Firstly, my apologies for the tardiness of this reply. I've spent the last week vomiting from the irony of Bart's attack on Led Zeppelin. Because, Led Zeppelin almost single-handedly invented metal - a genre so long past its sell-by date in every other country but America, that it's only acknowledged grudgingly here by historians and archeologists.

And yet... every teenage American boy since Led Zeppelin has been a metal fan. Some grow up to be perpetual teenage men, who in turn are still metal fans. Then they buy guns and blow shit up - mainly themselves. In that sense, Led Zep gave you half the music played on American radio.  The other half came, of course, from Milli Vanilli.

Case in point; the American media's obsession with Chinese Democracy, the long playing (actually, in this case, "interminably" playing) new recording by the singer out of Guns N' Roses - who now calls himself "Guns N' Roses" because he's a big weirdo girl who no one likes. Apparently it took him 47 years to make, because there wasn't enough cocaine in Bolivia left to wake up Axl Rose's remaining brain cell - the one that enables him to squawk like Robert Plant's Down's Syndrome sister being fucked by Forrest Gump. 

Last month, on the way to Manchester (home of many truly creative bands like Magazine, Joy Division and the Smiths) I spied a poster on the station wall for Chinese Democracy. It said "Good things come to those who wait: Chinese Democracy - Guns N' Roses". Underneath that someone had pithily written "who?" 

Ok - it was me - but my argument still stands.  Who?

Because - really folks - it's 2008 now. We don't need Guns N' Roses anymore. That's what the late 80s and early 90s were for. And even then, we needed them much less than we ever needed U2 or INXS - or even Wang Chung, come to think of it. Because, even then, GnR were the sound of hair being swallowed by a litter of electrified cats inside a metal bin, being pushed down a hillside towards a trash compacter. 

I can't say anything cogent about Chinese Democracy. I haven't heard all of it. The tracks I have heard sounded like death metal being played on a pipe organ while someone blasted out the album "Appetite for Destruction" backwards in their bedroom. And Appetite for Destruction was shit enough.

If that doesn't convince you that Gn'R are the tramp's pants - here are five other reasons to hate them:

5. Axl thinks he's punk, but songs like "Welcome to the Jungle" are actually about as punk as Queen. Or, indeed, the Queen. Britney's single song "Toxic" is more punk than anything Axl has done. Probably. (Britney is the one US artist everyone agrees is brilliant. But that's only because she mostly has European producers).

4. Axl wears a bandana and has dreads. Dude - you're white! 

3. The entire band quit and went on to form "Velvet Revolver" without Axl - a band so shit that that when they took the stage at Live Aid 2, every single person in Hyde Park, all 5 million of them, went for a bathroom break.

2. "Sweet Child O' Mine"

1. They're called Guns N' Roses in the mistaken belief that it confers rebel attitude upon them when, in fact, it makes them sound like a brand of anti-perspirant from Alabama.

Guns N' Roses; makers of the wank soundtrack for millions of spotty teenage boys (who grew up into hobos, benefit cheats and traffic light windscreen cleaners), please vacate the planet.  Your time is up.

twain