Best Of 2008

As the holidays close in, the Daily Vault is proud to present our annual cavalcade of Best Of 2008 columns, this year featuring entries from six writers (and counting...). Jeff Clutterbuck, Melanie Love, Sean McCarthy, Kenny S. McGuane, Mark Millan and yours truly have all chipped in to highlight the highlights from Bon Iver to Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond to Nine Inch Nails, The Hold Steady to Nick Cave and those Bad Seeds of his. Even Guns N' Roses merited a mention -- but then, these aren't exactly your conventional awards we're handing out here...

Guns N' Roses: The apocalypse

All signs suggest the apocalypse is just around the corner... or at the very least, this one does: the 14-years-in-the-making Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy will apparently actually be released on November 23. As supporting evidence, we offer the pre-order link now live on iTunes, including immediate access to a download of the title track when you pre-order the full album.

What's next, earthquakes? Locusts? The return of MC Hammer?

Fall music preview: AC/DC, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Taylor Swift, Jessica Simpson, T-Pain, Keane

This morning USA Today offers a fall music preview that's both informative and amusing. The informative part begins with items on Metallica, Taylor Swift, Ne-Yo, Jessica Simpson, Ciara, David Cook, T-Pain, Keane and T.I, and is highlighted by another fairly glowing preview of the new AC/DC disc Black Ice, including a fun little video snippet from the making of the "Rock'N'Roll Train" video. Yes, the boys are getting on in years, but they can still snarl with the best of 'em...

The amusing part would be this item on the list of forthcoming albums: "Guns N' Roses / Chinese Democracy (Nov. 25, tentatively)." Anybody want to put money on that release date? Didn't think so.

Music blogger arrested, charged with leaking songs from unreleased Guns N' Roses album

In a case likely to send shivers down the spines of music bloggers everywhere, blogger Kevin Cogill of antiquiet.com was arrested by FBI agents yesterday and charged in court with streaming songs from the infamously still-hasn't-been-released Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy. The charges accused Cogill of posting streams of nine tracks from the album, whose ten-year gestation period and repeated missed release dates have bestowed it with an almost mythic status.

What this means for the ongoing debate over creator's rights, the RIAA's heavy handed enforcement tactics, and/or the continually evolving music industry business model will no doubt be the subject of continuing speculation.

Of more immediate concern to GNR fans -- who, amazingly enough, still exist -- is the loss of access to the only new music the band has produced in the past 15 years. As one fan pointed out ruefully online, "For all we know, that could be the closest we ever get to an actual release."

Chinese Democracy: any day now, really, we mean it

Making fun of the industry joke that is the "band" Guns N'Roses is so easy at this point that it's become the moral equivalent of cruelty to small animals. So we'll give you the very latest with as straight a face as we can muster: Axl says the band is "in negotiations" for the release of the long-rumored album Chinese Democracy, and the band professes to have no idea why guitarist Robin Finck up and left to return to touring with his old band Nine Inch Nails.

Not that Axl's former bandmates have had much better luck with their latter-day frontman. What can you say but bad karma all around.