Review - Chinese Democracy

When I was in the fourth grade, my elementary school had “Dress As Your Idol Day.” While other students came to school dressed as Cal Ripken Jr. or Emmitt Smith or (how cliché) their father, I took the high road: I dressed as Axl Rose. Why my parents not only allowed to this happen but also helped to handcraft a Guns N’ Roses t-shirt for me I’m still unsure of, but I think the reasons for my choice were justifiable. Namely, that when Axl Rose was confronted with adversity, both personal and musical, he simply pressed on with a fiercer determination and even grander bombast. In other words, he quite literally marched to the beat of his own drummer – who he then fired. At nine, I found this to be admirable.

Seventeen years later, not much has changed. Chinese Democracy is an album of retribution, a not-so-quiet “f you” to those who’ve questioned Rose over the years, and even perhaps to those who didn’t. At 71 minutes, it’s a monster of a record that just may be the most preposterous of the new millennium. Taking a look at the liner notes alone, 11 musicians are given allowances for thank yous, 8 different engineers are credited with supplying the record’s “pro tools,” and 9 of the album’s 14 songs feature at least four different guitar players. And in spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it, the album also happens to rock.

Despite early reports that the album would carry an industrial sound, there’s quite a bit here that sounds like the Guns N’ Roses of old. “Street of Dreams” could easily take its place alongside “November Rain” and “Estranged” in the band’s catalogue of ballads, “Riad N’ The Bedouins” would comfortably find a home on one of the Use Your Illusion albums, and the bluesy “I.R.S.” sounds more like Appetite era Guns than anything the band has put out since 1990.

And yet for all this, it’s the fresher-sounding material that really makes the album go. “Better” is the record’s lone masterpiece, a gritty stomper of a rock song that effortlessly blends genres while carrying along its waves a classic Rose melody. The ballad “This I Love” is even more surprising if not as impressive. Here, Rose howls about love on the rocks accompanied by the kinds of emotive piano and string arrangements that made Evanescence an international powerhouse nearly five years ago. It’s clear by the time the synths fade on Democracy’s last track that the singer never lost his penchant for writing a good tune, but also that like all things in the Guns N’ Roses universe, nothing is that simple.

The true debate over Chinese Democracy will inevitably focus not on the music as a singular piece but rather on whether or not it warrants the two decades of production and millions of dollars spent making it. Indeed, one of the few frustrating things about listening to Chinese Democracy is hearing the moments where Axl very apparently strove too hard to make up the time. While the absurd number of audio samples in “Madagascar” (Martin Luther King Jr., Cool Hand Luke, Braveheart, and Seven, just to name a few) ultimately make the album more outlandishly Axl-like, songs such as “Catcher In The Rye” and “There Was A Time” suffer as they twist and turn one time too many, turning promising melodies into meandering opuses. The songs become “what could have beens” for a band all-too-familiar with such scenarios. Still, you can hardly blame the guy for trying.

What makes the record a triumph, for me, is that nothing on it feels tentative or half-assed. Despite his oft-reported preoccupation with public perception, it’s clear that Axl made the record that he set out to make long ago. Chinese Democracy is a grand, imperfect, and best of all, interesting rock record, and for someone who’s had that adjective used pejoratively towards him so many times before, Rose deserves to hang his hat on that.

Grade: B+

Happy turkey day

You may be just waking up today to pie in the oven and John Madden on TV, but here in Tokushima Thanksgiving came two weeks early courtesy of The Meat Guy and my good friend Balazs in Kawashima. Friends and dirt field football may never replace the comfort of family, but that doesn't mean I wasn't able to still find plenty to be thankful for.


the table takes shape


the most important part of any Thanksgiving feast


digging into the Thanksgiving guac


vegging out after the feed

Something tangible

It was 1991 and George Bush Sr. was still in office when Guns N' Roses last released an album of new music, so it seems fitting that 17 years later the Bush era is being brought to a close with the release of Chinese Democracy. I never would have guessed when I was in fifth grade that I would be teaching in Japan the next time I touched a fresh GN'R record, but like the marinating time between consecutive viewings of The Goonies or trips to Disney World, I've found the wait has done little to diminish my excitement.

Full review to come later this week.

Deep in writing

This is where the magic happens.

Office coffee and the interconnectivity of things

Oftentimes when I find myself dumbstruck by the power of modern technology, I put myself on time-out until the shame passes. I must remind myself that most consumer electronics these days are being created and marketed for my generation, and that in truth it just doesn't sound that cool to hear a 24-year-old marveling over the picture quality of an HD TV. However, today when my vice principal pulled up Google maps and had me point out exactly where my house was in Wisconsin and what it looked like, I was happy to don my "gee whiz" look sans embarrassment. There in the teachers room, we - myself, vice principal sensei, and a handful of other teachers - looked at the car sitting in my driveway and discussed the idea of neighborhoods and why mine was so full of trees. Together we strolled down Capital Drive, lauded the impressive outdoor sports facilities at Brookfield East High School, and counted the small airports around the town. And while the technology has been there for several years, we didn't look at it because of its novelty or because the satellite image looked cool; we did so because it was convenient.

I couldn't tell whether my vice principal was talking about my home or the map when he leaned back and remarked, "It's pretty great," but I'm positive that my answer (to either) was resolute: I think so too.

Playing small ball

After going for broke in Tokyo two weeks ago, I decided it was time to shut down for the month and narrow my lens - namely, on studying for my Japanese test in December, and on writing the 2009 Tokushima English-language musical. While the fruits of my labor remain to be seen, a couple of things have happened in the interim: 1) it got cold, and 2) I got around to watching I Survived a Japanese Game Show. And while I don't have much to offer in the way of an actual program review or analysis, I will present the following for consideration:

If the primary result of American reality shows (if not the primary aim) is the satirization of the general population by means of manipulation, is a show like the one mentioned above really necessary? That is, if reality shows produced stateside are already effective in highlighting the often ridiculous nature of those who choose to broadcast themselves to the world, are the secondary cast members and live audience of I Survived a Japanese Game Show actually needed for contrast?

Call it food for thought, and consider me entertained.

500 Miles to Indy

A good friend of mine recently pointed me in the direction of Mortified, a literary nostalgic trip of a website that allows grown men and women to confront their pasts by sharing the stories, poems, and videos they created as kids. I'm thankful for the recommendation for a number of reasons, but mostly I'm just happy to have found 500 Miles to Indy.

When he was 15, Jason Smith wrote and began filming what he considered to be his opus, a movie about car racing that was as much a love letter to his father as it was shoot-for-the-stars piggy bank blockbuster. Unfortunately, shooting on the film ended after only a few days, and 500 Miles to Indy never left the pit. Until now, that is. Thanks to the people at Mortified, a now 30-year-old Smith was able to put his screenplay into action with the help of Hollywood actors the likes of Elijah Wood and James Denton. 15 years later, this is what's become of Mr. Smith's opus:

Stepping up

Three days post-election and I'm absolutely thrilled. I watched the results roll in from my desk at work, and with tears in my eyes I recalled, of all things, the night we learned that Princess Diana was dead. I had just started the eighth grade and I remember vividly my mother's own tears as the networks reported the news. At the time I couldn't comprehend why she was crying for a woman she neither knew nor was represented by, but as I've grown older, and as I watched Barack Obama walk out into a sea of 100,000 people in Grant Park on Tuesday night, I think I've begun to understand that apart from the obvious tragic circumstances of that death, there was something else at play - something bigger. History. The realization that something has happened in the space of a minute or a day or several hours that will forever change life as you know it. I'm just projecting of course, but I think Mom cried that night because she encountered a moment in which the scope of the event trumped that of her own life. I hardly think I'm alone in saying that I shared one of those moments on Tuesday night.

More than that, though, today I'm proud to be young and imperfect and American. After being told repeatedly throughout the course of your life that your generation doesn't measure up (and did you hear about JFK and Beatlemania?!?), it's easy to simply accept the disappointment. Only this time, we didn't. I read this on the Huffington Post with a healthy measure of pride and humility:

Around 2.2 million more young people voted on Tuesday than did in 2004, accounting for 18 percent of the electorate -- a slight uptick from 17 percent in 2004. But they overwhelmingly voted for Obama: 66 percent to 32 percent - a 34-point spread. That's 25 percent more than the 9-point youth vote advantage Kerry had over Bush.

Patrick Ruffini at The Next Right drills it down further:

Had the Democratic 18-29 vote stayed the same as 2004's already impressive percentage, Obama would have won by about 2 points, and would not have won 73 electoral votes from Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, or Indiana. So, to clarify here: Obama's youth margin = 73 electoral votes."

I think that's pretty cool. But perhaps the most encouraging sign I took from Tuesday's events was the manner in which we celebrated. Not with our thumbs to our noses or with arrogance or a sense of entitlement, but for once with unbridled hope! Amidst the Facebook proclamations of "kill Obama" and the bitterness of a few, there was in fact a real celebration; dignified, joyous, and with gracious appreciation, the way in which we should celebrate every day. For at least a day, the youth of America could at once be proud while making others proud of us. And while we may not yet fulfill the hopes of our parents, who danced to Hendrix and put a man on the moon and helped usher in civil rights, I promise you we'll someday get there.

Yes we can, and yes we will.

Declare yourself, today

No more words. A new day starts tomorrow.