Well, here it is. Those of you who know me maybe guessed this was coming. When discussing Chinese Democracy, I'm personally not too concerned with the 17 years and $13 million it took Axl to finish the album, and I'm definitely not interested in anything concerning the album's audible qualities. If I may, G&R had their time and place in Mike's Sound World, and that time is not 2008 and the place is not his iPod. But this album makes the countdown because of my sheer interest in the situation surrounding blogger Kevin "Skwerl" Coghill, who was arrested by the FBI on August 27th and charged with a felony for illegally leaking 9 tracks off of the album on his blog Antiquiet a few months before it's November 23rd release. He got three years in jail and fined $250,000?!? Coming from someone who would love nothing more from life than to record music and sell it for a living, that seems a little heavy handed doesn't it? (NOTE: The author is a rabid supporter of letting most non-violent criminals out of jail and decriminalizing most of the bassackwards draconian laws in the United States, so you can see why this situation bothers him).
So here's how this works: someone leaks an album on a blog-->the band/label/tons of other people potentially lose $-->the leaker is jailed-->your taxes pay for his life in jail for 3 years. Now I don't want anybody to lose any money, but if it's going to happen I would rather it not be the everyman taxpayer suffering. That's just me. Make the guy do boatloads of community service or something. Damn! Whatever your opinions on the subject are, the fact remains there are countless criminal cases where an offender commits an atrocious, horrifying act that physically ends or destroys a person's life and yet they are not punished as harshly as poor Skwerl. Truth.
Anyway, the album came out to little fanfare, did poorly and nobody seems to like it that much. It's failure had nothing to do with it's premature leakage (gross). Instead of promoting his two-decades-in-the-making album, Axl disappeared for a few months and pissed off everybody at Geffen pretty bad. And even though G&R and everybody else (even Slash) want Skwerl to "rot in jail" and be financially ruined for the rest of his life, I think it's a bit over the top. As far as I can tell, the only thing he managed to steal from anybody was what little bit of thunder this album had, proving that G&R sucks real bad these days.
I really hope my boy John from Gavel & Tone chimes in on this one. That's a law and music blog he's got going on there, and a pretty good one too. Check it.
A perfect Christmas gift for any FBI agents on your list because apparently they love it to death. Just make sure you go to Best Buy and fork over $15 or you're going to federal prison.
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