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TyronneA Fearsomely Awesome review of Chinese Democracy by Chuck Klosterman
November 24th 2008 05:53
He starts like he should start:
"Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all?"
He's absolutely right - should we be thankful that the album is here in the first place?
Klosterman then gives us his take on the album, summarizing it in one streamlined paragraph:
"Here are the simple things about Chinese Democracy: Three of the songs are astonishing. Four or five others are very good. The vocals are brilliantly recorded, and the guitar playing is (generally) more interesting than the guitar playing on the Use Your Illusion albums."
Here's one of the tracks:
Klosterman then goes on for pages, talking about the cultural relevance of this album - how shocking it is that it's this good, how much better it is without Slash, how Axl misses Izzy... on and on, like a florist talking sweetly about her first boyfriend.
Axl Rose has transformed himself, predictably and oft repeated by me, the way all rockers end up - looking like someone's uncle, the one that refused to settle down and get a job, dreaming about rocking forever. The only thing that keeps the memory of Jimi and Morrison fresh is that they snuffed it at 27.
Instead, Rose didn't kick out early, like he might have done, burning so hotly on his Nighttrain. He stuck around, and in doing so, transformed into someone that needs to have some hot tea before bed. He went from this:
to this:
This last picture is from an article about today's Axl Rose biting a security guard on the leg, and then getting pushed around by Tommy Hilfiger. That's what the singer of GNR has come to - fisticuffs with fashion designers.
Still, Klosterman finds it all a big deal, that we have Chinese democracy now.
"I've maintained a decent living by making easy jokes about Axl Rose for the past 10 years, but what's the final truth? The final truth is this: He makes the best songs."
*images of Rose taken from this spectacle page, and the second image is from this news article
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