The Collapse of Chinese Democracy

The New York Times just published a tell-all article chronicling the nightmarish turmoil behind the Guns N Roses album that Axl Rose has been working on for eleven years (it took ten for Geffen to pull the plug, and still he soldiers on).

If you're anything like me, you're in an unsigned band that you care about very much, and the creation, documentation and promotion of your own new music is where all of your creative energy is funneled, and by virtue of these facts alone you consider yourself a part of the music industry, despite your modest rank in the food chain. On occasion you, quite naturally, find yourself entertaining fantasies of a day when you might enjoy an ascension in rank, and actually get paid a wage sufficient to cover your living expenses in return for your music-making. For the sake of your own emotional constitution, you try to keep a stranglehold on said fantasies, reminding yourself at every opportunity of just how privileged you are to be making music at all, at your own cost, with the time that your job and other obligations afford you. Fortune has already smiled on you if you spend any of your precious time writing songs, cutting records, playing shows even to audiences comprised only of your personal friends, and touring the nation, no matter if it's all on your own nickel. The music is an end in itself, and any and all sacrifices you make for its sake are worth it.

You will probably find yourself enraged, as I did, by every word of this article.