Here we go go...

Mr W. Axyl Rose adorned the cover of many Metal Magazines in the late eighties, early nineties and for a young man such as myself was a hero; coming from the valley this was familiar territory, Aerosmith, ACDC and, yeah, Fleetwood Mac. Got it?
Driving along the Wolfville Ridge road with the wind in my hair in my father's car is as far as I ever wanted to get in life. Growing up was not the first things I wanted to do, either. It is therefore a time warp hearing this album and as I turn it up to ten on my stereo with headphones on, I wake up to just how wimpy and defeated we have become as a nation. That Voice, cuts through all the BS of the last ten years, the crap that has been on the radio and TV. The whole album is about relationships, broken hearts and what can we say about life more than that? Life is heart, the clever people in the world fool themselves into believing it is an endurance game and getting people to listen to their cleverness, but if your heart is not in your decisions then what are you doing? Now that we have established this, lets talk about the music, catchy, inventive hooks, historical speech samples, a little literary reference - okay its Salinger and Martin Luther King, the big ones, but why not use them? Salinger is a recluse, he realized he had very little to offer the world after The Catcher in The Rye and W. Axl Rose knew that he also had nothing to offer other than his music; he's a small time boy after all, people talk about his problems, imagine how you would feel when people start telling you how to make your music? I'm with Axl, never met him but with him.
Now to the title and the historical reference. The historical reference to Martin Luther King is timely because there is now a black man in the white house or do you think that W. Axl Rose wrote this song at the last minute in the run up to the US elections? Lastly the title, Chinese Democracy, what does it mean? What do you think it means?

Oh yeah, in the clip, check out the metal sign...

Ten outta ten.



Now back to the poetry, Annie Freud: Best Man that ever was. Tim Wells, Boys Night out in the Afternoon, Paul Vermeersch, The Fat Kid. George Elliot Clarke's Execution Poems. Entertaining, great books and signs of the times. Read em.