Drunken Expat Writer

Man, the reviews for the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration have started to come out and they are not pretty. This is my favorite one just for this line:

"What did we do to deserve this?.... Ten tracks over two discs of what could probably pass as a university student's mashup project for a musicology assignment."

The thing is, though, you have to give Metallica some credit. They are in a weird position. They could easily go the U2 route and just create new albums full of material they know the fans want and just coast on that.

Then, they'd get labeled "sell outs."

Or, they can just say "hey we have enough money, why don't we just do what we want to do even if the fans bitch and moan."

Of the two their choice has more artistic integrity.

And, for the most part when they've gone against fan expectations they've done well.

People bitched about Load and Reload, but in retrospect there are some great tracks on those two disks. People complained when they did a double album of nothing but cover songs, but some of their most popular tracks are on Garage Inc. When they said they were going to play with an orchestra people went nuts but that gave us "No Leaf Clover" which is a pretty damn good track.

The problem, of course, is that when you go with your artistic vision instead of fan expectations you aren't going to get it right every single time. Sometimes you are going to create a piece of shit.

But, overall I have more respect for bands that create pieces of shit because it's what they want to do than I do of bands that create pieces of shit because it's what they think the fans want.

(CNN) - Moammar Gadhafi is dead, according to reports on Arab media. CNN has not confirmed the reports.

Man, now that Obama has killed Osama bin Laden and helped take out Gadhafi how the fuck are the Republicans going to try to paint him as a liberal dove?

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Now that Libya dude is dead who does Obama have to kill in October 2012 to secure reelection?