Music's 3R's 08.30.10: Guns N' Roses are Pissed, Linkin Park's New Video, Drake Not Getting Married, Wyclef's Run Over, More

Posted by Aaron Titan on 08.30.2010

From Guns N' Roses set being cut short at the Reading Festival and Linkin Park's new video for their new single "The Catalyst" to Drake pulling a marriage hoax via Twitter and Wyclef Jean's run at the Haitian presidency being cut short, 411's Aaron Titan brings you all the Right, wRong, and Ridiculous in the music world in this week’s Music 3R’s.




Greetings: And fighting out of the corner to your left, hailing from 411Mania.com, weighing in with all your music news commentary, the "Titan of Titans," master of the Music 3R's, AAARRRRRROONNNNN TIIIIIIIIIITAN!!!

That's right y'all, I'm back! Many thanks to Lenny Vowels for covering the R's for me last week in my absence. I thought he did a great job and would welcome him back anytime I need a sub! For those of you who didn't catch the column two weeks ago, I was out of town last weekend covering the Rockstar Uproar Tour in Chicago. I was supposed to do an interview with Roy Mayoroga of Stone Sour, but it fell through due to scheduling constraints and the like. I did have a photo pass for the second stage and got some great photos of Hellyeah. Here's a sample:



To catch my review of the show, which also featured Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, and Stone Sour, click HERE.

Nuff' talking! Let's get down to business with your Opus of the Week!








Opus of the Week: Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist

This is a really fun album despite what people may say in their griping about it. It's eclectic, it's pretty, and it rocks. There's just a lot of ethereal layers on it. It flows from start to finish and I just really like that weird unique place I escape to when I listen to this album.

Usually, this is the part where I talk about what particular songs are awesome and why they make the album so great, but I'm skipping that this week. I love this whole album and if you haven't heard it yet, go cop that shit now!

Seriously though, the song "Pink Cellphone" is the weirdest, grossest, yet oddly attractive song I've heard in quite some time!

Titan's Key Tracks: "Hole in the Earth," "Beware," "Pink Cellphone"


Opus of the Week Backlog: Here's some other stuff I'd recommend if you're looking for a few albums to check out that may have escaped you…

08/16/10: Black Star - Black Star
08/09/10: Zac Brown Band - The Foundation
08/02/10: Rage Against the Machine – Evil Empire
07/26/10: Green Day - Insomniac
07/19/10: Eagles of Death Metal - Heart On
07/12/10: Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
07/05/10: Pantera - The Great Southern Trendkill
06/28/10: Tim Fite - Under the Table Tennis
06/21/10: Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic
06/14/10: Antoine Dufour - Existence
06/07/10: Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
05/31/10: Foo Fighers - Foo Fighters
05/24/10: Van Halen: Best of Both Worlds
05/17/10: Hellyeah: Hellyeah
05/10/10: Limp Bizkit: Significant Other
05/03/10: She & Him: Volume One
04/26/10: My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges
04/19/10: Kanye West: Graduation
04/12/10: Avenged Sevenfold: Avenged Sevenfold
04/05/10: Fall Out Boy: Infinity on High
03/29/10: Dr. Dre: 2001
03/22/10: Cypress Hill: Black Sunday
03/15/10: Maxwell: BLACKsummers'night
03/08/10: Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf
03/01/10: Adele: 19
02/22/10: The Ting Tings: We Started Nothing
02/15/10: Nirvana: Bleach
02/08/10: Down: NOLA
02/01/10: Dixie Chicks: Taking the Long Way
01/25/10: Lamb of God: Ashes of the Wake
01/18/10: The Clash: London Calling



The Column

For those unfamiliar with the 3R's concept, here's the breakdown. I will be reporting and commenting on happenings in the music world and categorizing all the hoopla into three sections: the Right, the wRong, and the Ridiculous. The Right will feature news, albums, and announcements music-related that I'm personally stoked about. The wRong will be the bad versions of all three of the aforementioned. The Ridiculous is the worst of it all, that which makes good ol' Mr. Titan shake his head in perplexing amazement.






Tupac Movie is ON: The long-rumored Tupac Shakur biopic seems to be back on and the wheels are spinning in earnest. Shakur's mother sold the rights to the film back in 2007, but the project has kind of been sitting on the back burner for a while now. Training Day director Antoine Fuqua will helm the project, which will be given a completely new script.

Says Stephen J. Rivele, one of the two screenwriters on the project, "He was obviously very angry, and had been subjected to a great deal of violence at home, in the streets and in prison. But he was just beginning to shed that anger and look for a purer voice...He was in the process of changing himself, and entering a new phase of his life — essentially a Romantic vision — and had set up a new label, and a new production company to create it. He saw the contradiction between the musical persona of 'Thug Life,' and his essential nature as a gentle, sensitive person. And that was partly responsible for his murder: He was not a gangster, but the people around him were. They saw he was going to leave, that they were going to lose him, and so I think they decided to kill him."

From what I've read, the film will take place on the last day of Shakur's life with flashbacks interspersed from the previous four years or so of his life.

I think that this film will be incredibly provocative and if done correctly, could serve as a very fitting testament to an undoubtedly talented entertainer. I'll admit that I'm not the guy's hugest fan, but I can appreciate a lot of his music ("Hail Mary" still holds water to this day) and film work (Juice and Above the Rim are two that come to mind). He was one of those people you just had to pay attention to and I can definitely agree with that warring dichotomy ‘Pac had that Rivele talked about.

Undoubtedly, this film is going to be compared to the Biggie biopic Notorious when it comes out. Despite all of its flaws – and there were many – I did enjoy it, but just based on how these guys are talking about the Tupac project and the perspective they plan to take here, I can see this film being ten times better than Notorious. With Notorious, I feel that they presented the events of his life in an interesting life, but missed the essence of why Biggie was such a big deal despite only releasing three CDs worth of material in his lifetime. When the film was released, it had a ton of hype behind it, yet now, you can find the DVD in the $5 bin at WalMart.

I don't think the people behind this Tupac film will make the same mistake. At least I hope not.



Living Under Loaded Gun: If you follow the R's regularly, you'll remember I thought the new Linkin Park single "The Catalyst" sucked in a major way when the demos first came out. Then, the mastered one came out and for some reason, I liked it a lot more. It's catchy and in a weird way, it feels like an uncharted, but logical next step from where they went on Minutes to Midnight. You can't tell me that piano outro on this track isn't fucking dope!

The music video is really cool looking too, and it just came out from what I understand, so here it is if you haven't seen it yet:





I've read that LP fans are split over the new musical direction of the band. While TOO MUCH change can alienate your fans despite the amount of satisfaction it may give you as an artist, I wouldn't expect their entire new album, A Thousand Suns, to sound like this. So basically, as a longitme LP fan, I'm in...for now.





Twittergate!!!: This weekend, headlines lit up briefly with news that up-and-coming MC Drake and fellow musician Nicki Minaj exchanged nuptials. Drake tweeted on Saturday, "Please refer to @nickiminaj as Mrs. Aubrey Drake Graham and dont stare at her too long. She's finally mine."

Minaj corroborated this on her own Twitter feed: "Yes, its true. Drake and I tied the knot. RT @drakkardnoir @nickiminaj Baby I am never scared. PROUD is more the word I would use."

Then basically, later, the two admitted it was all a hoax.

I'm not going to sit here and complain that I was duped and that my whole world revolved around this announcement and subsequent revelation of it's falsity. I could really care less. I'm a fan of Drake's music, but what he does in his personal life is his business. What he wants to put out there that's true or otherwise, you know, whatever...

I guess, this is just another example of the whole Twitter thing being used by celebrities to hype their own egos to planetary proportions. You see a lot of celebrity drug use to combat the pressures of overworking and being in the limelight constantly. Why not use your free time to actually relax and take a step back? Why go out there and put a hoax on?

The answer is probably because if you're Drake, you know people are going to pay attention and you'll get press out it. You probably get addicted to getting a reaction out of people for every slightest move you make. I don't know… I just kind of shake my head at how the Internet gets used these days.

So basically, while I'm going to sit here and pretend that I'm penning this section of the column as a commentary to the outrageous Twitter use by celebrities, in the end, I'm just feeding into it because I've put these musicians' names in press again.

Fuck.





We've Come to Expect This: So what usually happens when Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses come to town?

Yeah, exactly: They go on late and people get pissed off. You have the occasional riot here or there, but for the most part, yeah, they're unprofessional.

That's not to say they aren't awesome, because you can encompass both of those qualities really easily. Axl's been doing it for years and has made a rather comfy living by doing it to boot! I'm a big fan of these guys and if they decide to do the North American Tour that we've been clamoring for, I'd probably take the risk and buy a ticket. Chinese Democracy is a great album. I wasn't expecting another Appetite for Destruction and really, I didn't want another one. I already had that album. So yeah, let's just save all the "Chinese Democracy sucks" comments, because it's moot. Either you like the album or you don't…

But yeah, Gn'R was scheduled to headline the Reading Festival in Britain this past Friday night. The festival promoter was under a lot of pressure from local police to make sure the band went onstage on time and didn't play past the 11:30 curfew time for the city.

Long story short, Axl and crew go on over an hour late and the promoter is forced to cut their power and sound when they were in the middle of "Paradise City." OK, he's not forced to, but he's saving himself a fine or the loss of future occupancy permits. But then after the sound was cut, Axl grabbed a megaphone and kept singing, but eventually gave up and walked offstage.

Gn'R guitarist DJ Ashba took to the wonderful land of Twitter to voice his displeasure at how the band was treated: "Apparently the promoter has had a personal grudge with GN'R stemming from 8 years ago, if this was the case why book the band? He knows our show. Let me guess... To take our fans money and then not allow us to give them a show that they payed for. This was clearly not a curfew thing because after cutting our power like a selfish money grubbing prick, he allowed music blasting through out the venue till the early morning."

"The promoter was already being a cocky f$#k in the press before we arrived, so yes we went on a little late, and for this we apologies."

Gn'R's other guitarist Richard Fortus added on his Twitter, "I don't think there is another band out right now that has the balls to do what we did last night. Axl insists on doing things his way and not playing by the fucking rules. You can love him or hate him for it, but the fact of the matter is.... he's the real fucking deal. skin, blood and soul. Deal with it or not, but it won't ever change."

OK, well first off fellas, I'm not sure the whole crowd felt cheated by the promoter as much as you, the band, who were unprofessional and went on over an hour past the advertised starting time for your set. You signed the contract with the promoter to play the gig at the scheduled time for the agreed upon price. So shut the fuck up! The reports I read said that fans were booing and throwing shit at the stage during the set, so maybe they were the victims here, not you. And yeah, maybe they played music on the festival grounds for people over the PA after the curfew, but I would like to think there's a world of difference between how loud an iPod on a PA is compared to a rock concert with screaming fans.

I mean, if I showed up over an hour late for my job, I'd get shitcanned. I work in a professional setting and since I want to call myself a professional, I have to behave like one. If you're a professional musician, you should act like one. You need more time to get ready and get to the gig? Wake the fuck up an hour early or something! Don't piss and moan that you were victimized when you were late. Yeah, we know Axl will always be Axl, but that doesn't make it right. You're still going to get booked because the Guns N' Roses banner you play under has a lot of history and classic songs attached to it, so the demand is still there and always will be. That said, people don't have to condone your behavior.

Bottom line: Don't fuck up and expect to escape the consequences.

Wyclef Ousted: Wyclef Jean's run at the presidency of Haiti has officially been ended before it ever truly began. Basically, since he moved from Haiti to America when he was nine years old, he doesn't meet the residency qualifications to run for office. He cannot appeal the decision, because the rulings of the electoral council are final.

And Wyclef is pissed! He's accused the council of being corrupt, accepting other candidates that also didn't technically meet the residency requirements. He even recorded a song about it:





Here's the translation of the lyrics:

Im contesting
Im going to court im contesting,
I do not agree, Im contesting
Look they gave wyclef the boot
They say Wyclef Speak No Kreyol
They say this is the candidate of the diaspora
Even my own Haitians are against me on Facebook
Once they heard I wanted to run for President
Even my friends said to give me the boot
Even the catholic priest are surprised
They say I left peti gwav to Cayes
All weekend long while I was celebrating Saint Notre Dame
They gave me boot
They gave Port-salut
The children cry
There are militants that say I made a deal with Preval
But I did not make a deal with Preval
It's a president that asked to see a candidate, I could not refuse
I told laserre I would go back
When I arrived he offered me coffee
He wanted to assure our friendship
He said: You are a good candidate.
He put me on the phone with Jude Celestin
We had a very good conversation
After that Preval gave me the boot
Even if you say it's the KEP
But I know you hold all the cards.
I voted for you to be president in 2006
Why now have you rejected my candidacy
Its not Wyclef you gave the boot
Its the youth that you gave the boot
Its not Wyclef you gave the boot
Its the masses you gave the boot
Its not Wyclef that you gave the boot
The man that's selling "dous makos" you gave boot
Its not Wyclef that you gave the boot
Its the countrymen you gave the boot
Look! They gave Wyclef The Boot
People say that I went to make a deal with the devil in Saut-d'eau
But I only went to bathe in the water
If I made a deal with the devil they would not have given me the boot
The KEP gave me the boot
But don't forget, my father was a Pastor
My God is more powerful than Lucifer
This KEP is commanded by Lucifer
And those Devils gave me the boot
The son of God doesn't get the boot,
No No No
Face To Face
Youth hold down the Youth
Forward Forward
We want education for everyone to make it.
From all schools we want to succeed.
In all universities, the youth sector, the farming sector
We will not let them step on our rights
We shall succeed
We shall overcome
Red handkerchief , Black handkerchief
Red and Blue are all the same
My love is Haiti, don't break her heart
Before I sleep I always read a Psalm
I ask Hosana to get the people from the rubbles
And send the angel Gabriel
To protect the women that are being raped under the tents
And Wyclef Jean im telling you the truth.
I will continue to contest the KEP
We must mobilize, I will not let go
Face to Face
All lies will fail

Don't get me wrong. Wyclef Jean becoming the Haitian President would've been one of those storybook occurrences that actually happened in real life. I can tell that the guy had his heart in this election and really wanted to make a difference in a place that still needs a lot of help. There's no doubt that his celebrity status could've warranted a lot of international attention and subsequent relief money that Haiti needs to rebound from the earthquake disaster.

Basically, it doesn't look like this is in the cards for Wyclef though. Let's just say hypothetically that he was able to bypass the residency bylaw because of how much time he has spent in Haiti going back and forth over the last decade or so. There's still the problem of him not speaking Creole completely fluently and not speaking French at all. President Obama sure as hell wouldn't have won the oval office here in the States without being able to speak English. You've got to be able to rally your country, communicate your policies and direction to the people, and see and talk to people constantly. You can't lead effectively through a translator, at least in my opinion.

I think the best thing for the guy to do is to take this for what it is and go on doing what he does best: make music. "Gone Til' November" is an amazing song. "If I Was President," as ironic as that song now is, is an amazing song. The Fugees were awesome. Heck, even that song Wyclef did with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson back when WWE was the WWF is awesome. OK, maybe it's not awesome, but it's pretty damn fun.





Take that frustration from this whole election deal, go in the studio, and bang out a classic. Fuck, donate some of the profits from the tour to Haiti. Show them your attempted bid at the office wasn't about fame or fortune, but about truly wanting to make a difference. Music can make a big difference in the world, and that's the truth – corny to say, but yeah, it's the truth. Keep on keepin' on ‘Clef! If anybody knows what it's like to really go after something and wind up short, it's this guy!

Titan's Final Remarks: That's it for me this week folks! Hope your week goes as swimmingly as possible and I'll catch you here next week. Cheers!

Soundtrack to the 3R's this week was played by the following artists…
Ween – "Up on the Hill"
The John Butler Trio – "Revolution"
The Roots – "Mellow My Man"
The Notorious B.I.G. – "Long Kiss Goodnight"
Street Sweeper Social Club – "Somewhere in the World it's Midnight"
Beastie Boys – "Flowin' Prose"
Saul Williams – "WTF!"
Ozzy Osbourne – "No Easy Way Out"
Coheed & Cambria – "Ten Speed (Of God's Blood & Burial)"
Eminem – "Rabbit Run"
Liquid Soul – "Lobster Boy's Revenge"
The Black Keys – "Oceans and Streams"
Dixie Chicks – "Tortured, Tangled Hearts"
Nine Inch Nails – "The Wretched"
Terry Reid – "Seed of Memory"
Tim Fite – "Seed of Memory"
Tool – "Roseta Stoned"
N.W.A. – "Express Yourself"
Green Day – "Letter Bomb"
The Doors – "You Make Me Real"