Believing is seeing
Well, I said I'd believe it when I saw it, and now I've seen it, and heard it, and since this blog has featured several different posts about the eventuality, I would be remiss if the arrival of the long-awaited, oft-postponed Chinese Democracy went unregarded in this space.
So here we have it: the Guns 'N Roses album a ridiculous 17 years in the making finally arrives, and the first two things to bear in mind when listening to it are, a) it's not Guns 'N Roses (Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Adler are nowhere to be found), and b) no music released at this point could have possibly lived up to a 17 year wait. When Appetite for Destruction originally dropped, it shattered previous notions about popular music, paving the way for just about everything that followed in the hard rock milieu. (I was, of course, six, so that's just what I've been told. Still, GNR's sweeping follow-up, Use Your Illusion, served, along with Metallica's Black Album, as my first exposure to hard rock.) In the 20+ years since, of course, it's all been assimilated by music fans and music makers, such that GNR is now an important part of the past, but unlikely to have much influence on the future beyond what has already been contributed. Chinese Democracy bears this out.
At this point, I've only listened once, but I'll offer some rudimentary, probably trite, impressions. The album comes off more or less as Use Your Illusion III, with songs like "Better" and the title track recalling I and II's heavier moments such as "You Could Be Mine", while others such as "Street of Dreams" and "Prostitute" suggest the more epic feel of "November Rain" (if they don't exactly contain the same punch). My favorite song on the first listen was "Catcher in the Rye", probably because I seem to love just about any song that contains a "na-na". I also liked "Scraped" and "There Was a Time" (the latter of which begs the question of whether the oft-pointed-out acronym was intentional).
In the end, I found it to be a solid rock album but little else. It wasn't groundbreaking, but hopefully no one will be expecting that. If nothing else, the yoke of Democracy is at long last off Axl's shoulders. We'll see what he chooses to do now thus unencumbered.
"If I thought that I was crazy
Well, I guess I'd have more fun"
- Guns 'N Roses, Catcher in the Rye
So here we have it: the Guns 'N Roses album a ridiculous 17 years in the making finally arrives, and the first two things to bear in mind when listening to it are, a) it's not Guns 'N Roses (Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Adler are nowhere to be found), and b) no music released at this point could have possibly lived up to a 17 year wait. When Appetite for Destruction originally dropped, it shattered previous notions about popular music, paving the way for just about everything that followed in the hard rock milieu. (I was, of course, six, so that's just what I've been told. Still, GNR's sweeping follow-up, Use Your Illusion, served, along with Metallica's Black Album, as my first exposure to hard rock.) In the 20+ years since, of course, it's all been assimilated by music fans and music makers, such that GNR is now an important part of the past, but unlikely to have much influence on the future beyond what has already been contributed. Chinese Democracy bears this out.
At this point, I've only listened once, but I'll offer some rudimentary, probably trite, impressions. The album comes off more or less as Use Your Illusion III, with songs like "Better" and the title track recalling I and II's heavier moments such as "You Could Be Mine", while others such as "Street of Dreams" and "Prostitute" suggest the more epic feel of "November Rain" (if they don't exactly contain the same punch). My favorite song on the first listen was "Catcher in the Rye", probably because I seem to love just about any song that contains a "na-na". I also liked "Scraped" and "There Was a Time" (the latter of which begs the question of whether the oft-pointed-out acronym was intentional).
In the end, I found it to be a solid rock album but little else. It wasn't groundbreaking, but hopefully no one will be expecting that. If nothing else, the yoke of Democracy is at long last off Axl's shoulders. We'll see what he chooses to do now thus unencumbered.
"If I thought that I was crazy
Well, I guess I'd have more fun"
- Guns 'N Roses, Catcher in the Rye
1 Comments:
I'm ashamed to say to took me listening to some old Mike Mott tracks to catch the reference in your title.
Also, this week's Doonesbury story line has a character singing the praises of this album.
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