The Very Worst Album of 2010 Part II: Reflection (And Maybe Just a Little More Hostility)

Having vented my spleen on Santana’s utterly shitty Guitar Heaven, I would like to turn now to a broader contextual discussion of the record. How does something like this come into existence (and I am not prepared to rule out the possibility that a mad scientist created it in an attempt to destroy the world) and who is it for? And what, if anything, could such a musical abomination mean?

To take the last question first, Guitar Heaven might be the last nail in the coffin that holds the rapidly putrefying remains of Rolling Stone’s credibility. The magazine gave the album three stars (out of five) and called the performances, “mostly faithful to the originals” which suggests to me that Rolling Stone‘s Mark Kemp may not have actually listened to Guitar Heaven. Not that I can blame him. If you think the Joe Cocker-sung abortion that they call “Little Wing” on this album is “faithful” to Jimi Hendrix’s original, I will fight you. I will literally, violently, will all the force of my rage, fight you. With a two-by-four and a sock full of quarters. If anything, Cocktana’s version of “Little Wing” serves as definitive proof that we should pass an international law that forbids people to cover Jimi Hendrix songs.

And how did something like Guitar Heaven come to exist? That’s the easiest question of all to answer: it came about the same way every Santana album has for the last dozen years. Santana decides he wants to buy a boat, some producers come in and write some shitty tracks, arrange the collaborations with some brand-name, talentless vocalists (I know some people think that lasting a few weeks on American Idol means you’re talented, but I submit to you that it means exactly the opposite of that), and behold! a full-length album’s worth of crap is ready to clog up your FM radio for another year. Santana gets his boat, one or more asshole collaborators get Grammys, and everyone wins except, of course, people who believe in things like truth and beauty. Guitar Heaven turns the formula on its head by eliminating the need to actually write songs at all – now, Santana and his partners in crime (let’s just call it what it is, okay?) can mangle songs that people already know and love. And don’t believe for a second that this is a one-time deal; I’ll bet you every one of Carlos Santana’s dollars that there will be a Guitar Heaven II some time in the near future.

So who’s it for? You might be inclined to guess that it’s for the same Baby Boomers who saw Santana, drugged off his ass, at Woodstock forty-one years ago. If so, shouldn’t they be outraged? After all, Guitar Heaven almost certainly represents the co-opting and watering down of some of the great, primal rock ‘n’ roll moments that were the soundtrack to the youth of a many a Baby Boomer. Santana’s guitar tone renders the notes of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and Angus Young in a warm, digitally polished shine that is about as vital as a road-killed squid (it happens more often than you think) and only one vocal performance on Guitar Heaven really does justice to the original song; Chester Bennington’s performance on the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”, is every bit as boring as Jim Morrison’s.

Of course, Guitar Heaven isn’t just a cynical attempt to create and cash in on the perfect Baby Boomer nostalgia bait. It also tries to nab those of us on the cusp of Generation X and whatever the fuck the generation after X was. “Photograph” was a song from my childhood and having Chris Daughtry sing it is a clear attempt to get fourteen-year-old girls to buy this album or at least get that one track from I-Tunes. And if we’re talking about cynicism, what other word describes putting “Under the Bridge” on the album at all? The song is clearly not a guitar classic, but it was on the radio twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for about two straight years in the 1990s. That one is aimed squarely at people my age (as is the inclusion of Chris Cornell, although I was not fooled into believing for even a second that Cornell is as great as he was even as late as Superunknown), but literally nobody my age has ever strummed a solitary air-guitar note to “Under the Bridge.” Why? Because it’s the slow, sensitive song you put on when you want to try and slide into second base (I never did that, but I knew guys who did).

If you’re troubled and/or infuriated by Guitar Heaven, allow me to provide you with some comfort: although you’re right to be infuriated by this album (because – and I’m listening to it as I type this – it really fucking sucks), you needn’t worry that it represents some new kind of musical evil. These attempts to cash in on music someone else wrote have always been around. Paul Anka tried it a few years back with an album called Rock Swings which was so transparently hungry for the money of twenty-and-thirty-somethings that Anka even attempted a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There are, of course, good covers albums but they are the exception that proves the rule (the rule being, “Covers albums are generally cynical attempts to get money quick”). Astute readers will be in a hurry to point out that I loved Bettye LaVette’s Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook, and I say, “That’s very astute of you.” The thing is, LaVette, without any big-name assistance, took songs other people wrote and made them her own. There’s a sense, for instance, of the personal resonance that “Wish You Were Here” has for LaVette. When you listen to Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana choke the life out of “Sunshine of Your Love”, you can hear that the song means dollar signs to them and nothing else. They’re wringing it out like a sponge, waiting for money to fall out.

It might be tempting to try to link Santana’s decade-long mission to sell out as much as possible (which is his right, by the way – if you want to suck for money, that’s up to you, but don’t get all indignant when I call you a whore) to the Baby Boomer Generation as a whole. After all, a lot of these people spent maybe a decade (some more, some less) trying to stick it to the Man before deciding that they can save more for retirement if they just started working for him. Again, that’s their business and I certainly don’t mean that all Baby Boomer are sellouts, but I am willing to bet that those among the Boomers who buy Guitar Heaven are probably the most ashamed of their hippie-dippy past.  And to be honest, I don’t care so much that Carlos Santana is a sellout per se. I care that he’s a sellout who makes shitty music and now he’s making shitty music out of formerly good music.

And, lest I receive any Red-baiting comments, let me clear up what I mean when I say someone is a sellout. Making money doing what you love is not selling out. Watering down, pussifying, and taming your passions for mass appeal is selling out. Let the great Joseph Campbell sum it up for you: “There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.” Carlos Santana hasn’t just fallen “off the beam”; he’s swan-dived off of it into a swimming pool full of money, exchanging soulless, lifeless “music” (for it can just barely be called that, and mostly only because it consists of known chords and notes) for cold, hard cash. Or, to put it more succinctly:

Ladies and gentlemen, Carlos Santana has “lost his life.”

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.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?

Is nothing fucking sacred anymore?

I just found out that My Chemical Romance covered Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” for the Watchmen soundtrack. I just watched the fucking video on YouTube. The whole thing. Guess I’m lucky they didn’t cover all 11 minutes of it. But still, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Fuck you, My Chemical Romance. Fuck you in the face.

My Chemical Romance’s latest crime against music came at the expense of my favorite Bob Dylan tune. Such an atrocity can only be interpreted as an act of war and I shall respond in kind.

This aggression will not stand, Dude.

My Year in Lists 2008: The Worst of 2008

Welcome to My Year in Lists!

Regular music reviews will resume after the holidays, but now it’s time to indulge in that not-so-secret passion that every music critic (and many a casual music fan) falls asleep thinking about, usually after an intense wank (and if we’re being honest with ourselves, we must admit that wanking is a large part of what music critics do during their waking hours). I’m speaking, of course, of the completely arbitrary compilation of year-end lists. What was the best song? The best album? The best whatever?

So over the next few weeks, Bollocks! will be bringing you my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the ugly for 2008 (watches as site traffic statistics plummet). To get the bad shit outta the way first, I wanna talk about The Absolute Worst Music of 2008.

It goes without saying that Metallica sucks, but to bestow upon them the dubious honor of Worst Album of the Year would still be to grant them some form of accomplishment, however negative. They’re at least near the top of the Worst Song of 2008 pile, but I’m not good at making long lists of songs that are terrible because, as a rule, I try to avoid terrible music. Here are the three worst songs I heard this year, in no particular order:

“Unforgiven 3,” by Metallica – There was a time when Metallica didn’t make music videos because they didn’t see the need to make commericals for their songs. Then they decided two things: 1) They want money. Lots and lots of money and 2) They hate their fans. These two decisions pitched Metallica headlong into a race to out-whore their past achievements in Whoredom. Taking a page from the Hollywood playbook, they wrote a sequel to a massive hit (“The Unforgiven”). The sequel sucked, but that didn’t stop them from making a third, which really fucking blows. It gets extra “Fuck you” points for ripping off the keyboard part from “Comfortably Numb.”

“Welcome to the Third World,” by The Dandy Warhols – I could’ve picked a lot of songs from the Dandy Warhols utterly shitty Earth to the Dandy Warhols but I really chose to focus on this one for one simple reason. It steals the bass-line from The Clash’s “Magnificent Seven.” For a shitty Dandy Warhols song. That doesn’t say shit… about… shit. The Clash is an iconic band – they’re at least 85% of the reason I’m in a band (and probably a large reason why most people I know who are in bands are in bands) , they made really great music and they meant every note of it. I get that Courtney Taylor thinks he’s Lou Reed and every once in a great while, his Velvet Underground tribute band thing kinda works. But for The Dandy Warhols to rip off the Clash is to spit on everything the Clash stood for. If Joe Strummer were alive today, I’d like to think he would beat the living shit out of Courtney Taylor (and if Lou Reed were alive today, he’d do the same). “Welcome to the Third World” is a horrible song by a horrible band that appears on a horrible album – to call it a shit sandwich would be to offend shit sandwiches everywhere.

But probably The Worst Song of 2008 is “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. I’ve heard this in passing and I guess it’s a big hit for her, but it’s got some serious strikes against it. Chiefly, Katy Perry cannot sing. The verses on this song are merely unbearable but when the chorus rolls around, I want to stuff my ears full of nougat and run around the malls of Los Angeles slashing blindly with a machete, hopefully severely wounding anyone who would even so much as nod their head or tap their foot to the beat of something so insipid. This song is probably shocking to Katy’s parents, who might remember her better as the girl who started out singing Christian music before deciding that she could make a shitload of money writing schlocky turds like “I Kissed A Girl.” Perry’s debut pop album, One of the Boys, features other great song titles like “Ur So Gay” which annoys me not just for its utterly stupid spelling but also for the fact that this girl is so obviously trying to create shocking mall pop. It’s risque if you were home-schooled and still think girls shouldn’t show their ankles or if you think Jars of Clay is super hardcore, but if you want shockingly graphic lesbian music, pick up an Alix Olson album. Katy Perry is about as shocking and surprising as a post-it note, but I’ve got some song titles for her next album that will really help her kick it up a notch:

“I Finger-Banged Lynn Cheney During Sunday School”

“Dear Mom and Dad, My Boyfriend’s a Black Atheist”

(and last but not least:)

“Who Does A Girl Have to Blow to Get an Enema Around Here?”

So there you go, Katy Perry. You can use any of those you want. I promise not to pull a Joe Satriani and sue you.

So what’s the Worst Album of 2008? Well, for my money, it’s My Bloody Underground by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. This is another band from which Katy Perry can learn a lesson in the “Transparent Attempt to Shock Soccer Moms” department. See, Anton Newcombe has cleverly titled two of the songs on this musical Gorgon “We are the Niggers of the World” and “Automatic Faggot for the People,” and because they have naughty words, hoo-boy, they must be really shocking! Except that they suck. The whole album sucks. It’s Newcombe masturbating in the studio and then asking you to pay for it so he can go buy more heroin. Fuck this guy and fuck his band. The only good thing I can say about them is that, in all their fuckery, they’ve never ripped off The Clash. But you know what? I’m drawing a line here, folks. If the Brian Jonestown Massacre records a Clash rip-off I solemnly swear to find Anton Newcombe and kick his opiate-addled ass. For the good of all mankind. Earlier this year, I wrote that My Bloody Underground is the album I would make if I hated music and wanted to convince other people to hate music as well. In retrospect, I may have been understating things a bit. My Bloody Underground is the album I would make in an experiment where I was trying to create a black hole of shittiness that would suck all of the fun, joy, and creativity out of life.

Summer of the Whore

Ha ha, yet another post to lure in the all-important Porn-Googling demographic!

You’ve never heard of the Mendoza Line, which I’ll forgive for now. Okay, no I won’t; go find and listen to Full of Light and Full of Fire right now. Do it. Did you do it? You’re listening to it right now? Good. That’s a husband and wife team on that album, Timothy Bracy and Shannon McArdle. That album, however is not new.

Ya see, McArdle and Bracy recently divorced, which,  unfortunately, meant the end of The Mendoza Line, perhaps the most underrated band to come out of Austin, TX, in quite a while. Rumor has it Bracy is working on a solo record but, in the mean time, McArdle has released a frighteningly honest look at their split called Summer of the Whore. You can guess from the title how she feels about things.

Break-up albums are a fickle mistress; trying to force the emotion can turn your break-up album into a cringe-inducing, emo-filled affair but holding back the real meat can make it seem superficial, like you’re merely trying to cash in on your heartache. On the other hand, if you strike the right balance between melancholy and honesty, you end up with things like Summer of the Whore or The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit. In declaring it the Summer of the Whore, McArdle is telling us the decision she’s come to about her break-up: she’s going to fuck her way out of the misery, at least for now. Album opener “Poison My Cup” sets the tone: “Don’t want to go to a show, no baby/ take me to your room”. You’ll get the sense, over the ten songs on Summer of the Whore that McArdle has already left the Summer of the Whore behind her, but her willingness to chronicle it is utterly compelling.

It helps that her voice is such a finely tuned instrument – she can sulk, she can sigh, and she can seduce all in the same tune and it helps to get you on her side even while you’re listening to her admit, “I’ll have no conscience to speak of, I’ll have no guilt to lament.” (I’m not saying you should take her side in the divorce, mind you – that’s none of our business. We’re concerned with the songs here and McArdle does a good job of being that friend you know who’s lonely and fucked up and making some bad decisions but you know they’re just trying to get… well, whatever it is out of their system.)

The subject matter can weigh down an album like Summer of the Whore, considering that most of the songs have images of death (usually by drowning, usually in a wedding dress) or discussions of when one takes the ring off and admits that things are never going to be the same. Luckily, Summer of the Whore is only ten tracks long and not entirely devoid of hope – by “Come, Autumn Breeze,” (“The heat has lifted,”) McArdle is talking about the next guy she could actually see herself with and there’s the sense fo the slow healing begun (perhaps her next album will be more upbeat). But McArdle’s musical sense makes even the biggest downers on the album worth hearing again – the title track is exquisite, one of the best songs on the album, as is “Leave Me for Dead,” a feisty little revenge song (“You can say that it’s over/ but, baby, I’m not finished with you”).

I can easily imagine that, like the afore-mentioned Midnight Organ Fight, Summer of the Whore will provide a real catharsis for the recently romantically fucked-over. I imagine, in fact, that this album goes down very well with your own personal bottle of wine during a rousing session of setting fire to all those photos of your ex. Fortunately, I can only imagine these things because I am in a happy relationship and, as such, perhaps am incapable of getting the full benefit of something like Summer of the Whore. But from a musical perspective, it’s a beautiful album by a great singer and is hopefully an indication that she’ll be around for a while, even if the Mendoza Line is dead and gone forever.

Chinese Demo-crazy

So…

The FBI cannot seem to catch an ailing rich kid (and accomplished terrorist) who lives in a cave somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but they can sure as hell catch Skwerl (real name: I don’t know and I don’t care). What did Skwerl do, you ask? Well, he found himself in the possession of 9 leaked tracks that are supposedly from the perennially forth-coming Guns ‘n’ Roses release, Chinese Democracy. (You’d think Axl Rose, a whore if ever there was one, would’ve tried to get the album out in time to coincide with the Olympics. But he’s too busy blowing record label money on hookers and… well, blow, probably.). Skwerl streamed those nine tracks on his blog and Axl Rose pulled a Metallica (any wonder he used to tour with those assholes?) and decided to bring the hammer down on poor, hapless Skwerl (who was also wanted by the Spelling Police for his epic failure of a handle).

Skwerl was arrested (at fucking gunpoint!) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and freed on $10,000 bail. Apparently, Skwerl is a black belt in cop-killing-karate or something (okay, yes, I know it’s techincially a federal case, but seriously: at gun point!) because the FBI (who could, you know, be out solving important federal crimes) was apparently not taking any chances when they booked him.

Predictably, the reaction from the GNR (is that how they abbreviate it? I have never cared less about anything) camp (and non-camp) was basically that Skwerl should get the chair. Slash, who is not even in GNR anymore (he’s moved on to the even more corporate and awful Velvet Revolver), said that Skwerl should “rot in jail.” Slash also said that Skwerl’s leakage (ahem: if you are any kind of decent punk band and wish to use the name Skwerl’s Leakage for your band, you hereby have my permission to do so, completely free of charge. I, unlike certain Guns and certain Roses, am not a whore) would cause Axl to “lose a lot of money on that record.”

Um… Slash? Can I call you Slash? How ’bout I just call you Fucko the Clown, ‘kay? Good. Listen up, Fucko the Clown – you’re making two major assumptions of the most deeply spurious variety. First, you’re assuming that every morbidly curious schmuck that stopped by the Skwerl blog would actually have purchased the album if they couldn’t get it for free. Incidentally, this is a common argument that the record industry makes to inflate the impact of downloading (all I’m gonna say on the subject is this: if you really like a band, support them, whatever that means. There are bands that deserve my money and I make damn sure they get it; conversely, there are bands that deserve no one’s money and I do my part to make sure they don’t get it) and make it seem like artists are directly suffering from the epidemic of downloading. The problem is this, though  – I only ever hear major labels bitching about this when some tepid turd of a record by one of their most commercially viable acts is leaked to the 14 year-olds who are slobbering uncontrollably over it. A few years back, when a fan emailed Jeff Tweedy to say he’d downloaded A Ghost is Born (no matter how you feel about piracy, you gotta admit, it takes balls to email a musician and be like, “Yeah, I just stole your record and I was wondering…”) and he wanted to verify the track listing, did Tweedy go all Axl on him and call in the feds? Nope. In an act of increasingly uncommon graciousness, Wilco put a tab on their website where you could donate to alleviate your guilt over downloading their album. Dontate to whom, you ask? To the band? No. To Doctors Without Borders. And they raised a shitload of money, too. Wilco issued a statement that said (paraphrasing here, but not by much) that they don’t exist to make and sell CD’s; they exist to play music for people who like to hear them do so (this is one of a zillion reasons I fucking love Wilco, by the way.). Are the major labels going to shit a brick if you download Neutral Milk Hotel, Jonathan Coulton, or Okkervil River albums? No. Because they don’t know who those people are.

Your second (way off) assumption, Fucko the Clown, is this: that Axl can somehow lose money on an album he hasn’t actually released. In fact, Axl can only lose money on Chinese Democracy if he ever releases the sure-to-suck album for public consumption (because stores have to order the thing, receive it into stock, and move a lot of units without having to return it to the vendor – meaning a physical fucking product has to exist. For the record,  I hope, should Axl ever release this steaming load of dogballs, he loses everything he has and is forced to work at Taco Bell for the rest of his life). So far, only the various labels dumb enough to coddle Axl have lost money on it (dude has blown hella advances on this thing). Seems only fair to me that Axl should feel a financial pinch for locking himself up in a studio to masturbate and then cry foul when one of his two remaining fans gets excited to hear the new tunes.

Which brings me to the thing I really don’t understand in all of this – if you read an article online that has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with Axl Rose or Chinese Democracy (Fark has one or two a week on their music page) and you’re brave (or drunk) enough to flip down to the comments section, you will still find rabidly devoted fans who will literally try to preempt your dislike of an album whose existence is only slightly more proveable than God’s. I’ve seen comments from people who don’t want me to hate the album before I’ve heard it! Well, I’m a busy man. I’ve hated every other GNR release (Slash was a pretty good guitarist back in the day, but now I have Tad Kubler so Slash can – and should – go fuck himself) and there is no evidence I’ve seen that would convince me that Chinese Democracy will be anything other than an overproduced, underwritten, drug-addled, jackoff of an album foisted on the public by a man whose ego long ago outgrew his talent. So, for the sake of efficiency, I’m gonna go ahead and hate Chinese Democracy with about half the level of rage I reserve for pretentious twats like Axl Rose (note: that’s still an ungodly amount of rage). The fact that Axl, a man who is impossible to take seriously as a person, let alone a musician, still has zealous defenders would be astounding if it weren’t such a clear signifier that either 1) the apocalypse is upon us or 2) we’re careening wildly and quickly toward the society envisioned in Idiocracy, which means that one day, Axl Rose will be President. He’ll arrive for his inauguration late, high, and cranky. And Chinese Democracy, the worst album no one’s ever heard, will still only be a rumor.

Skwerl is now making appeals on his blog at antiquiet.com to get people to chip in for his legal defense. You can if you wanna, just pop over there and do it. I leave it up to you. It will be interesting to see if Axl’s label has to prove in court that those songs were definitely going to be on the final release of the record or not. That fat fuck Rose has been at this album for more than a decade – he’s probably got stacks of demos lying around; probably leaks them all the time to guage the public interest. The point here is not that people won’t buy Chinese Democracy because some dude posted songs from it on his blog; people won’t buy it because it will be, without doubt, the biggest disappointment in the history of music. Chinese Democracy has given the handful of GNR fans that remain on this crazy planet the biggest case of musical blueballs ever. There’s no known cure, and it’s just as well; Axl Rose doesn’t deserve fans.  What he does deserve, his fans won’t give him.

But I will:

Axl Rose is (and always was) a fuck-awful singer, a corporate whore, a bigot (‘member that song about “faggots” and how they “spread some fucking disease?”), a beyond-terrible (bordering on infantile) lyricist, and now he’s fat. Have at you, Axl!

There’s No Beatles, Clash, Or Rolling Stones

There are very few bands you can listen to without spotting their influences. Scratch that. I can’t think of any. Even bands with a sound as distinctive as that of, say, The Flaming Lips, reveal their record collections to you if you pay attention. The real test, then, is whether or not your band can put a unique stamp on a great record collection. For example, no one will deny that Cream did amazing things with their influences – they fed Robert Johnson magic mushrooms and took him on a wild, psychedelic ride (for you youngsters in the crowd, this was waaaaaaaay back in the day, before Clapton started to suck as brutally as he sucks now). As a counterpoint, you can tell from listening to John Mayer that he owns and has committed to memory every single Stevie Ray Vaughan album. And he’s translated his love of SRV into… becoming a poor man’s Johnny Lang (for those of you who don’t know who Johnny Lang is, just understand that being any man’s Johnny Lang is unacceptable).

Any first listen of any given Radio America tune will betray a love of The Clash and The Beatles. The Radio Americans are not shy about their political leanings, but they understand that melody is a good thing. But The Beatles and The Clash are epic figures in our musical heritage and the brazen taking-up of their respective mantles is problematic. If you’re going to stand on a stage in 2008 (or “2007″, the lead-off track to Radio America’s new You Will Pay for This EP) and declare, “There’s no Beatles, Clash, or Rolling Stones/ and we’re finally on our own,” you’d better have the chops to back it up. Radio America has set these stakes for themselves and have rose to the occasion admirably.

Since 2006′s Raise High, the band has undergone some personnel shifts – Tom Stuart and Jesse Reno, original criminal masterminds for the group, are still present but have added Gabe Wilhelm and Robby Van Saders on, respectively, guitar and drums. The sound is still loud and brash, but there’s a new dynamic on You Will Pay for This – Radio America is stepping a little bit away from their punk rock roots without ever losing track of where they came from. The EP still bears the mark of some kids who have memorized London Calling but these kids are smart enough to know that, while imitation is a sincere form of flattery, a little goes a long way and too much makes for a boring listen. So You Will Pay for This starts off with vocals front and center: “Bones/On/Bones” starts off “2007″, which goes on to suggest that the Rolling Stones your alcoholic stepdad is paying $400 to see are not the Rolling Stones who gave us Exile On Main Street. “2007″ stakes Radio America’s claim on the flag of their forebears – for better or worse, these guys (originally from Worcester, MA but now hanging out in New York) are going to weld their punk politics to their pop sensibilities and it’s a good thing. Because it’s 2008: there’s no Clash (raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer) and there’s really not much of a Bad Religion anymore either.

“27 Octobre” follows “2007″ with Reno’s bass and Van Saders’ drums propelling the song under a Dick Dale guitar riff. And then in comes Stuart singing about the “deafening clash/ of riot gear” and buy the time he gets to the refrain, the backing vocals pop up (truth be told, Stuart’s never met a “bop-bop-ba-dudda-dudda” he didn’t like; see “Mahabharata” for keen examples of this). “27 Octobre” showcases the vocal dynamic between Stuart and Jesse Reno – Reno’s the growler, Stuart’s the crooner (for want of a better word – put it this way: Tom Stuart sounds more like Joey Ramone and Reno’s voice has evolved to a snarls like Tom Waits’ vocals on “Anywhere I Lay My Head.” Hmm… note to Radio America – round of beers on me on September 20th if Jesse sings “Anywhere I Lay My Head” during your set at Lobsterfest.). Stuart and Reno make great use of their respective voices all over You Will Pay for This, but never to greater effect than on “Battle Hymn,” the centerpiece of the EP and a song I’ve literally just listened to five times in a row… make that six.

“Battle Hymn,” starts off with a little pseudo-reggae lick and then jumps full bore into a loud-ass guitar squall. Then comes Reno, growling “hold on to courage/ hold on to pride”, building toward the chorus, warning a brave soldier not to scream, “there’s blood on my hands.” “Battle Hymn,” also features Stuart’s trademark pointedness: “Boy/ don’t you ever mix conviction/ with compassion” is a great lyric (although it would be helpful if it weren’t a Republican Party plank as well) that rivals his admonition to kids who “bleed red, white, and blue” to make sure they can reconcile their nations history with their beliefs on “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” (from Raise High).

“Nazarene” follows at break-neck speed; the scene unfolds at a nightclub, a “den of vice and sin” where the holy rollers are “begging you to welcome them back in” but the kids aren’t cut out for salvation – they’re just ordinary Nazarenes. The point of the song seems to be that Jesus went out for a pack of smokes 2000 years ago and, would ya lookit the time, he just hasn’t made it back yet. And he’s unlikely to, no matter how the holy rollers “compliment or spin.” The song features a breakdown that is an instrumental nod to “Death on the Stairs,” by The Libertines (this is the kind of pop culture reference that pervades Radio America’s catalog; little guitar licks here and there that call to their influences but only the musically well-read will catch them. If you listen to “(Raise) Higher,” the 10 minute epic from Raise High, you’ll notice a guitary nod to “Marquee Moon” by Television. Or you won’t.).

The last new tune on You Will Pay for This (it closes with a live version of “Mahabharata”) is “Dead Man Rock (Pistolero)”, Radio America’s modern spaghetti-western soundtrack song (apparently Ennio Morricone has joined Strummer/Jones and Lennon/McCartney in the Radio America pantheon of heroes). “Dead Man Rock” marks Radio America’s furthest departure from the sound of Raise High, proving that they’ve expanded their horizons with no loss of quality, asking “How many people/ will honestly teach you/ to stand up and fight for your rights?”

Overall, You Will Pay For This marks a new and exciting direction for Radio America and will hopefully garner them a little more widespread attention (although they’re getting rave concert reviews on the East Coast, I’m very excited to see them coming to LA next month. Radio America is exactly what a city that still loves Motley Crue needs right now). You can still spot their influences in every song, but what you can’t do is deny the earnestness of their intentions, the cleverness of their lyrics, and the volume of their awesome. To Tom, Jesse, Gabe, and Robby – big ups to ya, see you next month, and I’m totally serious about the “Anywhere I Lay My Head” thing.