There Was A Time

I’ve got songs, albums that’ll always be tied to a particular time in my head. The Bravery’s “Believe” is summer depression ’07; “Bohemian Rhapsody” on infinite loop is freshman year of high school; “Rock You Like a Hurricane” is Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri; “Mustapha” will always make me wince with the memory of saying I liked Night at the Opera more than the just-gifted Jazz.

Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy is one of the few free radicals, tying together four years of college and the rise and fall of Camelot — however overdramatic that might be, it’s true.

//If you don’t know the story behind ChiDem, the breakup of GnR, or the way the album sounds, I’d recommend skimming the wiki page before reading — this post’ll be plenty long even without an actual review.

When I started college, Chinese Democracy was still an industry joke that would never leave development hell, and the only Guns ‘n’ Roses that I liked or even knew was “Civil War”. This isn’t out of character for me: for a while, on the basis of “All Apologies”, I thought Nirvana was a Christian band singing about Mary. I was a walk-on member of the NCAA fencing team, showing up for the first few practices in grey sweat pants and playing the role of enthusiastic target practice. For the first quarter-and-a-half of college, most of the fencing season, GnR was power ballads: why listen to “Jungle” when Axl was belting “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” at the Freddie Mercury Tribute?

Enter The Black Knight. Somewhere in that block of time, the Knight was taken aside by the fencing team captain (Thor, who would rather fellate a hot iron than visit a doctor) and told to give me a killer edge. The Black Knight chose rock ‘n roll as his tool, a collection of CDs with, among others, “Run to the Hills”, “Warriors of the World”, and “Better”.

How those CDs changed everything (everything!) about my musical tastes is its own story. “Better”, one of the leaks from Axl Rose’s fifteen-year production cycle, was the first track from ChiDem that I’d heard; burnt on the same CD as “Don’t Damn Me”, I figured that it was also from Old-GnR. I was a neophyte, and it all sounded the same, and there wasn’t any reason to care about an album that would never come out anyways.

I used to joke that The Black Knight had a six-track mind, and one of those was permanently devoted to ChiDem. The GnR forums were bookmarked, and any leaks became instant conversation-fodder, and for the first time in my life I was talking with friends until oh-god-o’clock-late. “The Blues” (later renamed “Street of Dreams”) played as we rode in a teammate’s VW bug, a guy and two girls listening to the Knight tell how when the lights snapped back on, Axl was standing on the piano, belting out the final verse to the track that succeeded and surpassed “November Rain”. We had plans for the fencing team; we were all on board; we were all pushing ourselves. As ChiDem reached six months from release, we ended every extracurricular conditioning session with a series of Olé and “Fuck Stanford!” If the Knight and I looked at each other and said “Dah nuh, da nuh nuh NAH NAH,” we both recognized the distant, distorted opening riff from the title track; if no one else got it, we didn’t care.

September 14, 2008, “Shackler’s Revenge” was released for Rock Band 2 as part of the buildup to the album’s release. “It’s really happening.” The Dr. Pepper giveaway was confirmed, but there was only one day to print out your coupon, and I never got my free can. The cracks were starting to show; the extra conditioning had ended. The word of the day was “Sabre gets shit done.” We were a team within the team.

Chinese Democracy Day, November 23, 2008 — midway through fall quarter, junior year. Some friends were making [cough] purchases for the Day: the first time I heard “Sorry”, I was sitting on the floor in a thirty-year-old stranger’s living room, and the dreamlike ripple-guitar and grinding choruses slammed my brain. Once we’d bought the CDs at Best Buy, I ducked out to finish an essay. That Sunday, academics had to come first. For others, ChiDem Day continued.

Here, the record skips; I’ve skirted the edge of what I can tell this whole time, and any detail here would cross that line. The cracks widen, indulgence sinks its roots, and I go to practice without my squad captain — without any captain at all, and I watch to see who’s left standing and who’s sitting on the sidelines. When I graduate a year and a half later, I am the only male left of my class on the team; the men’s team never beats Stanford.

But before graduation, there’s a coda to be played: Las Vegas, with frustration and isolation during the school paper’s Memorial Day trip. Four AM, late enough for the women to have gotten back from clubbing, and we went to a strip club. Because we were bringing under-21s, it was a fully nude club. I considered skipping it, but I’d just gotten over being petulant — and I thought I had a shot with the editoress-in-chief.

The women crowded the stage with dollar bills; I considered getting a Hawaiian burger. Somehow she’d managed to sneak up on me. “What’re you thinking about?”

The most terrifying thing you could say would be “You think too much.” Ah, I, I’m trying to remember what you danced to. It was Rage Against the Machine and… Disturbed?

Yeah.

You a Guns ‘n’ Roses fan, by any chance? There’s a great video online of the, uh, pole dancing world championships, a girl dancing fifteen feet up to “This I Love”… one of the most graceful things I’ve ever seen…

Really? You can’t do that here – most poles will do spin one way and lock another, but this place is too cheap for that. It’s not safe to climb, so everything’s on the ground. I’ve danced like that in Hawaii, though, and I’m when up north earning my law degree. There was this one time I got a cop busted for pulling me over before I reached the speed limit sign...

After the trip, The Black Knight ripped me for not getting her number; I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes my unintentional-asexuality personally. I maintained that asking for it would’ve broken the spell, and the chime of midnight would’ve turned the conversation into just a lap-dance. Maybe he was right; maybe I was; who the hell knows? Six months later, I’m one thousand miles from the Knight and the fencing team; I wear the team sweater when it gets cold, and under it I’ve got a classic GnR shirt. The yellow ring and six-guns — I’m going to marry the first girl who so much as notices it.

“Sometimes I feel like the world is on top of me / Breakin' me down with an endless monotony / Sometimes I feel like there's nothing that's stopping me / All things are possible; I am unstoppable.”

-Axl Rose, “Scraped”