Chinese Democracy

I don't normally review albums on this blog. But Guns & Roses have just released their long promised album, and having obtained a copy I wanted to share my thoughts with the world. Or the 2 people that read this blog.

Nowhere near as good as Appetite for Destruction, but realistically what could be? Appetite is one of the best debut albums of all time and was hungry, angry and sexy. Obviously once you get that level of critical and commercial success things are going to change. When I first started listening to Chinese Democracy I thought that it was a poor effort. But then when I took it in to the context of the albums released by G’N’R Chinese Democracy makes sense. Chinese Democracy reminds me of the latter half of Use Your Illusion 2, those long songs all about pain and loneliness. So as a progression this album is an extension of those themes and sounds.

What Chinese Democracy does confirm to me is that Axl was not the hard rocker of the group, his instincts are towards middle of the road melodic rock. This album has no standout guitar riff a la Sweet Child O’ Mine, no hard rockers like Paradise City, You Could Be Mine or Welcome to the Jungle. And the lyrics all seem to be about how lonely Axl is, how no one understands him and madness. Gone are the dangerous songs about drugs & booze (Mr. Brownstone, Night Train,) sex (pretty much any song from Appetite and a fair few from Use Your Illusion 1&2), and just plain anger (Get in the Ring, Out Ta Get Me, Bad Apple).

Having said all that I quite like a few of the tracks. And once I look past that the band is called Guns & Roses and view this as what it truly is, an Axl Rose solo record, then I find I can appreciate it more. If this was a record by some unknown group I would view them as having potential, but the real question is will I go back to this in 6 weeks or even 6 months time and listen to it again? I am not sure I will.

Christmas Photo Shoot

We got some pictures taken for the girls to put in our Christmas cards. Here is one of the outakes, that will not be making in to the Burr family album.

I'm almost tempted to have a caption competition.

Gay Day

California has a long history of direct votes with regards to different policies. They are similar to referendums, and occur on nearly every election that takes place. They are called Propositions (or Props) and the most contentious one this year was Prop 8. Prop 8 wanted to ban Gay marriage. Gay marriage was made legal by a Californian Supreme Court case which ruled that the Californian Constitution makes discrimination of any kind illegal. Californians are rightly proud of the fact that slavery was never allowed in their state and this tradition of inclusion has long extended to the gay community.

San Francisco is well known as the gay capital of the world and in some parts of America, San Francisco is seen as being the prime example of everything that is wrong with modern USA.

Prop 8 was passed which mean that the Californian constitution now has to be amended to define the marriage as that between one man and one woman. This does lead me to wonder will divorce be made illegal. I guess it will depend upon the wording of the amendment.

The vote was close, and now the ramifications are being felt. The Attorney General is reviewing the Prop to see if it is legal. Surely this should have been done before the Prop was even put on the ballot. Regardless of your personal opinion on the measure it does seem a bit like poor sportsmanship to wait for the result and then challenge the rules. If you don’t like the rules before you start a game that is when you should challenge them.

There is also a group on Facebook trying to get Gay, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transsexuals and their “straight friends” to join together on 10th December to strike. The day is being billed as “A day without the Gay” and they are encouraging supporters to not go to work, not spend any money and not engage in any activity that will boost the economy in any way. A similar thing was done in 2007 by immigrant workers, who held a one day strike to flex their economic muscle. The gay community has significantly more financial clout than the immigrant community so it will be interesting to see how effective this day is.

That was the week that was

This has been a hectic and busy week. I started the week with a swollen face, after one of my teeth decided to explode. I needed emergency root canal treatment, which although painful was nothing compared to the pain I had been experiencing. My cheek is still swollen but not as bad as it was on Sunday evening!

On Wednesday we had pickets outside of our office building for 2 hours, blowing horns, playing middle of the road rock music (think Foreigner) and shouting about wanting a fair wage for a fair days work. I was going to point out that none of them was currently working, but the police were called and directed us away. The Union involved is the SEIU and they represent the service workers at the hospitals. Or to be more accurate they represent some of the service workers. Anyway enough hair splitting. They want more money. The management does not agree. It has come out that certain caretakers (or Janitors as they like to be called here) earn more than teachers do. As Ray would say “it’s a mixed up, meddled up, shook up world”.

My co-workers got all flustered by the strikers and many were running around giving constant updates to what was happening outside our offices. I couldn’t help but contrast their reaction to the reaction of my colleagues at the Child Support Agency. I remember clearly that on more than one occasion that the CSA would have protestors outside. There was also one occasion when one of the protestor’s got inside the building, but obviously hadn’t thought it through because he had no idea what to do once he got inside. My favourite story though of my whole time there was the time that we were asked to stay away from one side of the building because they Royal Navy Bomb Squad were defusing a bomb outside. During all of this my workers and I practiced a large sense of detachment and bravura which to this day I do not know if it was indifference to what was going on or just a huge piece of British stiff-upper lip. You know the idea that if you just continue working then it is not really happening.

Balls and Forking

Ellie is starting to put words together, and it is getting easier and easier to understand what she is saying as each day goes past. She has picked up my accent and way of saying things for certain things, so when she says ball, bottle or bath she sounds English.

Recently though she has been having problems saying fork, and what comes out has had me in stitches. Every night I hear her shouting because she has dropped her “fuck”. Then again maybe she is really cursing and isn’t saying fork at all…..

The American Dream

The election is done and dusted. Now, unlike the UK, Obama is not in office straight away. He doesn’t take office until 20th January 2009. One of those little quirks of the system.

The effect that this election win has had on the country is interesting. The campaign of McCain was a divisive one, with his running mate even going so far as to differentiate between those states she concluded were “real America” and those that weren’t. Today a lot of younger people, poor people, people from minorities are feeling positive and energized, they have seen that the American Dream is alive and well. Others, the McCain supporters, are fearing the worse and think the country will fall apart.

The one down side for me is that I am now going to have to find something else to blog about. Bah!

Who will win?

The results are starting to come in as I write. I have I think spoken about this before but I still find it amazing that while the polls are still open here on the west coast of America results are being called on the east coast. Surely this could effect how people would vote out here in the west? I guess I am used to the British system of actually waiting until all the votes have actually been counted before determing who has won, unlike here where it seems to be a mixture of exit polls, gut feeling and random guessing.