I was thinking about how things used to be done vs. how they are done now.

Making albums costs money, and the return on the investment is diminshing.  If you look at the bands that ruled the 80's/early 90's, other than GnR, you can see that each band such as Van Halen, Aerosmith, Poison, Bon Jovi, etc....they had a formula.  The formula was followed for each album, and slowly as each album was released, the returns diminished.  During this time, album sales were king.

Chinese Democracy was in it's infancy prior to the P2P file sharing explosion, downloading, and really the internet as we know it.  It certainly doesn't follow a formula for success that GnR had previously used.

Irving Azoff is now the most powerful man in the music business, due to his stable of reunited touring bands, who are able to sell out the McOutdoor arenas, without EVER putting a product out.  We are seeing more and more artists who said they would never be nostalgia acts touring without a new CD.

And why would they?  No one pays to hear them anyway, and the average fans of these bands wants to relive the past, not see Axl or Bon Jovi whining at age 40 about how tough things are, and teenage angst.

Which leads me to Best Buy, Guns and Roses, Irving Azoff, and Axl Rose.

I believe that this CD was released only to pay off the incredibly out of date and current thinking DEBT that Axl ran up in the studio.

It was only released because Azoff was able to screw Best Buy into taking on the entire risk for the fiasco.  He also probably through in something about ticket sales that we've yet to see announced because...

Azoff being the fucking evil genius he is, KNEW THE CD WOULD FAIL, at least by the terms that GnR usually releases something, because of the industry changes.  Thus, leaving the notoriously fragile Mr. Rose artistically bankrupt and unable to/unwilling to write and perform new music. Now, Axl is angry enough at his fan base for not following his "new direction" to stick it up our asses with $300 reunion show tickets with Izzy, Duff, and Slash.  (See Edward Van Halen and David Lee Roth, The Eagles, Etc}

And that's where Azoff's payday is in all of this.  It's where his payday always is.  It's his end game everytime.

And as far as this one goes, the end justifies the means.

He's a manager responsible for huge reunion shows, not overhyped albums.

Start the countdown.  Chinese Democracy ends now.

Has anyone heard anything from the Buckethead camp about CD/GnR lately?

I would love to have Buckethead back, when does his current tour end?

Another Kurt Loder exclusive with Herbie would be good.:buckethead: