(me c. 1987)
i streamed Chinese Democracy this morning on Myspace...
at it's best it sounds like a new Robert Plant album ("If The World")...at it's worst it sounds like Stone Temple Pilots post Purple ("Shackler's Revenge")...
still, there's something undeniably great about hearing new Axl tracks...no matter how bland or over-produced or confusing (MLK samples?)...i'm rooting for the album (even though it's mediocre) and i'm rooting for Axl (even though he looks like Ice-T)...i don't know, maybe i'm the only one...but i get really excited when celebrities from my youth re-emerge older and weather-worn but better for it...like Christian Slater, Scott Baio, Jason Bateman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Axl Rose, Michael Anthony Hall, Jeremy Piven, Flavor Flav, Corey Feldman, Patrick Dempsey, Ione Skye et al....call me an idiot but i'm truly happy when these people are employed...maybe it's because when i think of Corey Feldman i think of Vision Street Wear and skating the Concord canals and craw dad fishing and peanut butter ice cream and horror movies and sleep overs and setting fires...and when i think of Flavor Flav i think of Summer camp and my cousin Manoli and Big John and cassettes and rivers and bb guns and Navaronne Way...and when i think of Christian Slater i think of Gleaming The Cube and Heathers which makes me think of painting rocks and my brother and Thrasher magazine and finding porno in the field at the end of the cul de sac and rubber band guns and building ramps and the Cupertino flea market...and when i think of Michelle Pfeiffer i think of Grease 2 and my sister and my cousin Vicki and birthday cake and Slip n' Slide (into the fence) and climbing trees and Taco Bell and Friday The 13th...and when i think of Axl Rose i think of the Benicia skatepark and wearing shorts and 957 San Simeon and Woodside and Toyota trucks and Nintendo and Tom Cruise in Legend and VHS and The Chronicles of Narnia and Moraga and "dip"...
i don't know, i think i root for 80's celebs because the 80's were magic...pre-internet pop culture ingrained in my little skater brain...so when i see Axl or the others in the news 20 years later i think "magic!!!" "the magic is still alive!!!" "carry on you beautiful creatures..."
i think what "Guns n Roses" needs to do is tour this album for 6 months or something and then get back to the studio and record a new, non-epic record for release in 2010...i want GnR to be sustainable...but Chinese Democracy isn't the album to keep people interested...they're certainly not going bring in any new fans with this release...i think the only reason why i sort of like the album is because i trust Axl's voice...i can "hear" it because i have the context to hear it...if i came of age in the oughts though...i would think "this shit is wack..."...i would think "this reminds me of what We Love The 90's says 1994 sounded like"...
at it's best it sounds like a new Robert Plant album ("If The World")...at it's worst it sounds like Stone Temple Pilots post Purple ("Shackler's Revenge")...
still, there's something undeniably great about hearing new Axl tracks...no matter how bland or over-produced or confusing (MLK samples?)...i'm rooting for the album (even though it's mediocre) and i'm rooting for Axl (even though he looks like Ice-T)...i don't know, maybe i'm the only one...but i get really excited when celebrities from my youth re-emerge older and weather-worn but better for it...like Christian Slater, Scott Baio, Jason Bateman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Axl Rose, Michael Anthony Hall, Jeremy Piven, Flavor Flav, Corey Feldman, Patrick Dempsey, Ione Skye et al....call me an idiot but i'm truly happy when these people are employed...maybe it's because when i think of Corey Feldman i think of Vision Street Wear and skating the Concord canals and craw dad fishing and peanut butter ice cream and horror movies and sleep overs and setting fires...and when i think of Flavor Flav i think of Summer camp and my cousin Manoli and Big John and cassettes and rivers and bb guns and Navaronne Way...and when i think of Christian Slater i think of Gleaming The Cube and Heathers which makes me think of painting rocks and my brother and Thrasher magazine and finding porno in the field at the end of the cul de sac and rubber band guns and building ramps and the Cupertino flea market...and when i think of Michelle Pfeiffer i think of Grease 2 and my sister and my cousin Vicki and birthday cake and Slip n' Slide (into the fence) and climbing trees and Taco Bell and Friday The 13th...and when i think of Axl Rose i think of the Benicia skatepark and wearing shorts and 957 San Simeon and Woodside and Toyota trucks and Nintendo and Tom Cruise in Legend and VHS and The Chronicles of Narnia and Moraga and "dip"...
i don't know, i think i root for 80's celebs because the 80's were magic...pre-internet pop culture ingrained in my little skater brain...so when i see Axl or the others in the news 20 years later i think "magic!!!" "the magic is still alive!!!" "carry on you beautiful creatures..."
i think what "Guns n Roses" needs to do is tour this album for 6 months or something and then get back to the studio and record a new, non-epic record for release in 2010...i want GnR to be sustainable...but Chinese Democracy isn't the album to keep people interested...they're certainly not going bring in any new fans with this release...i think the only reason why i sort of like the album is because i trust Axl's voice...i can "hear" it because i have the context to hear it...if i came of age in the oughts though...i would think "this shit is wack..."...i would think "this reminds me of what We Love The 90's says 1994 sounded like"...
3 comments:
ah john, you are certainly not alone. thank you for the nostalgia. i will return to the moment you and i sat in the smoking section at naropa and you noticed the DK and Misfits patches on my bag and commented on the mistaken assumption that i was a hippie. your stories are so like my own experience of the "magic" of the 80s. i was in third grade when appetite for destruction came out. i went to the mall with my mom on a saturday and ran to camelot records while she was ordering our food at Chik fil A, and the clerk at camelot told me i had to be 18 to buy the album. for some reason, my mom sympathized with my plight and went and got it for me. she prescreened it and told me what songs to listen to and which ones i was not aloud to listen to...and thus started by musical rebellion. it WAS so easy to sneak and listen to those songs when she wasn't around. and now they have a place in memory that is almost better than the music itself. like you, i was setting fires, sporting vision street wear, and thinking gleaming the cube was the shit. (i mean, it is, right!? "dude, you want me to deliver a pizza at 4 in the morning?" the guy's underground room with the halfpipe, vigilante justice...it has it all). and for me, GnR marks the summer me and Ryan started smoking grapevines, stealing his older brother's iron maiden tapes, my first skateboard...this huge powell deck with yelow and black discs on the bottom... skate(board) night on tuesdays at the skating rink, horror movies. shit man, just a big fuck yeah!!! to everything you said. and if i may, i would add Pump Up the Volume, Trick or Treat, The Lost Boys, John Cusak...One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead in particular, Teen Wolf, the Nintendo Power Pad...
magic indeed.
tim,
but you had dreads!!! what was i to think...? thank god for the DK patch...and then "i fuckin' hate hippies" in beautiful West Virginia dialect...and then i knew, tim a.'s alright...
heheh. why thank you.
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