GN'R Blames Major League Baseball for Band's Silence on Tour

Band has it's lackeys "call-out" MLB Senior Editor Doug Miller.

We've all noticed the lack of updates on GunsNRoses.com ever since the recruitment of DJ Ashba (March 21, 2009).

With the Japanese dates coming up and the Canadian ones scheduled, one would expect the band to actually get off their asses and update the official website with the usual fluff-talk about how it's going to be great, et al. The effort is mostly symbolic; that way people would know that the band acknowledges the dates and is committed to them. Last month, Mysteron seemed to agree with this on this back at HTGTH:

"It is important though that the band add credence by putting these dates on their official website. An official announcement would be even better."

However, yesterday, Mysteron, a beloved 'insider' at the HTGTH community, went completely around and posted the following:

"I want to apologize to GN'R for my comments. MLB currently own the rights to, and control input to, the official GN'R website. However ...dot dot dot Hopefully Guns can find another official way to communicate with the fans in the meantime."

MLB.com and former GN'R manager Merck Mercuriadis came into an agreement of sorts in 2006 regarding the online shop features of GN'R dot com. While the domain listings maintain the ownership of GNR.com is solely in the hands of our man Axl, technical and administrative contacts direct one solely to MLB.com staff. Go figure.

MLB.com have apparently stepped back of providing content around the Japanese dates of the 2007 tour. Before this, most (if not all) articles on the GN'R site were written by their local Senior Writer Doug Miller, who currently continues to write for MLB.com. However, the website managed to be updated semi-regularly up to the recruitment of DJ Ashba, with or without MLB.com's direct consent.

So, bummer. The CD release came and went and no-one at MLB had a problem with the content. It's only a year after that GN'R, having clandestinely sneaked in numerous updates, have finally reached the end of their rope.

I do hope Guns find another official way to communicate with the fans. GN'R Online was an Interscope-manned site, who must've forgotten the password somewhere in early 2003, before transforming it more into the line of their generic band websites.

The only dangerous thing about the modern GNR is their dangerously sloppy management.

Thanks to copperye at GNREvolution who originally wrote this piece.

For futher discussion.

Axl Rose: Do You Know Where You Are?

John over at Addictive Thoughts has written a sad and thought-provoking article addressing Axl Rose and Chinese Democracy. An excerpt follows.

In 1999, Axl Rose spoke with MTV’s Kurt Loder over the phone. Their discussion centered on the inevitable: the former rock star’s withdrawal from the public eye and the details of his pending record, 2000 Intentions, which Rose claimed had just received a new working title: Chinese Democracy.

Over the span of the following decade, these two words would take on an immeasurable notoriety and inadvertently come to represent the decay of the traditional music industry. If Guns N’ Roses’ early career – with the band’s all-time-best-selling debut album — was representative of the old industry’s peaks, Chinese Democracy would signify the final nail in its coffin.

One can’t help but wonder what, exactly, the effect of Chinese Democracy might have been if it had been released in 1999; after all, this was the year nu metal arguably hit its commercial zenith, with the likes of KoRn and Limp Bizkit roaring across the airwaves. (I need not point out how insufferable this era was.) Most classic rock bands were dead; the era of cash-grab reunions had yet to begin, since the grunge movement hadn’t exactly reinstated rock ideals; and some of the last groups of the alt-rock movement in the ‘90s were on the cusp of extinction. Legitimate rock n’ roll was, quite suddenly, in high demand.

If Rose had released it in 1999, before the age of Internet piracy and before the New York scene ostensibly brought back “real” rock n’ roll, his work could have lived up to its status. He could, indeed, have been remembered as not only the singular force in the resurrection of classic rock music, but even as the last true superstar prior to the downfall of the music industry.

Of course, that’s just wishful thinking. Expectations of quality aside, Chinese Democracy just doesn’t represent enough – it should have been an Event, but instead it’s just another album; a solid listen with intriguing songs whose longevity will mostly appeal to the pre-converted. And its mastermind, let’s face it, has proven his long-time doubters right: not only did he reveal that he never had a brilliant scheme brewing after all, but it seems he is no visionary – or at least not as visionary as we might have once been inclined to believe.

Read the FULL article here (there's much more).

Related Discussion: Guns N' Roses thread - Addictive Thoughts