Walking into the tour-closing Guns N’ Roses show in Universal City, I had good cause for the skepticism I felt. With only one original member, no new material released in over a decade and a tornado of negative hype surrounding the mere name, the modern version of Guns N’ Roses should, by all accounts, be a recipe for colossal failure.

How do you replace the dirty swagger, the serpentine energy, the explosive chemistry of the band that brought an endgame to hair metal? The vacancies left by the original members seem too vast to be occupied by anyone else, and it’s been the upside of a decade since Axl Rose’s signature wailing dominated the rock landscape. I fully expected the same ugly disappointment and vicarious embarrassment I felt while watching GNR’s “big comeback” performance on the 2002 MTV Music Awards, where my attention was split between Axl’s surgically altered wax-museum face and his embarrassingly off-key performance.

Why is it that, after eight years of touring and recording, the best hip-hop act I’ve ever seen is still flying so far beneath the radar? The Crown City Rockers played the House of Blues in Hollywood last week, opening for New Orleans funk-fusion masters Galactic, and not only were there less than 70 people or so on the floor, every last one of them was white.

By association, it seems, this kind of music- the backpacker genre, if it can still be called that- isn’t nearly as cool to be into as the repetitive autotune-soaked bullshit that acts have been piggybacking and riding the lowest lyrical common denominator (bitches and money) for every last cent. Hell, FM radio eats it right up. I know I’m not alone in believing that nobody in hell should know who 50 Cent is, much less have to deal with him trying to use his staggering success to hock movies, shoes, sports drinks and other such nonsense that has nothing to do with music. Sure, white culture mimicks black culture with a three or four year delay (I’m starting to hear the f’shizzles again), but does black culture then, by default, shoot itself in the foot by abandoning a magnificent art form?

We here at Antiquiet have had our fair share of trouble and then some, but there’s one thing I’m fucking certain of. The new Hilary Duff video is hands-down, without a doubt, seriously infringing the shit out of some copyrights:

I think what pisses me off the most about this is that Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic claimed a co-writing credit on the track, for the music- which is nothing more than Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus; verse for verse, chorus for chorus. Even Hilary’s hook only changes one word from the original.

Question: How does one add to the humiliation of being in a band like this?

Answer: By inviting Avril Lavigne onstage at one of their shows to impersonate Joan Jett, of all fucking people. That’s exactly what 80’s metal parody band Steel Panther (formerly known as Metal Skool) did Monday night when they pulled Miss Complicated onstage for a super-short, brutally bad rendition of I Love Rock N’ Roll. Watch the video…

You may have noticed, while perusing the interwebs of late, that much is being made of this whole “hipster” fad that is sweeping the nation.

To some, this is a shocking revelation. To others, it’s old news. But for young people on either side of that fence, one glaring question rears it’s stylishly keffiyah’d head: Am I a hipster?