Last week, the Internet was rocked when California blogger Kevin Skwerl posted nine newly leaked Chinese Democracy tracks, including three previously unheard songs allegedly from Guns n’ Roses long-awaited album. Skwerl — who used to work in the distribution department of Universal Music and is now a Web designer — runs the blog Antiquiet, and says he received the tracks from “an anonymous online source.”

Yesterday Skwerl was surprised to find himself face to face with two FBI agents who paid a visit to his day job. “It was kind of an ambush,” Skwerl tells Rolling Stone. “When I came back from lunch they were waiting in the lobby for me. It’s a little creepy they know where I work.” Two young FBI officers, who Skwerl describes as “Mulder and Scully types,” questioned him for 15 minutes about where he got the tracks and made plans to visit his house at 7:00 a.m. this morning.

“I wasn’t sure if they were going to come by with a warrant and trash the place, like in the movies,” he says. “It was nothing like that.” The FBI officials wanted to see the original files, but Skwerl erased them last week per instructions from Axl Rose’s attorneys. Skwerl ultimately gave them second-hand files that are now widely available on the Internet.

Last week Skwerl’s blog crashed from the traffic flood that resulted from his controversial posting. “My host contacts me and says, ‘What the fuck did you do?’” I go, “Uhhhh. I posted some music.” He goes, “What exactly did you post?” I go, “Uhhhh. [Meek voice] New Guns n’ Roses.” He goes, “Motherfucker.” Before long his cell phone rang with an unfamiliar 323 number. “It was a really cool guy from the Gn’R camp that was a middle man between someone who was very angry and me. He was trying to reach out and see if I’d go without a fight, which is more or less what I did.”

Skwerl agreed to take them down, but a cease-and-desist letter soon followed threatening possible legal action. “I’m not so worried about that,” Skwerl says. “It’s a legal grey area since it wasn’t for download, it wasn’t a finished product. We aren’t sure who owns the recordings. I feel like I might survive this.”

Update: Skwerl wants to make it clear that he’s unsure whether or not he broke the law, but he will cooperate with the feds in any way he can. “If legal proceedings come my way, I’ll face them 100 percent. I’m not afraid of that. I did what I did, and I’ll face the music if I have to.”

5MS has a copy of the album...

We were thinking about posting it on our website for "free" listening? What do you think?

They any good? Something tells me no, but I live in hope.

also: "...I'll face the music if I have to." Works on so many levels.

quote:

We were thinking about posting it on our website for "free" listening? What do you think?

That would probably drive some traffic to your site!

I heard it almost 2 weeks ago. The first song starts off giving some bit of hope to an old G n R fan... there's a few Pretty good melodies (Axel was always good at that)and the guitar solos are wicked for most of the album. Some songs are better than others, but notably the first song "Better" and "Catcher in the Rye".

I have to say I am actually pleasantly surprised by a majority of the album. But- the last 3-4 tracks on the disk are obviously not finished, and don't sound mastered or completely mixed.

Hopefully the album will be released soon. But if it's not I'll never complain. Maybe we should get a few bands together for a show and cover the album before it's released!

Ten years and 15 million dollars, it better be good!!!

The wikipedia entry on this album is just mind-blowing. What a fantastic waste of money!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Democracy

No one should spend that kind of money recording a rock and roll album. Fucking stupid.

Shaquille O'Neal sing backup vocals? what a joke

quote:

Originally posted by WebMonkey:
Ten years and 15 million dollars, it better be good!!!

10 years, $15 million -- free pre-release download blows the whole spectacle. I bet Axel personally called the FBI. Karma is a mofo.

They'll put a song on Terminator 6 an make it all back... whatever.

Guns N' Roses Leaker To Plead Guilty

billboard.com November 11, 2008 , 4:30 PM ET

A man accused of illegally posting songs on the Internet from an unreleased album by Guns N' Roses has agreed to plead guilty, a federal prosecutor said today (Nov. 11).

Kevin Cogill will enter his guilty plea to one federal count of copyright infringement at a hearing on Dec. 8, said Craig Missakian, assistant U.S. attorney.

The FBI said Cogill posted nine tracks from the highly anticipated Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" on the Web site Antiquiet.com. The album will be released on Nov. 23 exclusively in Best Buy stores. They did not disclose how Cogill, who has no known direct connection to the band, obtained the songs.

Cogill was arrested in August at his Los Angeles home and released on bail. At the time of his arrest, authorities said he faced more than three years in prison if convicted.

Missakian declined to discuss details of the plea deal that Cogill reached with federal prosecutors.

Slash said recently that he was more excited than anyone to hear the album... ??? ...because he wanted to see what exactly Rose wanted out of them (the original ((post adler/reed)) line-up)and why the original band was uh... disband.

I still think Axl should have just changed the name of the band all together (the dummy name on the bootleg was SAVAGE) and put the album out as it's own entity 'cause it's not GNR.

YEs, the guitarist is a demi-god but the frontman is still Axl (I'll fuck it up for all of us) Rose, and when Axl is Axled in the wrong axl the whole axl comes off the axl and axl will axl the axl out of any axl that tries to axl, fukit... at least its not emo!

quote:

Guns N' Roses Leaker To Plead Guilty

3 years in the can for a quasi GNR album... what a sad day for that guy.

But... thanks to him many of us won't have to go to Best Buy to get the album....

The album is streaming on myspace now: http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses

If you listen to it and tell your brain that it's not G'n'R Its a pretty good album.

one of my favorite music writers, Chuck Klosterman, reviewed it: http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews. I guess I will have to check it out.

And Dr. Pepper is going through with the free sodas! On Sunday! http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc9S2...MbO9iJGbjlAD94IV63O1

Though I have to say: with GNR, Metallica and AC/DC such news right now... rock and roll is officially for old people.

With the amount of money they spent to record/produce that record they could have sent an orbiter to mars or got rid of all famine in Africa.

No but seriously, say you spent $10000 recording an album (which I assume almost everyone on here would be pretty stoked to do) for 13 million bucks you could record 1300 albums.

For that kind of money you can even make what's left of G&R sound decent.

Hm. So THAT'S what a turd smells like when you've been holding it in for 13 years.

STANKO-PUTRID-STENCHORIFFIC!!

Total buttrock

Well, at least 94 rock will have some new material to play.

quote:

Well, at least 94 rock will have some new material to play.

Ha! Probably once every 16 hours between Dio and Rush.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Guns N' Roses became Guns N' Roses N' Lawyers this week.
Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose finally released "Chinese Democracy" in November.

The band, which released its first album in 17 years last week, has found itself in a legal tussle with soft drink giant Dr Pepper over a promotion turned awry.

Dr Pepper rolled out a marketing campaign in March promising a "free soda" to "everyone in America" on one condition -- Axl Rose, lead singer and frontman for Guns N' Roses, had to "finally release his 17-year-in-the-making belabored masterpiece, 'Chinese Democracy,' in 2008."

Guns N' Roses, often called GN'R by its fans, released the album last week. And Dr Pepper followed through, posting a coupon on its Web site for a can of soda. There was one catch: fans had 24 hours to go the Web site and print out the coupon.

That's when the Pepper hit the fan.

So many GN'R fans -- and, no doubt, fans of free stuff in general -- tried to get the coupon that they choked the site and it crashed. Disgruntled and downright ticked off, some blamed the band.

"When you go on the blogs and you read the responses from the fans, they associated Axl with this promotion ... and blame him for the fact that they didn't get their free soda," said GN'R lawyer Laurie Soriano.

That's when GN'R became GN'RN'L. Soriano fired off a letter to Dr P. No one is LOL.

Her letter asked the soft drink company to make good on its offer. She has yet to hear back, Soriano said this week.

"We've gone public with the fact that we are not involved but are trying to clean up the mess," Soriano told CNN.

Dr Pepper told CNN it had "taken great steps" to keep up its end of the bargain. It said it extended the window for the giveaway from 24 to 42 hours, added a toll-free line to handle consumer requests for the coupons and set up an interactive voice recorder to accept coupon requests. None of those measures are still in effect.

"Additionally," the company said in a written statement, "for those who contacted us in the week after the giveaway about difficulties requesting the coupon, we continued to offer free coupons to address any problems they may have encountered."

That may be so, but the band still wants an apology.

"The door to a lawsuit being filed is always open until the fans are taken care of and Dr Pepper has done the right thing," Soriano told CNN.

The band may have other concerns. "Chinese Democracy" received mixed notices upon its release, and some bloggers are blaming Axl Rose for the new album's reception.

"The album was beaten to the top of the UK charts by The Killers' 'Day And Age' on Sunday," the British music news site NME.com said Tuesday in a segment labeled Today's Top Gossip. "Sources have said that record bosses are fuming because Rose has been AWOL for the last two months -- meaning he hasn't done any promotional work for the album."

And an official Chinese Communist Party newspaper was widely reported as describing "Chinese Democracy" as a "venomous attack" on China, accusing the band of turning "its spear point on China."

As Rose once sang, "Welcome to the jungle. It gets worse here every day."