sep 29
2008

Chinese Democracy Sold Exclusively At Best Buy

I've tried to stop publishing GNR rumors, and although this one look more legit than all the others, skepticism is still warranted: Chinese Democracy To Be Sold Exclusively At Best Buy. An entirely new class of people will now be forced to step foot in Best Buy... or more likely, learn how BitTorrent works.

5 comments

What new class of people? Aging long-haired stoners? I'm pretty sure they they're regulars at BB -- that's where they've been buying music since the local record store went out of business. They also probably got their shitty computer HP there.

posted by alesh at 2:20 PM on September 29, 2008

No, alesh, he obviously means the black jeans-wearing 17 y.o. mallrats. I'm sure they have NO idea where their nearest Best Buy is. (Hint: left at the food court.)

posted by Jared at 3:59 PM on September 29, 2008

And where do you suppose they've been buying their Xbox games?

A better question: why can't Rex let the GNR thing go? Is he honestly expecting the forthcoming album to have some sort of redeeming qualities?

There is a sort of argument you could pretend to make for the BB-exclusive: Axl's target market has never used iTunes (plus artiste Axl hates the idea of an album as just the sum of its songs), BB has stocked GNR disks all this time and they've sold reasonably well, and Axl probably (rightly) doesn't expect the album to sell like crazy and is eager to settle for an up-front deal.

Nonetheless, it should be obvious that this deal will NEVER HAPPEN, and moreover what sane person could possibly care?

(Sorry for the bitchy tone -- I'm actually genuinely curious, because almost everything else Rex mentions I can see the significance of.)

posted by alesh at 11:21 PM on September 29, 2008

Is he honestly expecting the forthcoming album to have some sort of redeeming qualities?

No.

I can't "let it go" because I grew up with it, wrote about Axl ostentatiously, find it a cultural age-specific joke now.

Specifically though, I'm curious about the aging of the audience of GNR. Because I grew up in the deep midwest, I don't know if it's my mechanic friends who will buy this record (or actually not buy this record) or my yuppie friends who will buy this record (or actually not buy this record). There are so many things about this that I want to understand.

posted by Rex at 11:50 PM on September 29, 2008

Ok, that makes sense.

I think we're about the same age, and I was certainly a GNR fan back in the day, but I honestly don't see this as any more significant then, say, the Steely Dan reunion.

Extremely cursory survey of my friends suggests that it's not GNR without Slash, but even with him.... I guess I'll listen to the new album once when it comes out, and shake my head in sad disgust for Axl, the band's legacy, and whoever is so attached to their past that they run out and buy an album on the basis of the work of the lead singer twenty years ago.

posted by alesh at 11:58 AM on September 30, 2008




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