We Like The Nightlife, We Like To Party...

I couldn't help but notice that there has been an abundance of fun music news recently. Let's begin with Van Halen. It only took 21 years, but Eddie Van Halen finally fired bassist Michael Anthony. I honestly didn't know that VH was still performing (maybe they're doing county fairs and bar mitzvahs), but honestly, Michael Anthony was one of the most boring bassists ever. He provided a pedal tone over which Eddie could shred and Alex could wail on the drums. All one needs to do is listen to the first song of their first album, and you'd get a pretty good idea of his playing... I think he actually plays eighth notes at some point during the song. In any case, I'm intrigued by the replacement: Van Halen's new bass player is none other than Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's 15-year-old son. According to Eddie, Wolfgang "is fucking dangerous. If I excel at the speed of sound, he excels at the speed of light. " More fascinating advice from Eddie can be found in this article...

And then there's Robert Plant. My god, does he look like shit. I'll try to find the picture from RS, but my first thought was "what the editors were thinking when they chose that photo?" In any case, he was really proud of the fact that for his latest album, he gave his band the titles of the would-be songs, and the band had to write the music to fit the songs. Pardon me, but that sounds like a really dumb idea considering some of the titles from his 2003 album: Tye Dye on the Highway, Dirt in a Hole, 29 Palms, Darkness Darkness, Sea of Love, and Big Log (thanks, Wikipedia). How do you compose to fit someone else's title?

Finally, mark your calendars: March 6, 2007 is - according to the Axl himself - the release date of Chinese Democracy, the album which G'n'R (well, really just Axl) has been working on since 1993. Yes, that's fourteen years ago. And at a reported cost of nearly $14 million, it better fucking impress me. Fourteen years!! That's a long time. That year, Kurt Cobain was still alive, Conan O'Brien started his show, and Barry White was on the Simpsons. Anyway, there are a couple of things that bother me: One, Axl said that the announcement of the date is "not a promise, a lie, or a guarantee." Then what the hell is it? Do I believe that the album will be released on March 6? No way. And two, his manager (whom he just fired) issued a statement defending Axl's integrity and credibility as an artist, including the statement that Axl "managed to have at least three good days' work [on the album] during the past year, but the record needed two or three days' more work before it was completed." The manager also detailed the "problems" that they encountered while working on the album:

"We planned the tour in February and we were supposed to finish the album in May, before it started. We sent our engineers to New York, where we all waited, for over a month, for the muse to come but she never arrived. We then scheduled sessions in London in August. August came and went and once again the muse did not show. We came back to LA but yet again she eluded us."

Those are not problems. Having a drummer die or having the studio burn to the ground, those are problems. Waiting for the muse to show up? Are they fucking serious?!? Either this is one of the best 14-year-long pranks ever conducted, or Axl is a lazy, insecure, insincere dope who's got his head so far up his own ass that his ego can't see out. Given that he only manages three days' good work per year, I know where my money is.