Remember Chinese Democracy? The musical equivalent of Axl Rose having painful, trapped stomach gas for 13 years, before dropping a slow, inconsequential guff of an album onto the world? Yeah?
Remember it?
No? Course not. No one cared.
What with Guns N’ Roses being about as culturally relevant as Pog and The Macarena and the fact that the album just wasn’t up to much it sort of fizzled away.
Even more inconsequential was the fact that a fellow music blogger named Keving Cogill leaked several of its tracks onto the internet pre launch. One would think that perhaps GNR’s label would take this as a good thing, generating buzz and interest around the album, but no. Instead they have the blogger arrested, and today he’s been sentenced. For his heinous crimes against Axl Rose – he is confined to his home for two months and must have his computers searched, just in case he’s thinking about leaking a couple of unfinished cuts from Ratt’s new album. Or something.
He must also record a public service announcement on behalf of an anti-piracy group. Which strikes me as a little perverse. It reminds me of those tapes of hostages, forced to confess how well they’ve been treated by their captors, whilst – off camera – being poked with a bayonet.
‘Say you love DRM! Say it!’
‘But I don’t! It’s rubbish!’
‘Say it or you get the bulldog clip on the balls again!’
Well done record labels and anti-piracy groups. You’ve now got me comparing you to torturers. What next? Where do you go from here?
