what you can say about any band that dumps everyone and then fills the holes with scabs (e.g., KISS). If John Lennon had started a new band and called it The Beatles, people would say the same thing.

    But here's the thing: no one, in the big picture, really cares. It's just another CD. Hell, the new AC/DC was more of an event than this thing, as far as promotion and all that is concerned. I don't care what it sounds like. The GNR boat sailed a long, long time ago for me.

    And, I say again, Chuck Klosterman can fuck right off.
  10.  (4245.10)
    Because it isn't Gun N' Roses at all.

    FWIW, Axl has been the only member of the original lineup since Izzy left in 1991. LA hair metal groupies probably said the same thing about Axl doing an album with Duff and Slash back in 1987.
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      CommentAuthorSt.Wanger
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008
     (4245.11)
    @James: I see your point, but you know ... I still feel the "consistense" of it is completely gone now.
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      CommentAuthorExploder
    • CommentTimeNov 20th 2008
     (4245.12)
    Are we really still caring what fucking Axl Rose does in the twenty first century? I thought that age had passed...
  13.  (4245.13)
    Fuck it. I like it.
  14.  (4245.14)
    Listened to it about 4 times now. It's a good album and it doesn't have a bad track on it. Unfortunately the content doesn't justify the wait
  15.  (4245.15)
    @Lessthanzero:

    That's a better review than Chuck could ever muster.
  16.  (4245.16)
    @Orwellseyes

    ... Pretty much. I don't have to qualify why I dig something, even something as potentially ridiculous as the new Guns N Roses album. Ole Chuck does have some salient points, like how do you really take this in context? It's better than anything contemporary rock radio has to offer. It IS a rich listening listening experience, kind of Axl Rose meets Faith No More, and that's not a bad thing.

    What it's not? The Second Coming of Christ. It's not Appetite For Destruction II. It's not going to make up for it's absurd birthing process.

    But it's pretty fucking good. I've been grooving to it on GNR's Myspace page. I like it.
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      CommentAuthorbrycemidas
    • CommentTimeNov 21st 2008
     (4245.17)
    Once bands that get famous for doing coke and having long hair cut off their hair (see: Metallica) or decide to get cornrows (see: GnR) and quit doing coke, they should just fucking pack it in instead of making us watch them slowly implode.

    Also, I grew up in the town where ol' Chuckles cut his teeth as a music reviewer for the local paper and thusly have despised him for aeons.

    I used to really like the AV Club but their content has seriously deteriorated in recent memory. Jason Heller is a guy who I have known 15 of in every punk rock scene I've ever been in and I've always wanted to punch him/them. Also the imaginary band names feature this week was awful.
  18.  (4245.18)
    If you live in America you have just 22 hours left to claim your Free Dr Pepper.
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      CommentAuthorrickiep00h
    • CommentTimeNov 23rd 2008
     (4245.19)
    @brycemidas

    I live in the town where he cut his teeth writing obits. I'm fucking LEAVING it, too. I'm sad I missed you on your way through Fargo, btw.
    • CommentAuthorpoor_boy
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2008
     (4245.20)
    I'm listening to it right now...on the second to the last track. Pretty good.

    First CD I've bought in a year. I could've gotten it for free, but I saw it in Best Buy and decided, fuck it, I actually <em>want </em>to give Axl thirteen dollars for this. They even had it on vinyl...seems like more of a collectible than anything else at this point.

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