25 Listens a Second
By now you've probably heard that Axl Rose finally finished his Guns N Roses (album/cd/release/etc...) and it only took 17 years.
Conceptually, it's difficult for me to get a handle on what 17 years means.
There isn't any one thing I've done consistently for 17 years. Breathing notwithstanding. How long ago is 17 years? I can't immediately recall.
Perhaps a visual aide.
17 years ago THIS looked cool.
So 17 years had to be FOREVER ago.
Creatively speaking, I'm not sure why it would take 17 years to make an album.
I know & understand creative dry patches. I'm in one. I know a little bit about expectations and the negative effect it can have on creativity (what will THEY think?) I can even imagine those factors amplified by a few orders of magnitude. But not magnified by Super Stardom. That's probably several HUNDRED or thousand orders of magnitude. And I really can't get my head around that.
Even though the album was leaked on the interwebs and is available for free to people crafty enough to find it - most people are tuning into to Myspace to listen to it for the first time. Myspace is cheap, easy & free. It is the new radio.
According to this report - an average of 25 listens a second is happening on the Guns N Rose myspace site. A record number for any artist. That was 7 days ago.
Currently, 8 days in, it's at just under 80 million plays. That's about 10 million plays per day. Granted - those are mysapce numbers. But still - that's insane.
I suppose I should make some comment about the music. There's some good tunes on there. There's some wikkid crafty guitar stuff too. I didn't have grand expectations as I was never a "Gunner" fan.
So from that perspective it's a decent release.
And while Buckethead can out wank Slash, Slash out riffs Buckethead by a mile. So I don't think there are any new "classics" on Chinese Democracy that we'll still be listening to 17 years from now.