Chinese Democracy, now that we've had time to think (and forget) about it

should have made "axl means that sleep is an area in which he excels" an option

had a weird night recently driving home from across state lines at 2am and Chinese Democracy was one of the only CDs in the glove box that i hadn't listened to lately, was kind of a fun companion piece to reading the 33 1/3 about the Use Your Illusions (which i actually like a lot), and yeah man this album is more of a drag than a WTF or anything. i might still like "Better" enough to vote #2, though.

"I don't need to hear it again, but jeez it's not godawful or anything."

But it was definitely a disappointment considering the wait.

I will give props to Klosterman's review, because memories of this paragraph made listening to the most unforgivably turgid song on the album not just bearable but hilarious:

On the aforementioned "Sorry," Rose suddenly sings an otherwise innocuous line ("But I don't want to do it") in some bizarre, quasi-Transylvanian accent, and I cannot begin to speculate as to why. I mean, one has to assume Axl thought about all of these individual choices a minimum of a thousand times over the past 15 years. Somewhere in Los Angles, there's gotta be 400 hours of DAT tape with nothing on it except multiple versions of the "Sorry" vocal. So why is this the one we finally hear? What finally made him decide, "You know, I've weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I'm going with the Mexican vampire accent. This is the vision I will embrace. But only on that one line! The rest of it will just be sung like a non-dead human." Often, I don't even care if his choices work or if they fail. I just want to know what Rose hoped they would do.

I wish there was a choice in between "Actually, I think there's some decent stuff on it" and "It's G'N'Rs finest hour, and I say that with no irony whatsoever." I like it a lot. In fact, I would happily dump the Illusions and keep Appetite and Chinese as my only two G N' R albums, if it came to that.

That paragraph is exactly what I sound like every time I watch The Room. This is a great way of approaching weird art imo.

I love Guns 'n Roses, like this album, but despite this, it is still my lifelong dream to throw a potato at Axl Rose during a concert.

Why "potato"?

What finally made him decide, "You know, I've weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I'm going to throw a potato at him?"

Potato makes sense to me, tho'

"Actually, I think there's some decent stuff on it."

I'm pretty mixed on Klosterman overall, but that review was one of the best things I read about this record. Voting #2 because there is a decent album buried under all that over production.

i really think the songs have more problems than the production

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

never heard this album. The 3 g'n'r super-fans that i know irl all stan for it

two of them, independently of each other, refer to it as "chi dem" :/

i never got my god damn doctor pepper

This may well be the biggest lol in rock history.

+

I don't care either way, and yet I feel the need to express my apathy by voting.

=

ilxor

The latter option perfectly describes my opinion.

Went with "I don't need to hear it again, but jeez it's not godawful or anything," which is the closest to how I feel about it, although I'd say most of it is fairly godawful. It had decent moments here and there, but not a single song that I care about hearing again.

^^^^^^^

(and I think that's possibly the best outcome, because after all the time Axl spent on it, it could have been a complete disaster, the "Heaven's Gate" of rock)

Got the damn thing cheap on CD the last weekend. Haven't litened to quite all of it yet. So far I'm inna "but jeez it's not godawful or anything" kinda state o'mind.

nah I think a complete disaster would've been overall a way better outcome than the kind of shrug this elicits. even Use Your Illusion has way more cringey/campy/over the top moments, CD feels surprisingly small and unambitious by comparison.

Yeah, except GnR's least ambitious album (The Spaghetti Incident) is also their second or third best.

I don't care either way, and yet I feel the need to express my apathy by voting.

i wasn't saying ambitious GnR = good GnR, just that the album that took 13 years or whatever felt oddly scaled down compared to the one that took 2-3 years.

That's not that surprising, is it? Taking that long = lots of rethinking/rerecording/reworking = a much less spontaneous-sounding result because it's been analyzed to death before it could make it out of the studio.

yeah but i mean...Axl's raging id is all UYI with crazy rants and spoken word bits and 9-minute epics, and people pretty much expected when the rest of the band left that he'd go even further over the edge. by comparison Chinese Democracy isn't especially indulgent; a lot of songs that sound kind of like "Estranged" or "November Rain" but aren't nearly as long or over the top, no profanity-laced tirades, etc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The sorrows:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/axl-rose-sues-his-former-manager-for-5-million/

lol wow Azoff hardballin

Mr. Rose also accuses Mr. Azoff of name-calling. “Out of spite and vindictiveness to cause Rose emotional distress and harm,” his suit says, the lawsuit Mr. Azoff filed in March uses Mr. Rose’s adopted name, William Bailey, instead of his legal name, W. Axl Rose. “Azoff knew that the name William Bailey carries significant emotional damage.”

When asked to comment on Mr. Rose’s suit, Mr. Azoff said in a statement on Tuesday: “On advice of counsel I cannot respond at this time, but will discuss in my upcoming book, ‘My Life With William Bill Bailey.’”

oh man that is cold

ice cold

http://thegreenroombar.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/bill-bailey-l.jpg

w. axl rose, yesterday

Axl was adopted?

No. His birth dad did a runner iirc

Was raised by mom and stepdad

Lots more about Irving Azoff.

azoff manages the eagles so you know he's gotta be some kind of hardcore SOB.

This is the only opinion on "Chinese Democracy" you need: http://estebanbuttez.blogspot.com/2009/01/buttezview-guns-n-roses-chinese.html

Yours at Best Buy for the princely sum of $1.99:

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/208344_10150547813235578_827245577_17914532_3019586_n.jpg

Haha, wow, I'm imagining them to still have warehouse overflowing with this record. Every now and then my local Best Buy puts back up the original special display endcap in the hopes of shedding more copies of this. The major drawback of these exclusivity deals? Target seems to be having trouble dumping their stock of that 3-disc Prince set as well.

Yeah, and Wal-Mart's taken a bath on most of their exclusives. The Eagles and AC/DC were their only hits.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WkGsRv1JB1o"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkGsRv1JB1o&feature=related

So Best Buy is selling this album for 1.99 this week. Lol they tryin to unleash the backlog of unsold exclusive units?

Look up a couple posts, they've been selling it that cheap for a while now.

oops...this is what happens when I ILX from my phone in a hurry, haha.

Chinese economy.

eheh, funny I listened to this yesterday. bad. sometimes awful.

ahah. It think I've listened to it more than twice though !
talking about this makes me want to give it a go tonight...

I always make it through the first few songs before getting tired of it. Should really listen to the whole thing. I like "Better" pretty well, sorta almost.

NOT EXACTLY A GLOWING RECOMMENDATION! I couldn't do it. I couldn't let it go without qualifications.

Better was one of the other "new" songs they played.

Why anyone would listen to this more than twice is beyond me. Not every album deserves two listens, let alone three. I think this one's exhausting not-goodness is pretty prima facia.

"Better" is dope imo

this is a really exhausting record but parts of it are good imo

definitely doesn't deserve josh's ire

also yeah "better" rules

the idea of ILM in 2045 is very chinesedemocracyesque

The intro feels really corny to me. Plus, I always notice how his voice goes a little wonky on the chorus (specifically 1:18-1:22, below. I can't unhear that)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbyqqd2Lwp8

Come on, this album is only good in a vacuum: it sucks! No, seriously though, if this was all I or anyone knew about GNR it would be fine as a weird sort of sterile, industrial hard rock record with long ballads. But I can think of very little I'd cut from either Illusion disc to make room for even one song from this one, and yes, that is taking into account the total dross. Because even the OK stuff on this album sounds horrible, like some Pro Tools band in a box experiment gone nuts ("Let's see what happens if we construct an album overdub by overdub, with no more than one player in the studio at a time, over the course of a decade, with no more than one part being added per week!"). The disturbing miracle of the current live GNR is that Axl has hired a band that is able to capture this album's stiff precision in a live setting.

that Brain interview on Chinese Democracy is my favorite anecdote about this record, but it is my favorite story about this record so I'll sum it up:

- Josh Frieze tracks drums on 30 or so songs for the album, the songs are significantly built up over Josh's drum tracks
- Josh and Axl fall out for various reasons, Axl says 'if you leave, I'm taking you off the record', Frieze says 'whatever'
- Axl hires Brain to replay Frieze's parts
- Brain slowly realizes that his job is to recreate Frieze's takes, fill for improvised fill; not to add something new, but just strictly to replace Frieze
- hires a guy to chart out Frieze's parts with notation, takes a few months
- spends several months in the $2000 a day studio rehearsing because Axl insists that Brain perform the drums for each song all the way through in real time
- finally nails the takes
- producer uses Pro Tools' Beat Detective to quantify and allign Brain's performance -exactly- to the original drum takes, so that they are technically the exact same performance of the original take, but with every inch of life and breath edited out of them
- Months and months later, Axl gets the creative result he wanted; Frieze is officially no longer on the album

There's a lot of electronic music that is audibly the result of every sound being programmed, but this record really sets some kind of high water mark for Pro Tools abuse; every single sound has been conformed and tweaked and it is just baffling to listen to from the engineering perspective. Once you realize that this album is edited down to the sixteenth notes, it can be a fascinating listen (I've listened to it all the way through once and to the title track, 'Bedouins' and 'Prostitute' a few times)

I love Guns 'n Roses, like this album, but despite this, it is still my lifelong dream to throw a potato at Axl Rose during a concert.

― Heroin Kills (Brad Nowell's Soiled Undergarments), Saturday, May 8, 2010 10:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why "potato"?

― t**t, Monday, May 10, 2010 8:36 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What finally made him decide, "You know, I've weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I'm going to throw a potato at him?"

Potato makes sense to me, tho'

― bendy, Monday, May 10, 2010 8:43 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Actually, I think there's some decent stuff on it."

― he's always been a bit of an anti-climb Max (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, May 10, 2010 9:01 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

On the potato?

^ bows down

Wow, I've been reading some of these Brain interviews. Is he the only guy who has talked about this stuff in detail? It's just nuts. No wonder the album is a mess. A guitarist - say, Buckethead - might bring in a riff or song, then the band would jam it out, then the guitarist would leave and the replacement would work it out with the band. Then the drummer would bow out for a bit and they'd bring in a new guy to play, say, just the chorus, while the rest of the stuff is a mix of, say, Brain and Josh Freese. And then that would be the process on every other track, too, with a rotating cast of people recreating each other's parts. That worked well on, say, the first Eno record, but here, played to a click, with drum parts transcribed ... gosh.

those are fun facts. I didn't know about all that... (I didn't care about that, actually !).
It's pretty conceptual/artsy when you think of it !
anyway, didn't have the time to listen to it yesterday... soon its time will come !

It's pretty conceptual/artsy anal retentive. This album ain't "Aja."

ahah. there's a thin line between conceptual/artsy and anal retentive !

Spinal Tap said it better ...

is there a book or documentary on the recording and history of chinese democracy ? that could be great !
they should make a movie actually !

di caprio could play axl at all various stages of the process.

(anybody could play buckhead).

no, only one contender!

http://932413476.r.lightningbase-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/bucket.jpg

the history of buckethead is so wtf : http://www.bucketheadland.com/visitorcenter/VIC1.html

"Chinese Democracy - the movie (3D)" would be so gorgeous...

http://www.metalinjection.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Faxl-150x150.jpg

It would have to be Chinese Democracy:3-D in IMAX.

ahah. and Axl would want to record a whole new soundtrack for the movie !

Wow, I've been reading some of these Brain interviews. Is he the only guy who has talked about this stuff in detail?
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, April 2, 2012 11:03 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The only bandmember, yeah.

It's weird to me how most people concede that Better is awesome but won't give it up for There Was A Time. Buckethead pwns on that song, man.

some dude otm

Buckethead doesn't own on anything, ever. I was just in Louisville, and the science museum there has a traveling exhibit on guitars. About 2/3rds of the electrics are dedicated to these stupid shredder hybrid models, including a little installation dedicated only to Steve Vai, who has this clip playing on a loop of him soloing in the dark with flashlight eyes, colored lights on his frets and lights on his fingers. That's what I think of when I think of Buckethead, only with nunchucks and a KFC bucket on his head.

- Brain slowly realizes that his job is to recreate Frieze's takes, fill for improvised fill; not to add something new, but just strictly to replace Frieze

I'm trying to figure out how this reconciles with the notion that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I'm trying to figure out how this reconciles with the notion that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

this is just some folksy axiom that stops making sense when you think about it, especially when we juxtapose it with these other coffee mug proverbs:

- "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again"
- "the key to success is persistence"
- "never give up on your dreams"
- etc.

All those could apply to Chinese Democracy!

I guess my point is that implications of insanity would probably be better associated with the thing you're trying to accomplish rather than the act of doing something over and over.

(and yes, the description of drum tracking above indicates insanity)

^ It's not trying them again that is crazy, it is hiring a different drummer to play the parts exactly the same as the drummer that preceded him.

it's funny because you'd think Axl would be walking around thinking of new ways to screw over Slash or Duff some more and write them out of GNR history but he's too busy making new grudges and getting revenge on friggin Josh Freese

there's this rumor, not sure if it's true or not, that George Lucas wanted to recreate this creek that he used to play in when he was a kid, and he ordered people to meticulously take notes on the original creek, and then in the new creek, place rocks in the exact same locations that they were in the original stream.

I heard he was making the creek better, inserting cool new sassy-talking rocks and making it so that the fish totally provoked you before you caught them on a hook

guys don't you get it, he wanted the same drumming but with Brain's FEEL

Buckethead doesn't own on anything, ever. I was just in Louisville, and the science museum there has a traveling exhibit on guitars. About 2/3rds of the electrics are dedicated to these stupid shredder hybrid models, including a little installation dedicated only to Steve Vai, who has this clip playing on a loop of him soloing in the dark with flashlight eyes, colored lights on his frets and lights on his fingers. That's what I think of when I think of Buckethead, only with nunchucks and a KFC bucket on his head.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, April 5, 2012 1:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whatever dude, the There Was A Time solo is fucking badass

sO I've finally given this another try and went through THE WHOLE album !
actually, it's not that bad.
many songs are not worse than what's on UYIs (which doesn't mean much since there are many tracks I don't like/don't care about on the UYIs...).
and I was surprised to find many that are actually not bad/better than many tracks on YUIs : street of dreams, there was a time, catcher, IRS, prostitute.
I think it might be the GnR album I would rather listen to these days !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQw9449ppo

will totally rep for "catcher in the rye" and "there was a time," although this is kind of an exhausting record to listen to. there's no space that's not crammed with sound.

find this band totally loathsome in general and am now listening to this on YT for yuks and... I dunno this mostly sounds like how I remember UYI sounding back when I heard it in college.

So any bets on when the follow up to Chinese Democracy is going to happen?

well that was tiresome, I almost made it to the end but I gave up with four minutes left to go. so much of that proto-Jim Dandy shrieking blech.

I love Guns 'n Roses, like this album, but despite this, it is still my lifelong dream to throw a potato at Axl Rose during a concert.

― Heroin Kills (Brad Nowell's Soiled Undergarments), Sunday, May 9, 2010 2:24 AM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why "potato"?

― t**t, Monday, May 10, 2010 12:36 PM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Taste's very Estranged!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Lm5rAq8K1kE/maxresdefault.jpg

aww, mr and mrs potato head are still very much in love

I just bought it for the first time for $1.39.
It was a compact disc.