Radius Clauses and Keeping Poor People from Seeing Live Shows

If you ever feel like massaging any latent class-warrior outrage you might have lurking around, I suggest planning a wedding.  If something costs you twenty bucks for the hell of it, that something will cost you two hundred for a wedding. Companies will try to sell you shit you don’t need by guilt-tripping you about “making your special day perfect.” It’s criminal, and implicit in it is the suggestion that poor people shouldn’t be allowed to wed. But if you’re not getting married this summer (I am. In forty-one days. My fiancee and I have managed to plan our wedding on a budget without the purchase of excess expensive bullshit) and you still want to feel shat on for your paltry five-figure salary, why not try to see a cheap concert at a small venue in your city?

Because assholes are making that harder now too. Lollapalooza has a radius clause preventing participating bands from playing “competing” shows within 300 miles of Lollapalooza for 180 days before the festival and 90 days after. Radius clauses are pretty typical of big festivals and I can see the necessity of preventing a band from, say, playing a 1pm set at Coachella and then playing a club in Indio that night. But 180 days is six motherfucking months and what that tells me is that Lollapalooza wants your three hundred bucks and wants to be the only game in town for your concert-going buck. Meaning if you don’t have that kind of disposable bread to throw at a festival (not counting the money you’ll spend on food and water, depending on your festival’s rules regarding coming and going from the concert grounds), Lollapalooza would like you to please go fuck yourself.

To be as fair as I’m gonna be to the assholes who write up these clauses, they do offer exceptions to so-called “smaller” bands on the bill (of course, they choose what that means) but if the festival in question is more indie-oriented, their headliners might be the kind of band you can see for twenty bucks if they’re allowed to play a local gig. Lollapalooza’s clause covers a total of 270 days of the year. That means if your band plays Lollapalooza, they have a 95 day window (96 during a leap year) in which to swing back around through Chicago for a more affordable gig. If that sounds criminal to you, you’re not alone. The Illinois Attorney General’s office is investigating Lollapalooza (an ancient Algonquin word meaning, “Better in the 1990s”) on antitrust grounds.

I’m not sure if Lollapalooza will be forced to change its ways because of this or not, but I want to talk a bit more about what constitutes a “competing” show for a band playing a festival. Because I live in Los Angeles and frequent local shows as well as Coachella (which takes place about 100 miles from here and undoubtedly has its own radius clause, though a possibly less severe one than Lollapalooza), I’ll stick to what I know and use that festival as an example. It’s about three hundred bucks to attend all three days of Coachella. Over those three days, you can see a lot of your favorite bands, many of which will play shorter sets (unless they’re headlining, but I was only interested in one of the three headliners at this year’s festival), but you can also see reunions and special gigs of bands you might not otherwise see (my prospects for seeing De La Soul and Pavement would be slim indeed were it not for Coachella 2010, which allowed me to see both bands on the same day). But again, it’s three hundred bucks for the tickets and then there’s money for food, drinks, souvenirs, etc. And Heineken has a beer monopoly at Coachella, although I complain to them about it every time I go. By way of contrast, I saw a show at the Troubadour (Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. They were fucking awesome) this year for twenty dollars without giving Ticketmaster/Live Nation any money and I could get Guinness at the show. What’s not to like? But my point is that people who can only pay twenty bucks to see a band are generally not foregoing a festival because they already saw the band for twenty bucks. They’re skipping the festival because they can’t afford the fucking thing.  If Jesus returned and ordered ‘em to go to the festival, they’d be damned to hell by their lack of dollars. Generally speaking, you have to buy festival tickets several months ahead of time and if you’re like me (i.e. poor), that money erases any concert-going dollars you have to double-dip on bands, assuming they can squeeze your city into the fistful of days that lie outside of the radius clause for your local festival. So I don’t think too many of these so-called “competing” shows are really competing. For the most part, they’re playing to different audiences. Granted, there are a handful of superfans who will see a band’s local show and festival gig the same month, but festival organizers and club owners should both see that as win-win.

But here’s what really pisses me off about the radius clause: it smacks of cowardice. Yeah, that’s right. If you need a radius clause to protect your monolithic, corporate (i.e. shitty beer) sponsored festival, you’re a fucking coward. In a free market society, which this is (don’t kid yourself – the Market is America’s state religion, largely because we love our stuff and hate our neighbors. It’s getting interesting now because we love our stuff, hate our neighbors, and are really starting to hate things like education and hard work, which means we’re getting ’round to the time where some asshole is going to make a billion dollars because they think they know what plants crave.), you’re supposed to compete for consumer dollars. Theoretically, Lollapalooza should have to go head to head with small clubs to fight for your concert-going dollar. They clearly can’t win on price (although, if you can see enough bands at a festival, you end up paying like twelve bucks per concert – remembering, of course, that they’re probably shorter concerts), but perhaps they can offer you something small clubs can’t. I already pointed out that Coachella, for their part, tries to provide some awesome reunion shows (Pavement was really awesome,  by the way, but this year’s Coachella also featured gigs by Public Image Ltd., Devo, and the Specials. They also provided me with the opportunity to see Mick Jones and Paul Simonon live because they played with Gorillaz who, by the way, couldn’t really do what they do at a small-venue gig) and stuff like that. But the radius clause allows festivals to take the lazy way out (we hate hard work now, remember) by simply choking off the competition instead of offering the consumer a unique experience (i.e. a reason to go to the fucking festival in the first place). My suggestion to the folks who organize Lollapalooza? Organize Ultimate Fighting style cage matches between concert promoters and music industry executives and have them on one of the festival’s smaller stages. If I could see whoever dreamed up the radius clause bloody up (and get bloodied up by), say, an EMI exec who had a hand in killing Dark Night of the Soul, I might just book a flight next summer.

The Worst of 2009

Well, I’m back after a restful week in Seattle and it seems to be that wonderful time of the year when everyone arbitrarily quantifies all their favorite whatevers – I’m not immune to such behavior. But before I tell you what I thought was so great about 2009, I wish to – in the interest of balance, of course – point out the very worst that 2009 had to offer. I’m limiting this to music because, if you expand the Worst of 2009 list to, say, news stories, you can get depressed fast. I should hope the image of a vomiting clown suggests we’re here to have a good time.  So, without further et cetera:

Worst song of 2009: “Desolation Row” (Bob Dylan cover) by My Chemical Romance. Now, I didn’t like the new Bob Dylan album. I do, however, enjoy much of his early work. It just so happens that “Desolation Row,” from Highway 61 Revisited, is my very favorite Bob Dylan tune. Of all time. When I heard that My Chemical Blowmance was going to cover the song for the Watchmen soundtrack, I knew it was going to be bad. I just had no idea how bad. This band truly pioneers shittyness. Fortunately, My Chemical Toilet didn’t bother to cover all 11 minutes of the original. Still, they put together a painfully awful three minutes. I was doing pretty well at ignoring MCR’s evil up to this point. But now, I want them destroyed. Fuck this band.

Worst album of 2009: Scream by Chris Cornell. I should think this is unsurprising to Bollocks! readers. Scream was a perfect storm of really bad ideas (Timbalind producing a dance-pop record by a grunge icon? I thought there were laws against shit like this) and, somehow, the whole manages to be far worse than the sum of its parts. Cornell has been slipping since Soundgarden broke up (I know, that’s putting it mildly), but Scream was the point where I completely lost my faith in the man. With dull, misogynist hooks like “No, that bitch ain’t a part of me,” and vocal performances that could charitably be described as “lackluster”, Scream is terrible enough to be a dark horse candidate for worst album of the decade.

Worst person of 2009: Chris Brown. Oh, I know. He apologized and he wants our forgiveness and wants us to buy his terrible new album, but I don’t feel like letting him off the hook just yet and here’s why: I was able look the other way while Brown became an inexplicably famous adolescent pop star with a swimming pool full of money and a stunning girlfriend. It happens all the time in this country and I don’t begrudge Brown his success, up to the point where, in a sports car that costs more than I make in a year, he smacked around said stunning girlfriend. You don’t get to be an inexplicably famous pop star and an abusive cocksucker, Chris Brown. Fuck you. If you want my forgiveness, here’s what you can do: purchase a Yugo, four bottles of Old English, drive out somewhere in the hills, drink the malt liquor, and then beat the shit out of yourself. You do that, and I’ll run out and buy your shitty new record. I promise.

Worst Live Act of 2009: Ghostland Observatory. I saw these assholes open for the Flaming Lips. They looked like a Ren Fair crashed into a Star Trek convention and sounded like a sack of kittens and a laptop in an industrial-sized blender. At first, I thought this was some kind of Andy Kaufman thing where they were fucking with my perception of what a “good” band should be. But then I realized that no, they’re just no-talent ass-clowns with a pretty good light show.

Most Pathetic Comeback of 2009: Creed. Hey, even Jesus hates these guys. And his word is Gospel.

Worst New Band of 2009 (and Possibly of All Time): Wavves. I guess they’re not technically “new,” because they put something out last year too. But I just wanted to take another opportunity to point out that Wavves is a god-fucking-awful band. How awful? I shit you not, I’d rather listen to My Chemical Blowmance’s Black Parade album at top volume while Gerard Way bad-touches me and reads aloud from the My Chemical Romance Saved My Life Site than listen to Wavves even one more time. If I’ve already doled out a “Fuck this band” to Way’s MCR, I reserve the (much more severe) Triple Dog-Fuck This Band for Wavves. No… Quadruple Dog-Fuck This Band.

Worst Record Label: EMI. And Sextuple Dog-Fuck EMI for not putting out Dark Night of the Soul. It’s ironic to me that labels often assume you would buy an album that you downloaded if you couldn’t get it for free. This is definitely not always the case. But, with Dark Night of the Soul, EMI is putting me in the position of having to steal an album for which I would gladly have paid. Way to keep the kids from getting what they want, EMI.

That’s about the worst stuff I can think of for this year. Later this week (starting tomorrowish – we don’t have hard and fast schedules here at Bollocks!), I’ll tell you some of my favorite songs of the year and 13 of my favorite albums.

Jesus Christ Reviews the New Creed Album

Editor’s Note: I said I was going to review Creed’s new album, Full Circle, knowing full well that I wouldn’t like it. Well, in this season of giving, I’ve decided to relent. I sought out someone who would be infinitely more merciful to Creed than I could ever be. My first choice was His Holiness, the Dalai Lama but when I sent him a copy of the album he said, “I love you, Matt, but we Tibetans have suffered enough.” So then I remembered that Creed kinda has a thing for Jesus and I figured I’d let him take the reins and share his thoughts with us about Full Circle. Below, completely uncensored, is Jesus Christ’s review of the new Creed album.

Hi. I’m Jesus Christ. I don’t usually contribute to Bollocks!, but I’m doing a friend a favor (Chorpenning and I get together about once a year; I bring him John Coltrane bootlegs from Heaven and, in exchange, he supplies me with delicious microbrews. Keep this on the do-lo, okay? I don’t want the zealots getting all lathered up about the Rapture – I’ll initiate that particular party when y’all stop speculating about it, savvy?). I am a big fan of a lot of different kinds of music (Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix collaborated on an album last year that literally induces the listener to orgasm – but you can’t get it down here) and I was quite game to give Creed a listen since my pal claims he’s incapable of giving them a fair hearing.

Contrary to popular belief, I’ve never listened to Creed before. I hear that their singer, Scott Stapp, likes to imitate me from time to time. That’s cool, I s’pose. At any rate, I’ve listened to Full Circle several times now and, since I’m the All High Judge of Everybody (what can I say? I love my job), I expect that you will take my word as Gospel.

Full Circle is a great album.

Permit me to clarify: Full Circle is great album if you like trite, empty, corporate rock that fits like peas in a pod between Kid Rock and Nickelback (by the way, if Heaven has a greater musical enemy than Kid Rock, it can only be Ted Nugent). It’s great if you like a singer who sounds like he’s trying to shit out a bowling ball while simultaneously attempting to imitate Eddie Vedder’s sound from the first two Pearl Jam records (try this for me: while you’re listening to any given Creed song, just put on your best Vedder and sing “Jeremy spoke in class today” all weird and elongated – you’ll see what I’m getting at here). It’s awesome if you like a band that likes to sandwich wanky guitar solos between verses of single-fingered, Drop D “power chords” (for non-guitar people: you can tune your low E string down to a D, which gives you the option of playing “power chords” with just your index finger instead of the typical barred-chord fashion). I am only going to say this once, ye believers, so listen up: single-fingered “power chords” are the last refuge of scoundrels and complete pussies.

Lyrically, Full Circle is a mishmash of pain, blood, rain, crumbling walls, shame, heartache, hope, and light. I think Stapp (I assume he writes this dreck) might literally just be pulling words like that out of a hat and pasting them into lines about how tortured he either is now or used to be or both. He starts the album off by singing about how he’s “entitled” to overcome. Let’s examine this phrase, can we? It bothers the piss outta me and here’s why: overcoming things (usually obstacles) has nothing to do with your rights. In fact, obstacles tend to arise in direct defiance of what you think you’re entitled to. You don’t earn the right to overcome an obstacle, you get off your ass and overcome it. I’d have no problem with Stapp singing about “trying” to overcome something (other than the fact that song is by-the-numbers radio rock. Like Metallica meets Switchfoot. And by the way, if that combination fires up your salivary glands, you should know that you’re going to hell) but singing about having the right to overcome something is nonsense. By the way, Mr. Stapp, I overcame motherfucking death and I didn’t need to sing a song about how I was entitled to do so. That’s how you roll Messiah-style.

Elsewhere, Stapp is lyrically preoccupied with fighting and struggling (I guess, implicitly, he’s struggling to overcome. Or to assert his right to overcome if he should so choose at some point), though he never really articulates the nature of these struggles, the foes with whom he’s struggling (and the first person to suggest he’s struggling with himself will be struck by lightning. Don’t test me), or really anything other than maintaining that he’s going to keep on fighting. Over the course of Full Circle, Scott Stapp comes off as a completely humorless person and that makes me really sad. The old blues masters (I don’t mean Eric Clapton, white people. I mean Leadbelly and Robert Johnson) sang songs about being about as busted-ass as you can be – Leadbelly sang about not being able to go places because he was black – but there was always a sense of laughter behind the moaning. In the face of feeling about as bad as you can feel, these dudes maintained their humor (and my friend Mr. Johnson, I can assure you, also maintained a harem of womenfolk across the entire country, women who were willing and able to squeeze his lemon until the juice ran down his leg – this is part of what got him killed, but he hasn’t stopped to this day. Dude still gets all the finest women in Heaven. You can bet your ass Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts were shocked to arrive at the Pearly Gates and find an entire afterlife full of mixed-race blues babies). It’s a life lesson that is apparently lost on Scott Stapp, which is really too bad. Humor gets us through the very worst that life can throw at us. When I was on the cross, the thief to my right recognized me and said, “Jesus! What are you doing here?” I lolled my head over toward him and said, “Oh, I’m just hangin’ out.”

Jesus Christ can be reached through prayer, though he is not always inclined to answer. He wishes it to be known that, of his favorite 10 albums of 2009, only one can be found here on Earth: Middle Cyclone by Neko Case. He also told me to tell Neko Case to call him, but I patiently explained that I have no way to reach Ms. Case. If you happen to be Neko Case and you happen to be reading this (unlikely), I think Jesus has a crush on you. He also said that there’s no war on Christmas, so all the right-wing people who are on about that can “shut the fuck up” (his words, not mine. And his words are gospel, kids).

The Case Against Green Day

It’s actually pretty hard to describe how much I dislike Green Day. I’m serious – this is the fourth draft of this post that I’ve started because it’s also really hard to decide where to start discussing all the things I don’t like about them. Do I start with all the better bands they’re ripping off? Do I start with the black-dominated wardrobes and guyliner? Do I start with some of the laziest, most cringe-inducing songwriting I’ve ever heard? Do I start with the fact that they’re considered by some people who may or may not have cognitive disabilities (including themselves) to be a punk band?

Maybe I’ll start there, because that bugs the living shit out of me (and because I have a lot of love for good punk music. A lot of love). When I think of punk bands, I think of (who doesn’t?) the Clash, the Stooges, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys, the Jim Carroll Band, early Bad Religion, and – for some current reference – the Thermals, the Old Haunts, Titus Andronicus, and the Future of the Left. Green Day is, at best – at best – a dull, lifeless distillation of the style of music those awesome (and vastly superior) bands play(ed). The Clash gave us, “Let fury have the hour/ anger can be power”; Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” (one of the most repetitive, godawful songs I’ve heard all year. Billy Joe Armstrong knows one word that rhymes with enemy: “enemy.” Oh wait. That’s the same word. I hate this band) literally waters that down to “Violence is an energy” and “Bringing on the fury” and maybe I’m paranoid, but that seems a little close to be coincidence. Am I accusing Green Day of callously ripping of their betters? You bet your ass I am. And even their peers – one of 21st Century Breakdown‘s many awful tracks is “East Jesus Nowhere” which features a guitar riff eerily similar to (and by “eerily similar to”, I mean “shamelessly ripped off from”) Marilyn Manson’s “Disposable Teens.” Have you left no sense of decency, Green Day? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

When American Idiot came along back in 2004, lots of people loved it because they hated the President and all the bullshit he was up to. But what did that album really say about…well, anything? The answer is (drum roll please) fuckall. Sure, they got their best line ever on the title track (“I’m not a part of a redneck agenda”) but the rest of that album was generic suburban alienation bullshit. They spent 13 tracks saying nothing the Clash didn’t say better in “Lost in the Supermarket”.  The best moment of that album is “American Idiot” and it’s eclipsed in every way by (take your pick) “White Riot” by the Clash, “California Uber Alles” by the Dead Kennedys, “Anarchy in the U.K.” by the Sex Pistols, and even “Time for Heroes” by the Libertines*.  And Green Day’s utter lack of ability to handle anything approaching substance led them to squander a great song title in “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Any punk band worth a damn (hell, any kind of band with any kind of sense) doing a song with that title in 2004 could’ve made an awesome song about how frustrating it is, only a few years after 9/11, to be constantly reminded to “never forget.” But what does Green Day give us? “The innocent can never last.” Really? That’s all you got? And this was their Big Meaningful album, folks. Not only does that fail to scratch the surface, it fails to come anywhere near the surface. It floats around in space, consulting maps and charts in a futile attempt to determine the location of the surface. And it’s fucking banal, musically and lyrically. Especially lyrically. In the span of one song, we get that prize-winner about the innocent and “here comes the rain again/ falling from the stars/ drenched in my pain again/ becoming who we are.” That might be fine for any given 8th grader’s Live Journal entry, but it doesn’t cut it for discerning listeners of rock music (much less bands that claim to make rock music). It’s like Armstrong just pulled words from his copy of Poetic Imagery for Dummies Pretentious Assholes. And don’t even get me started on “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” By itself, that song puts Green Day at the top of the list of bands that need a serious cock-punching.

But people are buying their shit at an ungodly rate. Rolling Stone, a magazine whose irrelevance actually increases exponentially with every review, raved about 21st Century Breakdown‘s “rage filled punk anthems.” The Los Angeles Times called the album a “dazzling musical journey.” If “Know Your Enemy” and “21 Guns” are rage-filled punk anthems and/or dazzling musical journeys, we’re in trouble. You can like whatever you want, but I’m warning you: if you let bands like Green Day (or My Chemical Romance or any other band that is just dying to write the anthems of your prepubescent/adolescent/adult angst) climb to the top of the punk and/or rock heap, you’re running the risk of creating a nation of black-clad, whiny dullards who are capable of expressing their feelings/desires/politics only in the most vague and offensively bromidic terms. That’s a nation where Green Day dominates the radio, every television show and movie is about emo vampires, and people think Dane Cook is funny. Believe me, America: we can do better than that. We must do better.

*This song features the line, “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot,” which I mention only because it occurs to me that Green Day are the stylish kids in the riot (the kids who show up to say they were there, but don’t expect them to hurl any bricks, thank you very much). For the sake of contrast, Joe Strummer, who wrote “White Riot” actually participated in a riot. He and Paul Simonon attempted to set a police car on fire while the British cops beat up some black kids. I’m not advocating destroying cop cars in hilarious ways, but it’s certainly nice to know that Strummer and the Clash weren’t afraid to put their money where their mouths were.

Goddamn, EMI Fucking Sucks. Seriously, Fuck These Guys.

The oil-soaked bird does not lie. EMI, the dicks who refused to bring you Dark Night of the Soul, are now refusing to sell their stuff to independent retailers in a move that can only be charitably described as one of the biggest dick moves ever. What the fuck is wrong with these assholes? They’re apparently telling the independents to buy EMI product from so-called “one-stop” stores like Wal-Mart or Best Buy, stores that are renowned for doing things like fucking exclusively selling Axl Rose’s lastest shitfest.

So, while arguing that file sharing is ruining their physical CD sales, EMI is taking steps to… um… reduce their physical CD sales. Do me a favor – if you are an executive at EMI and you’re reading this, please go get sterilized at your earliest convenience. We don’t need this kind of thinking in the gene pool.

Now, there’ s a lot of the EMI catalog that I just don’t give a fuck about, but this move is going to hurt independent retailers by either forcing them to put money in the giant one-stop’s pockets or by forcing them to not sell popular EMI artists that will help them meet their bottom line. So if your dream music store was a giant electronics warehouse where the staff knows fuckall about your favorite bands and the selection is an embarrassment of pre-censored riches (so long as your idea of riches is the latest Katy Perry or Keith Urban CD), EMI is working hard to make your dream come true.

You know what? I hope these guys go out of business and I hope you help. Download and share as many Katy Perry albums as you can stand. If you’re feeling saucy, burn them to CD, drive to a post office a few towns away, and mail them back to EMI with a picture of a big middle finger. Fuck these jerks.

Your a Tool: Chinese Democracy Hate Mail Extravaganza!

For the most part, internet comment sections are the 21st century equivalent of the Letters to the Editor section from your local paper; that is, they are typically orgies of awful grammar, bad spelling, and utter fucking stupidity. For the most part, I can honestly say the Bollocks! comment sections have miraculously avoided that particular pitfall.

(Cue dramatic music)

Until now. Early this week, I had to zip off to Wyoming (Dick Cheney country – I’m still there as I write this and, if I find that son of a bitch, you had better believe that he is in for such a water boarding) for work. On my way out of L.A., as my weak-ass laptop battery died, I dropped by Bollocks! to start a draft or two of upcoming reviews and I happened to notice my stats were a little funny. First off, let me say that I thoroughly enjoy the fact that 6 to 9 people on average read Bollocks! with anything approaching regularity. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million time until I die: I am humbled and amazed that anyone reads this shit. When we hit 75 views in one day toward the end of 2008, I thought to myself, “Yeah, that won’t be happening again.” Well, on Monday of this week, more than 200 motherfuckers checked out Bollocks! And that’s really cool. Thank you, whoever you are. If you like what you saw, spread the word. If you don’t like what you saw, well, don’t be surprised by my lack of remorse. If you’re Craig Finn, I’m buying you a beer on July 7th.

Some of you clearly didn’t like what you saw in my three part, drunken review of Chinese Democracy. In fact, some of you didn’t like what you saw so much that you decided to throw caution, any understanding of what the word “subjective” means, and grammar to the wind and drag the ol’ Bollocks! comment boards to depths somewhere between your typical Onion A.V. Club article and a Fark politics thread.

The most frequent flamer was a user named Your a Tool. I did not edit the user name. He or she either meant to imply that I am a tool, in which case he/she/Axl Rose should’ve pulled his/her head out of his/her ass long enough to stick a fucking apostrophe in there (the user name, not their ass) or they wanted to be called Your Tool and accidentally hit the “a” key. Guess which one I think it is? I know Mr. or Ms. YaT is apt to argue that I’m a dick for picking on their grammar, but the fact is, I spent a lot of time in that review harping on Axl Rose’s utterly embarrassing grasp of the English language. Why? 1) I’m smart and 2)I’m a fucking music and language snob! It’s a double-edged sword that I have to try really hard not to wield pretty much all the time. Read some of the other reviews on this site, for fuck’s sake. When I don’t like something, I – because 1) it’s fun and 2) I can – rip it to fucking pieces. Also, YaT’s first comment was “you are a waste of life”, which is grammatically correct, but lacks the capital letter that kindergarteners know belongs at the beginning of a fucking sentence. So right away, YaT, you’ve fatally shown me that you do grasp the whole “your/you’re” thing and are just lazy.

YaT posted many comments, one  of which helpfully pointed out that Chinese Democracy’s title track is a metaphor but less helpfully failed to explain for what, exactly, “Chinese Democracy” is a metaphor. Metaphors are only metaphors if they refer to something which they don’t literally denote in order to suggest a similarity. And even if YaT understood the meaning of the word “metaphor” it wouldn’t somehow prevent “Chinese Democracy” from being a musical abortion. YaT points out that “Shackler’s Revenge” is about the Columbine shootings, but explaining what the songs are about doesn’t stop them from being shitty songs. “Shackler’s Revenge” could be about how dumb Glenn Beck is and it would be accurate and yet still awful. YaT also says, “when he finallys tells his side of the story on this song and album…you complain…” The “he” there is Axl and the ellipses are not mine either. Not sure what they’re doing there, but YaT fails to understand that Axl Rose isn’t the only person I complain about on this site. I complain about fucking everything! YaT nonetheless tells me I should “just go drink your life away” to which I can only respond: why on earth would I drink myself to death when there are morons like you out there floating around in cyberspace with your shitty grammar, poor understanding of figurative language, and appallingly bad taste in music, just waiting to post the next dumb comment to a blog that very few people give a shit about? Do you realize how entertaining this is for me? I don’t wanna die, YaT. I want people like you to keep coming ’round and confirming how motherfucking awesome I am and validating my clearly superior taste in music.

Here’s one of my favorite things Your a Tool said: “Axl wasnt trying to please people like yourself who are stuck in 88.” I didn’t edit YaT’s post even a bit because I want you all to understand that this person is some kind of anti-apostrophe bigot. Anyone who has read more than one post on Bollocks! (thanks, close personal friends) knows that I am anything but stuck in “88″, which I assume meant the year 1988 (which would, again, properly be abbreviated with an apostrophe before the digits. Did apostrophes kill your parents, Your a Tool?). The only album from 1988 that I even like is Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. If I’m stuck in any year, it’s 2008 because that’s when the last Hold Steady album came out. But, YaT was right – Axl Rose wasn’t trying to please people like me just as I wasn’t trying to please people (if Guns N’ Roses fanboys can be considered “people”)  like YaT or Ossi, who was at least firm in his or her grammar when he or she wrote, “Wow, you are really stupid.” That’s an opinion to which you’re entitled, Ossi, but when people who revere Chinese Democracy think I’m stupid, I can only interpret that to mean that I am doing something incredibly, deliciously right.

YaT, among many stupid shots, fired this winner across the bow: “so lets see if your as tough as your reviews indicate…or will you be a pussy and not allow these posts to go through?” Again, he/she/Axl Rose probably meant “let’s see”, a contraction of “let us,” which would be, you know, fucking English. Well, YaT, I did let these posts go through but not because I think I’m as tough as these reviews indicate. Tough doesn’t even enter into the equation (though I am tougher than these reviews indicate because Fuck You, which is the only reason I need to do anything, ever, end of story) – I relish the opportunity to rhetorically bitch-slap idiots. Does that make me an asshole? Yeah, but that’s only one facet of my personality, and one I never dreamed would come along whilst I ejaculated my silly little thoughts about silly little albums out into the interwub.

YaT was the most prolific of the posters, but I wanted to share this tidbit with you from William Andrews: “…it is idiots like yourself that brainwash today’s young audience into liking flavour of the month music or should i say crap that is out there.” First off, Billy – can I call you Billy? I don’t care – before Monday, not nearly enough people read this blog for me to be capable of brainwashing audiences young, old, or otherwise. Second, some of the people who I know who read Bollocks! regularly either 1) disagree with me about the album (but with, you know, dignity and civility) or 2) don’t bother listening to the fucking thing. Also, people who have read more than one review on Bollocks! know that I’m definitely not shilling for the flavor of the month; I hate Wavves (indie flavor of the month) and every (every) teen-pop, emo, pop-country, et cetera act that you find on the radio. The only radio station I even listen to is 89.3 The Current which is in Minnesota. So I have to listen to them online and not on the actual radio.

I always appreciate feedback on the site and I approve any comments that don’t smell egregiously of spam, so people are welcome to respond as much as they like. Bear in mind however, that any and all attempts to convince me of the error of my ways will only have the opposite effect, amplified times infinity. Taste in music is subjective; in fact, hate to ruin the party for you, but 9/10 of life is subjective because humans are fallible creatures all of whom measure things (even the colors we see) differently. No one has to like what you like, you don’t have to like anyone, you don’t even have to use good grammar when you post stupid comments to a blog no one reads (until recently, I guess) and, most importantly, I don’t have to refrain from calling you an idiot when you do it. I will end this discussion in a way I’ve always wanted to end a public argument: futhermore, fuck you.

it is idiots like yourself that
brainwash today’s young audience into liking flavour
of the month music or should i say crap that is out
there.

Too Funny to Miss

A friend emailed me a link to Mind-Melting Demo Disasters this morning and I had to share it. This record label gets sent some of the worst demos I’ve ever heard. There’s a shitty 9/11 song, a horrid song about being your own hero, and, as I write this, I am listening to a song about keeping your vagina clean.

So there’s that. Enjoy!

Chinese Dumb-ocracy: The Bollocks! Review, Part Fucking III

A palate cleanse is required while I let my Ommegang Abbey Ale settle. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to piss (gee, I wonder why so few people read this blog – this is quality shit, yeah?). Again with the water while I sniff the fruity and earthy notes that make up the head of an Ommegang Abbey Ale. This beer ain’t for amateurs – it’s a full on Belgian-style Dubbel that didn’t come to make small talk. I first heard of Ommegang Brewery (Belgian style brewery in Cooperstown, NY) in Beer magazine (you don’t subscribe? What the hell is wrong with you?) and I keep meaning to try their Hennepin Ale, but I always end up with the Abbey Ale. It’s win-win. Starting to feel the buzz now, and I’m wiping my sonic palate clean with Sonic Youth’s “Total Trash.” Hooah.

10:00PM: Free Association Songwriting: “I.R.S” makes no fucking sense. Axl makes references to various government offices but doesn’t really say what it is he wants them to do. Gee, maybe he’s a Republican (buh-dum tish). He also asks, “Would it even mattered/ The things that I’d say”. Well,  I think he asks that. That’s a question, right?

Here’s the thing. My band (Radical Edward – we had our first gig last night, but enough about me) has seven original songs right now. I’ve written or contributed lyrics to all of them. I recognize that you fuck with syllables to make the meter work, but I’m pretty goddamn diligent about making the lines make sense. You know, so people can comprehend them?  Axl is wandering around in a grammatical wasteland on Chinese Democracy and he took a decade and a half to cough up the shittiest lyrics this side of My Chemical Romance (who can at least string together a coherent line – it’s just gonna suck when they do it).

10:09PM: Jesus Monkeyfucking Christ: I know I just said “I.R.S.” makes no fucking sense, but then I heard “Madagascar.” Axl, waxing Jesus-like, sings “Forgive them that tear down my soul.” And then there’s a bunch of mismatched samples, including the one from Cool Hand Luke that famously introduced “Civil War,” a song I thought was Axl’s biggest descent into Bullshit until I heard “Madagascar.” Axl Rose samples Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I have a dream” speech on this song. Why? Is Axl worried about his civil rights as a white man with corn rows? Does he even realize that King was fighting for the rights of black people (from whom Axl didn’t wanna by a gold chain when he sang “One in a Million” – if you ask me how I know that song, I will scream like a girl and run away from you so fucking fast it will make your head spin) and that he fucking died for it? It seems beyond outrageous to me that Axl “My Engrish is So Suck” Rose would compare his struggle for… whatever the fuck he’s struggling for… to MLK’s struggle for racial goddamn equality. Christ, Axl, have you left no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Wow. I got so pissed off during “Madagascar” that I missed half of “This I Love.” Let’s start it over, shall we? Here we go: “This I Love” is a piano-y ballad where Axl whines, “Please God you must believe me/ I’ve searched the universe/ and found myself in her eyes.” It might be Rose’s best lyrical turn of the album (yes, folks, it’s that fucking bad), but still: please, God, don’t believe him.  “This I Love” is a schmaltzy ballad and yet, there still seems to be room for an annoying guitar solo. Anyone who knows me knows I have nothing against guitar solos, by the way. I just compare most of them to Tad Kubler’s solo on “Most People Are DJ’s” and find them sorely lacking.

The last song on Chinese Democracy is called “Prostitute” and I’m confused why it doesn’t include a parenthetical “I Am a”.  Axl sings, “I’ve done all I should,” with which I must immediately disagree – you, Mr. Rose, should go into a state of hiding that makes J.D. Salinger look like Ryan Seacrest.

Rose also asks, “Why would they/ tell me to please/ those that laugh in my face?” and I don’t know the answer, but I’m one of those who would definitely laugh in his face. The dude has lived in this country his whole life and speaks English like an aphasia patient. Axl kinda sounds like a hair metal Peter Cetera when he sings, “Ask yourself/ why I would choose/ to prostitute myself/ to live with fortune and shame” and while I’m not gonna take time out of my busy drinking schedule to ask myself why Axl Rose is a whore, I’ll concede that he is one. Also, the thought of a hair metal Peter Cetera is really fucking terrifying.

10:26PM: In summary… Chinese Democracy is actually about what I’d expect from an egomaniac locking himself in a studio for 15ish years – it’s a fucking mess. Overproduced, underwritten, and overperformed, it’s a testament to a man who crawled really far up his own ass and decided to make a home there. There are so many half-assed musical ideas on Chinese Democracy that it comes off as schizophrenic and, lyrically, it should be considered an act of literary (if not auditory) terrorism. I hereby authorize anyone in my band (or anyone who hears my band) to kill me (fucking kill me) if I ever write anything as fuck-awful as what Axl Rose has penned (in his own feces, as I understand it) on Chinese Democracy.

Final Palate Cleanse: I recommend more beer (I’m still working on the Ommegang Abbey Ale, and I have a dry Irish stout in reserve – it only took me three beers to get through Chinese Democracy, which I guess makes it slightly better than Chris Cornell’s Scream. That, for the record, is like saying you like the shit sandwich when the chef had corn the previous day as compared to when he or she had asparagus. It’s still a shit sandwich) and listening to Joe Strummer’s cover of “Redemption Song.” Twice.

Well, folks, I’m drunk. I’m gonna listen to something good and play video games. You’ve got a lot of choices when it comes to your music, and I’d like leave you with this bit of advice: none of them should be Chinese Democracy.

Chinese Democracy: The Bollocks! Review Part II (This Time It’s Personal)

One beer down, three to go. We’re getting heavier now, not musically, but I’m pouring a nice glass of Stone IPA right now and it’s a lot hoppier than the polite, mild mannered Morimoto. Stone IPA is one of my favorite IPAs, and 22 ounces of it might lead us to more typographical mishaps later in the evening. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. I did a palate cleanse with some water to make way for the Stone IPA, so how about a musical cleansing as well? I’m dipping into Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair” (seemed appropriate) for a second before picking up the Chinese Democracy again.

9:07PM: Back to the Grind: “There Was a Time” has Axl at his most martyred: “I was the one who gave you everything,” he sings. Way to toot your own horn there, Axl. Chicks dig confidence. As a guitar player (a decent enough one, I’m told), I can confidently say that, despite most of these songs having five guitarists on them, the guitars are uniformly annoying. Where the tone doesn’t suck outright, whichever guy is playing is just squirreling away a million notes a minute that mean exactly fuckall. On “There Was a Time,” there’s a little interlude that sounds like a Kenny G lick. Kid you not. Axl seems to lament, “There was a time/ I would do anything for you” as if now, after all you’ve put him through, Axl just can’t do anything for you anymore. So you’ve fucked that up for yourself, whoever you are. The song could be about Slash or some chick or… who really cares? All you need to know is that it’s Axl Vs. The World and gosh, he’s just tried so hard to be nice and give you so much and this is how you repay him? For shame!

I mentioned to a friend today that I could forgive how far up his own ass Axl is on this album if the music was halfway decent. The odds are looking better for Mousavi to win the election in Iran at this point (big ups to the protesters there; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an Islamic Sarah Palin and the good folks of that country deserve better). “There Was a Time” is overlong, features finger-tapping (hey, guitar players: you wanna piss me off? Engage in finger-tapping), and is, so far, the low point on an album I would be complimenting by calling a shit sandwich.

9:14PM: Why JD Salinger Doesn’t Talk to Us Anymore: Ooooooooh… a literary reference from a guy whose grasp of English is worse than my dog’s, and she’s got a pretty good excuse. “The Catcher in the Rye” must have been inspired by J.D. Salinger’s book, right? Axl sings, “If I thought that I was crazy/ guess I’d have more fun” and there’s really nothing in the song that indicates to me that Axl read the book. There’s little on this album to convince me that Rose can read. Salinger is currently suing someone who wrote a sort of sequel to Catcher in the Rye. Maybe he should sue Axl over this instead. This song also has a guitar solo that sounds almost like it was patched in from an entirely different recording session. This song takes the taco for infuriating lyrics (the Taco of Lyrical Fury): “Cause what used to be’s/ Not there for me/ and ought to for someone/ That belongs/Insane/ Like I do.” Despite my drinking, kids, I didn’t mistype a single word there. What…the fuck… does it mean?

And that’s the problem: you get the feeling that Axl doesn’t know either. He’s just singing shit and playing around in a studio and the result is this  jam-packed mess. Rolling Stone, proving they’ve lost touch with reality, called Chinese Democracy “a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.” Audacious, yes. Great? Hardly. Not even good. Kinda outside the ballpark of listenable.

“Scraped” follows “Catcher in the Rye” and it’s Axl getting back to what he does best: talking about how fucking great he is, shrieking in his whiniest voice, “Nothing’s impossible/ I am inconquerable.” Again, Axl, you’re not “inconquerable.” Nobody is “inconquerable.” It’s not a word. Dick. “Scraped” does throw a bone to any fans gullible – er, “faithful” – enough to have made this journey with Axl through these long years. He tells his listener(s?), “You know you’re stronger/ than the lies they tell you.” But I’m confused. Because he also says, “Don’t you try to stop us now”. Is he talking to the same “you”? That would seem kinda inconsistent, but since the song seems to be about how Axl is a word he made up that he thinks means “unstoppable”, I guess it doesn’t matter.

9:24PM: Ah. There’s that New Low. “Riad N’ the Bedouins” is the worst song on the album so far. Apparently, Axl is referring to someone named Riad (although, as it’s spelled, the word is derived from, I believe, the Arabic “Ryad”, meaning “garden.” ) and his or her semi-nomadic followers. He opens the song with this turdworthy verbiage: “Riad N’ the Bedouins/ Had a plan and thought they’d win/ But I don’t give a fuck ’bout them/ Cause I am crazy.” I’m pretty sure if you gave my niece dog meth, she could write better lyrics than that.  “Garden and the Bedouins” is the most egregious offender in the Holy Shit, This Song is Fucking Meaningless category. Is Axl really enemies with some semi-nomadic folks and a dude (a chick? I don’t know) who was named for Moroccan gardens? He sings about not bending his will to “nomads and barbarians”, the sort of thing you’d write about a far off land (say, the Middle East) if you’ve never fucking seen the region on a map.  Will more beer help this? Maybe, but the effects-driven guitars at the end are giving me a headache. Another palate-cleanse coming soon, though I’m still on my Stone IPA.

“Sorry” is, so far, the most unintentionally hilarious (and that’s saying something) song on Chinese Dumb-0cracy so far. “You like to hurt me/ you know that you do,” sings Axl in his “tender” tenor. I would like to hurt you, Axl. A lot. The song is a slow-burner that seethes with disdain for… well, somebody. Maybe this song is about ex-bandmates or gilfriends or… Christ. I’m not drunk enough to consider that a megalomanical, dipshit white boy with corn rows gets laid.

The hilarity continues: Axl just sang, “I’ll kick your ass like I said that I would.” Does he mean physically or musically? Either way, I have my doubts. “Sorry” continues Axl’s trend of knowing more than everyone else about how to behave and how to treat people. When, oh when, will we stop hurting poor Axl?

Part III coming up next. I think we’ll finish this thing up then: I’m going full Belgian on this bitch in a minute.

Airtight Proof that Wavves Sucks

I know I haven’t been updating much lately – made a sudden move upstairs and lost my interweb for a while. Things will resume as normal next week, but for now, here’s a little story that only proves what I’ve always known about Wavves. Not only do they suck, they are apparently also assholes. Sure glad I’ve never paid money to see them.

Although, to be fair, if you listen to their album, how can you expect it to not sound like shit live?