Sunday, May 6, 2007

Drip, drop, drip, drop...

The exciting music news of this past week was the leaking of three more recordings from Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy. Keeping up with this ever-delayed album has been my new pastime since Brian Wilson finally completed and released Smile some 35 years after it was started and aborted as a Beach Boys project. It seems Axl Rose has become an even greater perfectionist than Brian Wilson ever could have hoped to be, albeit with far less prolificacy and awe-inspiring results. Nonetheless, the songs are good. Catch this clip of "The Blues" before Axl's management has it pulled from youtube (if you're lucky, you might find new studio recordings of "Chinese Democracy" and "I.R.S." floating around as well). It's a fully produced studio recording that almost bests the live recording I've been listening to for the past, oh, six years? Yes, this is getting ridiculous. It's not as if Axl has been training monkeys to play keyboard during his downtime or anything.

And then another leak from about a week ago that had me all excited came from the new album by someone who actually has his shit together, Sir Paul McCartney. "Ever Present Past" was leaked as an mp3, and also appears on youtube as the basis of a fan-made video. It is due to appear on Memory Almost Full, his debut for Starbucks' Hear Music label, next month. There is even a little behind-the-scenes promo clip that appears to be legit and finds Paul in good spirits:


I give Paul major credit for remaining so productive in spite of the soap opera that his life has become as of late. And if Axl needs a little extra inspiration to close the books on the Chinese Democracy project, I bet Paul would be quite happy to give him some words of encouragement. Let's get this album out already!!

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