Guns and Roses finally released
Chinese Democracy last week and it debuted at #3 on the Billboard Charts. While debuting at #3 and selling 210,000 copies would be quite an accomplishment for most bands, debuting at #3 has made Chinese Democracy a colossal failure. See, this album took 14 studios, 13 years and 10 + million dollars to complete. Not exactly an album with modest expectations.
It's been 6 years since I sat down in my dorm room and cranked out a 5 song EP with my friend Phil on a budget of Rubios and Thai Spice. I can't say that I've spent the past 6 years trying to make a follow up. I've spent the past 6 years mostly distracted from writings songs with writing screenplays but for some reason 2009 is calling out to me as the year to put out some more songs. And, I'm not one to argue with the future.
Perhaps it's because my sister has worked "in the biz", but I feel like I can't just release the songs without some sort of rollout. I'll be self-financing this project so my "rollout" isn't going to be a Hype Williams directed video or a full page ad in Rolling Stone. It'll be on a modest do-it-yourself scale and success won't be measured in web page hits, or sales, or listens, it will purely be measured in self-indulgence.
Since the largest single week sales of 2008 went to Lil' Wayne, I will be taking the hip hop route for my album's promotion. It will happen in 3 stages: 1) The Mixtape 2) The actual album and 3) The remix album. And if there's success, then there's the ever-so-popular reissue of the actual album with bonus tracks, but lets not hold our collective breath here.
So sometime next year, expect a mixtape to drop, because I need to feed the people who are hungry for my jams on the streets. I'm not sure how much rapping I will do, but expect a rap over Feist's "My Moon My Man" and a freestyle about argyle sweaters. This will precede the album which will have plenty of guest musicians on it (the return of
Phil, how is now in Chicago!). I'm going to cheat and work on the remix album at the same time (lots of vocoder guaranteed - I see you Kanye!). This is the vision, this is the dream, and if it doesn't work out in 2009, it's okay, I still have another 12 years before this project becomes a colossal failure.
