Chinese Creativity
Axl’s creative life itself seems to be a good metaphor for Chinese democracy. Pretend to be open to other ideas, while being so paranoid that you either imprison those around you or drive them away. Back in the GNR heyday, he reportedly refused to go onstage before a concert until the entire band signed over the rights to the Guns N Roses name. Which is why he can still call himself Guns N Roses while Slash has to form a toolish band called Velvet Revolver. WTF?!

Executions On-the-Go
China allegedly still operates “mobile execution units,” vans that drive around and euthanize so-called criminals. This makes it harder for citizens to track the events, and perhaps reduces the psychological impact of executing thousands of people per year. The fact that the Chinese government banned the album Chinese Democracy shows the ridiculous truth, that their government is pathetically paranoid. Next time I’m in Shanghai, I’ll be wondering whether the van driving past is a euthanasia-mobile, or if the Falon Gong is somewhere being tortured.

I Used to Love Her But I Had to Kill Her
The long list of rotating musicians for this release also reminds me of Chinese democracy. Few “party” members survived intact, probably secretly poisoned by Axl’s spiritual advisors. But I’m not surprised. While the world needs artists like Axl Rose, few can handle working with him. In the era of Moby’s “Play”, Axl called him up and asked him to produce Chinese Democracy, but Moby turned him down. Probably a wise decision, considering that Moby might be buried in a backyard somewhere if he had signed on. 

Mad Shit Going Down
Anyway. I enjoy speculating on Axl Rose’s activities because he’s a mythical celebrity animal, a guy I imagine would’ve ended up as a serial killer if he hadn’t had a successful musical career. He doesn’t fuck around. I will be forever prejudiced to enjoy his artistic creations, because he occupies a mesmerizing space of paranoid melodrama and barbaric sensitivity that my inner beast just loves. I often have no idea what he’s talking about, but I can tell that some mad shit is going down:

Gonna call the President
Gonna call a Private Eye
Gonna get the IRS
Gonna need the FBI

Stay tuned for a more musical analysis of tracks from Chinese Democracy. If you haven’t heard it yet, you can do so here:

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The Music Snob Challenge
We want musicians to write reviews of their own music. But not boring reviews. And no reviews of famous music. Just unknowns, the guys/girls stranded in Lodi America, maintaining awful MySpace profiles and checking Craigslist.

Here’s the deal.

Write a review of one of your own songs

Make sure it’s either funny, terrible, or inspiring

Include as much ridiculousness and absurdity as possible

Send it to us.

If we think it’s snobbish, terrible, or humorous enough we will post it here…

Get crackin and submit your songs!

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This dude is so busy studying his lyric sheets that he hasn’t stopped to notice the thousands of microphones raining down on him. Crazy. After getting an email asking me to check out his tunes, I went to his MySpace page, but was unable to get the songs to play because each time I clicked on the player, it sent me to an external spam-looking MySpace Layout ad website. Garbage! It appears that the sheet of raining microphones acts as a layer of spam, raining down upon his profile, waiting to be clicked. As if MySpace didn’t have enough garbage floating around. 

I’d thought about instituting a no-MySpace-profile links policy on this blog, but had to reneg after breaking it out of laziness almost immediately. My dear CHANES, I want to hear your music but have now wasted a whole lot of time writing a post about not listening to your music and admiring your microphones instead.

Your profile is so pimped-out that I’m afraid of turning into a TV dinner just by looking at it. Please render it usable so I can come back and check out your music! I’m sure it’s great…

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Nothing against The Heaves, though. From this live-basement sounding recording you can tell that they are living the American dream, rocking out, drinking beers and having fun. I would hire them to play a party, if I wanted to trash the place and cause mass chaos everywhere. And if I had a dwelling in which to hold a party. Right now I’m stationed in the public library bathroom, tapping into the free Wi-Fi on a laptop I stole from a guy at a bus station. Who knew?!

ARRGHGHGHG. Rock n roll.

Connect the dots…

Band name is “The Heaves”

Dude’s pic is:

He’s got a cigarette and beer in the pic, named his band after a particular style of vomiting, and has a song called “Giant Need”.

Music style = Punk rock.

Cool. This song is a typical punk rock song, and the group makes good on the genre’s well-cemented conventions. 

At first their Myspace player was tripping out, with this weird syncopated skipping sound, and I was like whoa, this is a pretty trippy introduction. But it was just a computer glitch.

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Anyway. I don’t listen to much instrumental electronic music, particularly of the “new age” genre, and so when I started listening to this track I was way too conscious of the synthetic instruments and saturated reverb. But the more I listened the more I forgot about the particularities of the genre and came to accept the song’s motion on its own terms. There’s a really nice breakdown that begins around 3:10 (with a fake horn section I think) and builds to around 3:37, which I really dug. Perhaps because it involves one of my favorite chord progressions, a simple descending three chord line perfectly suited for melancholy.  

This song swims in sincerity, so if that turns you off, oh well. There are a lot of nice layers of simple melodies that intersect in epic, tragic waves. 

Douchebags and hipsters may scoff, but I dig the heart and homegrown production. I bet David Lynch could use this stuff for a Twin Peaks reunion episode…

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She’s Soft Inside

Anyway, The White Noise Supremacists seem to rage sound jihad on a wide range of sounds. I first checked out their video “She’s Soft Inside,” a live performance video. It was grainy and engaging, despite the singer’s seeming catatonia. The sound was rough but the melodies held and carried, some really nice inflections in the just-right spots to squeeze out some drops of blood from this cold heart of mine. A rough crude lovemaking, perhaps something I would listen to if I were fleeing from a crime scene in 1977 with my buddy Derek driving an El Camino. But I mean that in a positive way, because I enjoyed this song a lot.

I couldn’t tell what any of the lyrics are, but the song title suggests that maybe they are about a pelvic exam or something.

Fighting Against the Sea

This song makes me replay in my mind the dark associations I have with the music industry. Largely because here is a beautiful song that will probably never get heard by more than 10 people. The sonic world is the opposite from the live video jihad. This one is delicate, spacious and quiet, hits the orchestration just right by queuing some weird hipster-sounding synth at the choruses, reminding us that I Heart Huckabees was more than just a movie.

Props to this girl, the singer, Iféoluwa Babalola. She reminds me of a female Stevie Wonder / Michael Jackson that could use a few vocal lessons to strengthen the upper end of her vocal register. The chorus in this song flows nicely, doesn’t really dare or aim for the sky. The song just captures a reflective and optimistic mood that makes me want to be slightly younger and less jaded. I like it. It would be hard being mean to people while listening to this song.

Furthermore, I am happy / saddened to see that someone else besides me has played so many of the “lesser” NYC music venues. Super-duper props for booking Otto’s Shrunken Head. Repeatedly.

Advice for you
Check her out.

Advice for her
Get a better website. The current design looks like one of the spam landing pages that aggregate paid links. I’ll build one for you if you want.

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The first chords pummeled through the radio and burst into my ears. I thought we were under attack. I fell off my bike and hit my head on the curb. I tried to scream but the sound of the world’s best song just filled every single molecule in the air, leaving me no way to get my message across. I was like a dying monkey, shaking on the pavement.

The lead singer’s voice was like a golden unicorn, soaring through the air with white feathers. Each word rang true, as if his lyrics were divinely inspired.

To this day I don’t know what that song was, because I soon lost consciousness. When I awoke, I had aged three years and was no longer welcome in the neighborhood.

—————————————

This song obviously does not exist. And this review is probably the worst review of a non-existent song ever written. But this is all part of our big celebration, announcing that TheMusicSnob.com is welcoming the fearless and many to submit their songs for bizarre, irreverent, and inspired reviews.

Got a song for us? Send us an email…

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