If you are alt-identified, yet want Kris Allen to beat Adam Lambert in this week’s American Idol finale, then you are complicit in your own oppression. Rebels who want Adam Lambert to lose must just hate themselves.

People like to fuss about sex and sexuality, but the place where Adam Lambert is actually unusual is that it is rare to see new musicians with serious larger-than-life star quality in the spotlight today. I just watched a top 20 video countdown and Eminem was just about the only one who would turn heads in a room he walked into, on force of presence alone. So it is exciting to see someone who has the right counterculture vibe with a mix of subcultures gothic, punk, hard rock, rockabilly, emo, scene and more blended together for something unique and compelling. To anyone who states people like Adam Lambert are a dime a dozen and FOX is just not in-the-know, I have to say there are a lot of people with some of that general sort of style, but not a lot with that vibe and that level of both charisma and musical talent.

To receive the same kudos as someone who comes across more normal and mainstream, I often feel like I have to work at least twice as hard and produce work which is twice as good. I would be fine with this, except for the part where the whole process plateaus early. Allow me to explain. In a way, simple badges of flamboyance and theoretical nonconformity, such as tattoos or unnatural hair color, have become fairly common by 2009. Someone who truly has an artistic and offbeat spirit is still likely to have to be better than the next guy to achieve the same recognition. Unfortunately, people, who identify as somehow alternative or creative or freaky, tend to want to root for the underdog. This means that, as soon as one of their compatriots is about to come over the top and succeed for real, they get an enormous backlash from former supporters. So I see all these people, who were super excited by Adam Lambert’s early successed on American Idol, who are now not into him because he is perceived as the obvious front-runner; they think maybe they like the other final two member Kris Allen because he is the underdog.

Kris Allen is an appealing enough performer. In particular, I liked his performances of “She Works Hard for the Money” and “Heartless”. I most likely would not flip the channel if a music video of his came on. I actually think American Idol fans got it exactly right for the AI8 final two to be Kris Allen and Adam Lambert. (Alison Iraheta might be more demographically similar to Adam Lambert, but Kris Allen is a more ready-for-primetime performer.) Kris Allen is not the underdog to win this contest because he is somehow disadvantaged and just needs a little love and support. Kris Allen is not some sort of stray spaniel puppy in need of a home. Kris Allen is the underdog to win the American Idol competition because Adam Lambert deserves it far far far more than he does. Some of the web chatter about the final American Idol vote suggests more that people want to vote against Adam Lambert for being successful more than they want to vote for Kris Allen for any positive reason.

Opinionated and forthright judge Simon Cowell has stated in interviews that he would like to see Adam Lambert win. Led Zeppelin does not normally permit American Idol to use their songs, but they gave permission for Adam Lambert to sing “Whole Lotta Love”. U2 does not normally permit American Idol to use their songs, but they gave permission for Adam Lambert to sing “One”. When Slash from GNR mentored the Idols, he posted to his Twitter that he was especially impressed by Adam Lambert. When Katy Perry performed on the show, the legend on the back of her Elvis cape read “Adam Lambert”.

It seems like if Simon Cowel, Paula Abdul, Robert Plant, Bono, Slash, Katy Perry, and a host of other notables all feel strongly that Adam Lambert should win American Idol, then he should be a shoo-in sure thing. But he is not. The reason he is not is that inexplicably hot people with smudgy eyeliner and leather jackets and big boots hate themselves. Now nonconformity does tend to get push-back from the overculture, so I understand why many bohemians do not necessarily expect to always get praise. Getting praise, however, does not mean that you lose your individuality merit badge. You should expect to be able to win people over, when they see what you are really like.

No disrespect at all to Kris Allen, but Adam Lambert deserves to win American Idol. Adam Lambert earned the win. I know, I know, rebels figured out that 19E and the powers-that-be want to have Adam Lambert win, so it would be (oi oi) rebellious to vote for Kris Allen instead. A good rebel is ready to take the power, not just cry like a baby over whoever seems to be an authority. Voting against Adam Lambert is not sticking it to the man; it is just building a glass ceiling for your tribe. Hopefully Wednesday night still ends up being a coronation for Adam Lambert.

So reality television shows have this creepy format thing where they bring back a season’s cast for a six month reunion. Like being on a reality show was tantamount to going to college or something and the whole class needs to get back together to reminisce and see how everybody turned out.

Admittedly, my family is kinda not into things like reunions or even graduations, so the last graduation I went to was when I finished sixth grade. I somewhat regretted not going to my own college reunion this spring when Barack Obama turned out to be the keynote speaker. So maybe I just don’t get the reunion thing, but I’m still in touch with a lot of people I went to school with. On purpose. Because I like and enjoy them. Because I shared enjoyable and life-forming experiences with them.

College does not seem much like reality TV, but VH1 did recently do a show called Charm School where rock manager extraordinaire and TV personality Sharon Osbourne and seminal nightclub impresario and TV personality Riki Rachtman were the deans. I guess the idea was to teach some manners to chicks who previously tried to date Flavor Flav or Bret Michaels or somebody like them.

One of my most embarrassing Hollywood moments, when I first moved out to Los Angeles, Forrest Black and I went over to visit sexy bassist Megan Maddox, when she was in, I think, Tairrie B’s My Ruin and possibly Taime Downe’s The Newlydeads as well, to shoot her for Tattoo Savage. A couple of other people, who I knew from Los Angeles nights on the town, were also hanging out there, and we all had the misfortune of watching Sheryl Crow do a GNR cover. So we’re all cringing and I tell some anecdote about how Guns n’ Roses changed my life. I cringed a lot more later when I finally put it together that Riki from the club was Riki Rachtman from Headbangers Ball who got the gig via Axl Rose and had a fuck of a lot more claim than yours truly on GNR being life-changing.

To return to reality television programming, still in progress, the second season of the Bret Michaels Rock of Love extravaganza definitely helped turn me off of reality TV. Aside from the way they made it painfully apparent that Bret Michaels is a sucky prize, the dude chose some generic liar chick over beautiful Tattoo Savage covergirl Daisy de La Hoya. Apparently, Bret Michaels just couldn’t get over the fact that Charles Edward from Seraphim Shock is Daisy’s ex and they still spend time together. I’ve shot Charles and he certainly is, circa 2008, a lot hotter than Bret. The Poison frontman apparently felt so threatened by a good-looking gothic guy that the show couldn’t even mention Seraphim Shock. Whatever. Although Daisy seemed to actually have inexplicably warm feelings for Bret, she demonstrably can do better, because she already has.

The reunion show for Rock of Love 2, gamely moderated by Riki Rachtman, was pretty much a horror show. A chick named Heather, who I guess competed on the first Rock of Love and advised on the second one, punched poor Daisy de La Hoya and it was my opinion that VH1, not only allowed it to happen, but was hoping it would. I felt terrible for Daisy, but, in Heather’s defense, Bret Michaels actually let Heather get his name tattooed to her throat in the first season. And then did not pick her. I think it is very bad manners to give someone the go-ahead to get a tattoo of your name if you know you are going to spurn their affections on national television.

So, although I watched none of the seasons of Charm School, I noticed that a number of people have been chortling about how the recent Charm School reunion trumped the Rock of Love reunion for catfight fetish. To make a long story moderately less long, some two-face, mean, drunk, ditzy blonde from one of the VH1 programs, made a crack about another contestant’s child. Sharon Osbourne told her that was not cool. So the drunk ditz, apparently named Megan Hauserman, made some rude cracks about Sharon Osbourne’s family and Ozzy Osbourne in specific. At this point, Sharon Osbourne demonstrated just one of the many many reasons why she is qualified to school these girls. Without a hair out of place, and without appearing to sweat or shake, Sharon Osbourne threw this red drink all over the rude bleach blonde and, although it is hard to make out in the tape above, apparently also pulled out clumps of her hair and scratched her and twisted her arm badly enough that VH1 rushed rude ditzy girl to the hospital. Normally, I disapprove of violence in disagreements, but I do think a lot of people have no sense that some things are sacred. I think that, to someone like this Megan Hauserman, nothing is sacred, so she may truly have no concept that going after someone’s son or husband is crossing a line, put there by civilization, for good reason. Those who choose to be uncivilized in that way to someone as tough and elegant as Sharon Osbourne should consider themselves lucky when they only end up clowned, with ruined hair and makeup, and an arm in a sling.

I walked by the Rock of Love 3 bus on Hollywood Boulevard this Saturday night, walking home from Pinkberry. Living in Los Angeles is surreal.

I first came across Guns n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction when I was a teenage metal DJ on the radio in Connecticut.

A little background explanation: I got into doing this gig partly because I’d gone to high school overseas and the American overseas high schools I attended were woefully behind the times when it came to music. Like really behind. I used AC/DC and Rush lyrics in my campaign posters when I ran for class president. (I won. I mean, of course I did; there were AC/DC and Rush lyrics in my campaign posters.) I was shocked when I found out that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, the big slow dance number where I went to ninth grade, came out more than a decade earlier than I would have guessed on a multiple choice test. So I arrived at college with more of an Aerosmith taste in music than the average student at a competitive, left-wing, East Coast school normally would have. Although I loved bands like Janes Addiction and The Dead Milkmen and The Cure and The Violent Femmes as soon as I was exposed to them, I held onto the hard rock thing because you never forget your first musical loves. Oddly, although my classmates identified as free-thinking liberal individuals, they seemed to hold the view that bands like Motley Crue and Dokken were for lower class stupid people. My annoyance at this classist hypocritical bigotry is probably the reason I became a metal DJ. I was frustrated that my classmates could be so close-minded about something like music. I enjoyed hard rock in my personal musical mix and I wasn’t about to fake like I didn’t just to impress people I went to school with. To bring home the part where I was not hiding it, I ended up playing it on the radio. Never let it be said that I do things by halves.

Before Appetite for Destruction came out in the stores, it was naturally released to radio stations. One of my listeners called up to request the track “Paradise City” and I took a look and we had this album with an appalling Robert Williams painting of a girl up against a wall with her panties down. Only the requested track had lyrics about wanting to go down to Paradise City where the girls were pretty. Ooh, artistic emotional conflict! I was intrigued and had to listen to the whole thing. Appetite for Destruction changed my life. There was plenty of music which had moved me before this. I was a DJ, after all, but this was something new and different and deeper. If not for Guns n’ Roses and William Gibson and Jay McInerney, I would probably be an attorney or a management consultant for McKinsey or some place like that right now.

Last week, something happened which might have made me break my self-imposed rule never to download music. A blog called Antiquiet leaked nine tracks from the long-awaited Guns n’ Roses Chinese Democracy album. On June 6, Antiquiet editor and media expert Kevin Skwerl wrote an article Crying Chinese Democracy where he said he thought Geffen should just release the freaking album already. He said that he stole Appetite for Destruction from his mom’s record collection when he was eleven-years-old and has been waiting literally half his life for Chinese Democracy to come out. His definition of terms is hilarious:

The phrase is now more universally defined as the new Guns N’ Roses album than as the actual political movement in China that inspired the titling. And over the years, the phrase has developed a second meaning: It can also be used as an adjective, to describe something eternally “in the works,” promised countless times, yet never, ever, ever delivered. As in, “that raise I need is fucking chinese democracy,” or “that big break your boyfriend’s shitty band swears is going to happen is totally chinese democracy, tell him to get a fucking job.”

The gist of the rest of the article was that he’d personally worked at Universal and knew a fair number of music industry folks and that everyone he knows, who Axl Rose has allowed to hear Chinese Democracy, thinks the music is beyond excellent. In a very well-written feature he posited that the only way Geffen could ever make back their ridiculously huge investment in the new Guns n’ Roses record was if it turns out to be really good. Kevin Skwerl then brilliantly breaks down the sales aspect of GNR:

In an attempt to recoup some of their eight-figure investment after closing out Axl’s tab in 2004, Geffen put together a greatest hits compilation, with not a single new or previously unreleased track, or any promotional efforts by the band. It sold more than 1.8 million copies. It was the world’s ninth-highest selling album that year. But of course that album had one thing that Chinese Democracy probably won’t have: Welcome To The Jungle . . . Appetite For Destruction still sells 5,000 or 6,000 copies each week.

On June 18, Rolling Stone reported that the Antiquiet blog had posted an article We’ve Got Chinese Democracy, And It’s Worth The Wait. Antiquiet immediately had a bunch of comments from people saying how much they loved the Chinese Democracy tracks. Other sites which linked the downloads also got a bunch of positive comments about the music. Oddly, there was an undercurrent of Motley Crue vs GNR commenting, but the majority of the comments were people saying the music was great and they wanted the CD or legal downloads to come out. Apparently, someone from GNR management then phoned and asked Antiquiet editor Kevin Skwerl to remove the tracks, which he did. On June 24, Rolling Stone reported that FBI agents had come to Kevin Skwerl’s place of employment to chat with him about the situation, and he explained his actions saying that he thought posting the tracks was a legal gray area as the songs were potentially not the final mixes (WTF?) and that he had received the files from an anonymous source which he had since deleted at the request of GNR management.

Cynics question whether the brief leak was a deliberate publicity ploy to “get people talking.” Very few commenters who post about liking the music are people who are signing real names or known online nicks. It is possible that no tracks were ever posted and the whole thing is smoke and mirrors and fake sock puppet comments.

On the other hand, I just discovered Kevin Skwerl’s Antiquiet site and I’ve been really enjoying his writing and Johnny Firecloud’s all morning. They seem to disclose their biases and work backgrounds and it may be unfair to wonder about secret plots. I know it annoys me when people read something journalistic that I wrote and discount it as possibly having an agenda.

The problem is that all the astroturfing of recent years has left people very cynical. A lot of consumers thought they were being forward-thinking by using ad-blockers and claiming total resistance to traditional marketing. So the marketers adapted with fake grass-roots support and forced viral marketing. The record labels shunned rock journalism and attempted to replace it with articles written by publicists, who are bought and paid for out of artists’ future royalties. Add to all that that the record labels decided that the internet age meant they could and should stop servicing journalists and radio. Supposedly they just got sooooooooooo frightened that journalists and DJs would pirate the music and post it to torrents and file-sharing networks, but I think a lot of it was that they did not want to deal with an independent writer’s genuine opinion and they preferred corporate radio’s complete control where the DJ never gets to choose the song. So now we never know whether to trust what a journalist says. And we definitely know (or should know) never to trust what a supposedly random man on the street says. And the radio rarely offers up anything new that we want.

So people are still pining for a new effort from a band like GNR where at least they know they liked it for real the first time around. I know music industry people in LA who tell me lots of bands sounded like GNR in the late 80’s and the label just signed them all and buried them in order to prop up Axl Rose and co. Maybe I just have more visibility to how the sausage is made now than I did then. They say nobody wants to eat sausage, once they see how it is made. It seems to me that, if lots of groups of talented rockers could have been thrown together to make a Guns n’ Roses, then the record labels would already have done so and that manufactured rock just is not the same.

Maybe it is all a sham, but it moved me at the time it first came out. If not for Guns n’ Roses and William Gibson and Jay McInerney, I would probably be an attorney or a management consultant for McKinsey or some place like that right now. I should totally sue those guys.

Note to music industry: Seriously, guys, I don’t want to read a well-written blog and wonder if it is real, so can you please stop ruining all the cool pop culture which inspired me to take the road less traveled. Thanks.

I see it as, not only a given, but maybe even a goal that things I enjoy in a fringe environment will be picked up by the larger society. The problems come when the overculture, in the process of co-opting something cool, tries to destroy the naturally existing subculture and the people most dedicated to that culture, in order to replace it all with something more easily managed and controlled. The problems come when the marketing shifts from spin to bald-faced lies. The problems come when no one appreciates art without a backstory and the market becomes used to the perfection of fake backstory. It seems like modern press is often more comfortable presenting a tidy and wholly false PR tall tale than presenting something real and true. Part of the reason for this is that modern audiences are often more comfortable reading tidy and wholly false PR tall tales. Real life tends to be more complicated and harder to get your head around.

I could like Avril Lavigne if she were presented as essentially a cute blonde actress in a larger movie. Instead, her managers insult everyone’s intelligence by getting a stylist to put Avril in a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and having her publicist tell the world the actress is inspired by David Bowie (but neglecting to tell the girl playing the precocious punk songstress role that Bowie does not rhyme with Maui.) Just try and find music magazine press presenting anything remotely true about the teamwork creation of Avril Lavigne. I don’t know if the magazines fear lack of access to stars their audiences want to read about or if they fear legal reprisals or if it is all just some sort of gentlemen’s agreement, but certain specific pieces of truth have more trouble getting out there as overculture chews up subculture.

I’ve been debating with myself whether or not to mention what got edited out of the most recent interview Eros Zine did with yours truly. I appreciate what Eros Zine does for a variety of scenes and I adore EZ’s editor Thomas Roche who did the interview. And I very much appreciate the support (and fun times!) both have given to both me and Blue Blood over the years. I’ve decided to mention part of what was expurgated because I feel like this one small piece was important. Before I do, however, I want to make it very clear that publications such as Rolling Stone and the LA Weekly, with presumably larger legal budgets, have also cut pieces about the world of supposed altporn apparently due to legal concerns. So it is not unusual that Eros Zine’s legal department insisted on cutting a number of comments. (I promised Thomas I would be clear that it was legal and not editorial who required the cuts.) Journalists always want to know my opinion about adult video and the so-called altporn sites I’m supposed to consider competitive. But apparently what I have to say is just too dangerous to actually print.

Assuming that Eros Zine’s lawyers are essentially sensible, I just want to post for posterity the portion which was cut which contained shoutouts to people who deserve some credit. The rest can remain on the cutting room floor for now.

Some of the directors who might object to the current shameless pretension that punk art porn was just invented are Gregory Dark, David Aaron Clark, Nick Zedd, Justice Howard, Michael Ninn, Antonio Passolini, Stephen Sayadian, Richard Kern, and I’m really just scratching the surface with that list. (VCA and Vivid will be trying to get them all under exclusive contract by this time tomorrow. If they want to thank me for the suggestions, they can send checks payable to Blue Blood at 8033 Sunset Blvd #4500, West Hollywood, CA 90046. Or show me some quality product. Screeners are accepted at that address as well. My mind is open and I’m still a journalist.)

I worried about being potentially helpful to outsider corporations by giving shoutouts to people who deserve them, but I decided that I wanted to take the high road because I think it makes one a better person to give credit where it is due. Unfortunately, the legal folks worried about my commentary on my concerns about said corporations using my shoutouts as free consulting.

The biggest challenge of having sort of imperialist types come into a community is, not just to keep them from pushing out the native peoples, but also to keep the native peoples from simply becoming assimilated by the invaders. I’m certainly not immune, although I guess I’ve got more of a rebel/revolutionary mentality than many. I don’t think anyone is immune. (I just came from visiting a Native American art history museum, so please forgive the analogies.) I’m not personally what anyone would consider left wing and I definitely don’t believe cashing a check from a large corporation is intrinsically bad.

Full disclosure: Hustler owns VCA. I’ve not only worked for Hustler, but I’ve stated in public and in writing on numerous occasions that I felt they were the best of the big adult publishing houses, all of which I have done projects for. Vivid does not, to the best of my knowledge, do magazines, so I’ve never worked with them, but there are plenty of photos floating around the net featuring yours truly drinking and eating with with people who work at both Hustler and Vivid. I really like some of those people and think they are good folks.

I’m not sure precisely where one ought to draw the line, but I definitely think it should be drawn before invaders get to assume control of our opportunities, re-write history, and take away our language. There is nothing wrong with doing a lucrative gig for a large corporation. So much the better if the gig is something fun and interesting. But there really ought to be some wiggle room between accepting some money and accepting total annihilation of one’s self-actualization, culture, and ideals. I guess I’m just an optimist.