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I know I will sound arrogant saying it, but I’m going to say it anyway because it is a legitimate part of the story and a large reason why I was successful:

My IQ is 155.

Let’s rewind a bit to when “darknemus” tricked “GNR Sucks” and was able to secure a demo of Madagascar. I’d always had positive experiences with “darknemus” and admired his dedication to helping the fans hear new music. When he was able to use nothing but bullshit to get us Madagascar, it really made me think. Maybe bullshit was the only thing that could ever get us new music. Maybe the fans have put up with so much bullshit over the years that bullshit was all we had. Maybe the one thing that frustrated us for so long, bullshit, could actually be the thing that helped us in the end . . .

Well, love me or hate me, when it comes to bullshit, I am king. Again, it feels so awful to say it, but it’s true, I have an extraordinary level of intelligence. When I finished elementary school, I was forced to participate in an experimental program where 6th graders would be bussed across the county to take college classes. It has its advantages and disadvantages. It’s a blessing and a curse. They say there is a fine line between genius and insanity and “they” are right. I live it every day. Sometimes it is great. Sometimes it isn’t. When I posted “The Truth Is Coming” was one of those times where it was awful. To those that feel I am a cock tease, I truly apologize. I really needed a break. I was about to crack.

Anyway, I suddenly felt this overwhelming responsibility to use my mind to try to get us more songs. Keep in mind I am not an insider. Before all of this, I barely read the boards at all. I would IM “dave2k” a couple of times a month to see if anything new was going on with GNR. In theory I was not the man for this job, but I was so inspired by “darknemus” that I decided I should try something. At worst, maybe a few GNR fans that liked wrestling would find out who I am. At best, maybe I could trick someone into sending me some new clips that I could leak.

I needed a plan. I had no contacts. Nothing to trade. No nothing really. So, I decided the only way this could work would be if people thought maybe they could get money for their songs. Offer a few grand online, maybe someone thinks I am for real, I ask for clips, they send, I leak, the end. Simple enough, right? I picked $1,000 per song to start and planned to up the offer every week until someone contacted me or people got so sick of my shenanigans that I got banned from every major board. I posted the offer on mygnrforum.com just to see what would happen. Much to my disappointment, my post was deleted within a few minutes. I hadn’t saved what I typed and I didn’t really feel like typing it again, so I figured that was it. Game over. The experiment was done. However, in the few minutes my offer was up, I guess someone saved it because before long it had been posted on chinesedemocracy.com and rosesofvelvet.com. I quickly copied it in case the threads got pulled and decided to ride the wave since someone took the time to post what I wrote.

As expected, there was a wide range of responses to what I was doing . . . or at least what people thought I was doing. Some called me crazy for offering the money, some called me a hero, but nobody had any way of knowing what I really had in mind. I was pleased with the amount of responses and if all else failed, at least I got some attention. While it’s nice making money playing music and wrestling, at the end of the day, I think most performers do what they do because deep down they crave attention. That may not be a good thing, but I’m not afraid to be honest about myself, even if it means coming across as an egotistical, delusional, yet somewhat charming enigma. I am what I am.

I was surprised that there wasn’t more interest in my offer of $1,000. However, I realized that making it known that I was intending to leak the songs would scare people off. For my plan to work, I knew it could take some time. I needed the paranoia to start to set in and eat away at the minds of the hoarders. Many of you picked up on the fact that what I was doing was similar to the movie Ransom. That movie was definitely an inspiration for my strategy. I upped the money to $2,500, but deliberately worded my offer in a vague manner. Some would interpret it as $2,500 per song while others would read the offer and come away thinking the offer was $2,500 total. I felt confusion would be a good thing because maybe a hoarder would wonder whether the offer was $2,500 or $5,000 and then contact me to find out. At the end of the day, for anything good to happen, a hoarder had to reach out to me. I was playing a major game of mindfuck and needed to come across as sincere yet a little off balance.

Even with the increased offer, legitimate inquiries were non-existent. Everybody was either a fake or was a naïve kid that didn’t understand what was going on and thought I was looking for live clips of the songs. I was receiving hundreds of emails, calls, PMs, and IMs, but had nothing to show for it. Keeping up with everything had become basically a 24 hour a day job. With so many people in so many different time zones, it was never safe to sleep or leave the house, but I tried to sleep when I could. By Wednesday I was ready to throw in the towel, but then the new Marilyn Manson album leaked. As much as I love GNR, I love Marilyn Manson 10x more and was so excited that I was able to stay up the rest of the day without much of a problem. The album is fucking awesome and I must have listened to it on repeat for over 12 hours while I continued to answer all of the messages I was receiving.

Through all of this, I had a few people I trusted who were a great help. In addition to supplying information, they supplied emotional support, something I desperately needed. I am manic depressive and there were times where I didn’t want to do this anymore, but they would encourage me to keep trying. They know who they are and I hope that every
time they see someone type “MSL IS GOD” that they realize every star needed to be aligned for me to pull this off and that they were very important stars. They practically begged me to get some sleep and so at 8AM, I went to bed.

“Come on MSL. This is fucking bullshit. Nobody gives a crap about your stupid life. Why am I reading this? I want to hear about the songs.”

Ok, you’re right. I’m sorry.

I woke up at noon on Thursday and went straight to my computer. I checked my email to see if I’d missed anything during my four hours of sleep and sure enough I had. Finally, something had gone right. Someone from Portugal who was trying to sell me the songs actually sent a 53 second clip that contained enough of Chinese Democracy and The Blues for me to know that they had the songs. I did it. I got someone to send a clip. It’s over. I’ll just leak the clip and explain that my plan all along was to get a clip and then I’ll move on with my life. Some will be happy to hear more of the songs and some will say I’m lame for lying about offering money for tracks. Whatever, no big deal, right?

Well, before I could do that, my phone rang. The person on the other end claimed to be from Spain and said they had most of Chinese Democracy and would sell it for $2,500 per song. I started to shake. I didn’t know what to do. Was this for real? After all the non-sense, did I really just wake up to a clip in my email box and a phone call from a hoarder? My phone was about to die, so I ran downstairs to find my charger. The hoarder, who I’ll refer to as Mr. Spain, proceeded to play me several songs over the phone. I couldn’t believe it. Chinese Democracy, The Blues, a new version of Madagascar, songs I’d never heard before, he played all sorts of stuff. He said his phone card was about to expire and asked me to call him back. I said I would and hung up the phone. I immediately tried to call him back, but I guess my parent’s cell phone plan, which my phone is a part of, doesn’t allow for international calls. The guy mentioned on the phone that he was one of the people that had been PM’ing me on chinesedemocracy.com, so I rushed upstairs to PM him and explain that I couldn’t call him back.

Hindsight being 20/20, I would have done so much differently, which is something I’ll get into much more later, but I couldn’t believe I didn’t find a way to record the phone call. Mr. Spain mentioned that only one person had Prostitute and that he was trying to trade for it and had heard it on the phone. I should have asked if the “checkmate” clip was really Prostitute. I should have written down lyrics from the two songs I’d never heard before. I should have done a lot of things, but I was caught so off guard that I dropped the ball a bit. I hadn’t replied to the email from Portugal either and my head was spinning. Mr. Spain told me so much in such a short time, I was trying to remember everything he said. He mentioned that a friend or close relative of his was dating a band member. That is how he got access to the disc(s) he stole. He had 9 songs in all. Six that he gave to his underlings (CD, The Blues, IRS, Maddy, TWAT, and Better) and three that he kept to himself (a newer version of Maddy and two songs I’d never heard before). I didn’t know if I would ever talk to him again and I certainly didn’t have the $20,000 he wanted for all of the songs.

I collected my thoughts and decided to respond to the guy in Portugal, who I will refer to from now on as Mr. Portugal. I told Mr. Portugal that I had received his clips and would like to buy the songs. Sometimes it isn’t what you say, but how you say it. I guess I have a way with words because nobody seemed to question whether I really had the money or not or whether I was trustworthy or not. Mr. Portugal replied to let me know that he changed his mind and did not want to sell the songs anymore. He said he didn’t feel right making money off the band’s work and also did not want the songs to leak. While it seemed like bad news, at least I had him talking. We traded stories about GNR and I tried to convince him that I never had any intention of leaking and only said that to play the hoarders against each other. Eventually he mentioned that he was a musician and I let him know that I was a musician as well. He said that his birthday was coming up and that if I would buy him his dream guitar that he would send me the songs as long as I didn’t leak them. I won’t go into great detail because this whole thing is going to end up being way too long anyway, but basically we agreed that he would send me a link to the guitar he wanted and that I would buy it and have it shipped to him. I didn’t know what currency the site used, but knew enough to know that we were possibly talking around $6,000.

I told him we had a deal, but in matters like this there is a big difference between having a deal and really having a deal. He proposed that I buy the guitar and forward him the invoice. He would send one song upon receiving the invoice and another song upon receiving the guitar. Well, that certainly wouldn’t work because I wasn’t really going to buy the guitar. I argued that his request was unreasonable because he could end up with the guitar and just not send the songs. That wouldn’t actually be possible because I could easily cancel the order if he didn’t send the first song, but I had to try to be slick. I said that I had no idea who he was and led him to believe that I was a very famous wrestler in America, hoping he wouldn’t realize that only a small portion of wrestling fans actually follow the smaller independent companies that I work for. I also told him that I was risking thousands while he was only risking letting one more person hear some songs. With all the risk on me in theory, my counter proposal was that I be sent one song first and then would immediately buy the guitar and send him the invoice. I asked that once he received the invoice that I be sent the second song.

Never for a second did I think I would actually get a song, but I figured I might as well see it all through before it inevitably ended in nothing and then I could leak the clips of Chinese Democracy and The Blues. Incredibly, he accepted my counter offer and sent me Chinese Democracy. I couldn’t believe it. I HAD CHINESE DEMOCRACY!!! I did the impossible. Just like “darknemus” before me, with nothing but bullshit, I had secured us a new song. Tears began to stream down my face. Before I could even open the file, my phone rang. It was someone from a major wrestling company that I do consultant work for. I make most of my living with these consultant gigs and really do the actual in ring wrestling for fun. I could not blow off the call. After about 15 minutes, I was finally able to get off the phone. I played the file and it was real. Whoever had been IM’ing me at the time received the good news. This would come back to haunt me, but I never expected to get one song and getting more was not on my mind at all. I had Chinese Democracy and soon so would everyone else.

I quickly checked my email and saw that Mr. Portugal was very upset. He sent a song and I had seemingly vanished. Honestly, since I never expected him to send, I had no plan in place for what I would do if he did send. I emailed him immediately to let him know that I had received an important phone call and was very sorry. I told him I’d order his guitar right away and send him the invoice. I had to scramble. I needed to do something, anything. If it didn’t work, cool, but I had a chance at another song and had to act fast. I decided to order an inexpensive item from the site so I could see what their invoices looked like. I bought a $5 guitar cord, which in theory should be showing up at my house eventually. Maybe I’ll use it to record some new songs. Anyway, I got the email confirmation for the $5 item and got to work. I had just a minute or two to create an invoice for the expensive guitar. Mr. Portugal had ordered from this site before and knew everything about the guitar. I didn’t think I would be able to fool him. I did everything I could to quickly create a believable invoice for the guitar and emailed it to him. I didn’t think it had any chance of working, but then again, I never thought I’d get a song, so what did I know? Sure enough, he bought the ruse hook, line, and sinker. He sent me The Blues immediately and then followed with another email letting me know that he was going to bed and that when he got home from work the next day he would send me everything else he had as an added bonus. More songs tomorrow? What was going on? I now had Chinese Democracy and The Blues and was being promised who knows how many more songs. I’d hit the fucking jackpot. The world was going to love me. It was time to celebrate.

Or was it? It was only a matter of time until he found out there was no guitar. He could call the music store at any time and find out what was up. He was probably planning on calling from work the next day. If he really had more songs, I needed to try to get them right away before it was too late. I wrote up a short email begging him to send one more song before he went to bed. It was worth a shot right? Within a few minutes, he’d sent the new version of IRS. My jaw dropped. I now had three songs. I started with nothing and now had the two songs everyone wanted plus another we didn’t even know about. I was on cloud nine. However, I soon realized that cloud nine was not all that it was cracked up to be. When I received Chinese Democracy, I thought that was the end of the adventure. Because of things I said and did shortly after receiving the songs, cloud nine probably had nine people on it. What if they said something online? Worse, what if one of them leaked Chinese Democracy? Whether Mr. Portugal found out about the guitar or not, he’d find out I actually did intend to share the songs and our chance to get even more songs the next day would be ruined.

I immediately went to work getting the word out that everyone had to calm down until I was done with Mr. Portugal. As a thank you to some of the people who had been there for me during the rough times, I sent them The Blues and IRS. Everyone knew nothing was to be leaked or mentioned until after I got more songs from Mr. Portugal the next day. Shortly after, I received a call from Mr. Spain. I told him I already had the songs and was no longer interested in buying them from him. He flipped out. FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT. He went on a rant about how only people in Portugal had the songs and they were not to be shared with anyone outside of Portugal. A few things became clear. Obviously, he was not from Spain after all, he was from Portugal. Let’s refer to him as Fake Spain from now on. Another thing I realized was that a lot of this had to do with some bizarre nationalistic inferiority complex. Apparently, the fans in Portugal did not feel they were getting enough respect and having these songs made them feel more important than other fans around the world and especially the American fans. Fake Spain explained that he had given some of the songs to certain fans in Portugal (including “GNR Sucks”) and explained that he would find out who was giving me songs and make it stop.

I soon received an email from Mr. Portugal letting me know that he had been woken up by Fake Spain and that Fake Spain told him I was about to leak everything. I decided to play Mr. Portugal and Fake Spain against each other. I told Mr. Portugal that Fake Spain had tried to convince me to cancel the guitar order and spend the money buying songs from him instead, but that I refused. Mr. Portugal thanked me for my loyalty and told me to ignore Fake Spain for now on. He reiterated that he would send more songs when he got home from work.

Crisis averted.

Well, there was nothing left to do but wait. Wait for Mr. Portugal to get up, wait for Mr. Portugal to go to work, and wait for Mr. Portugal to get home. It was now the middle of the night and I was afraid to go to sleep. I wanted to be able to respond immediately to any email Mr. Portugal sent. I spent the whole night reloading Outlook Express and trying to make sure nobody said anything on the boards that could jeopardize the operation. I continued to answer messages all night and told everybody to hold their horses. You would think that considering I had miraculously uncovered three songs that everyone would have been appreciative and super nice to me.

Quite the opposite.

Everyone wanted the songs leaked immediately. Suddenly, I was being labeled a hoarder. People were cursing me out, threatening to reveal everything on the boards, some even threatened to leak the songs I gave them. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was sitting at my computer Friday morning, having only slept 4 hours since Tuesday, being a slave to Outlook Express so that I could get us more songs and everyone was trying to make me feel like shit. I knew I had to stick to my guns though. There was no reason to tip off Mr. Portugal any earlier than needed, especially with more songs hanging in the balance. I monitored the boards all day while waiting for Mr. Portugal to come home. I knew I’d pulled something off that would never be forgotten. I knew I’d be labeled a “legend” or a “god” or whatever else people came up with. However, the mission was clear, GET SONGS. No reason to throw in the towel now, so I kept waiting.

Mr. Portugal came home from work and let me know he would be going to band practice. He gave me an email address of a friend of his, let’s call him Portugal 2. He told me Portugal 2 would send me some songs since Mr. Portugal would be busy at practice. I contacted Portugal 2 and explained the situation, but he wanted to check with Mr. Portugal, understandably. Portugal 2 let me know he’d be sending songs very soon. It would only be a few more minutes. At this point, I’d been through so much, time became a blur. The waiting wasn’t that bad anymore because I no longer had the capacity to know the difference between one minute and an hour. I was tired and hungry, but I knew it was almost over.

It was almost over alright. Out of nowhere, someone showed up on chinesedemocracy.com as “leaky” and leaked the three songs I’d received from Mr. Portugal. I was crushed. All this hard work. The impossible dream. I was minutes away from several more songs and someone that only had songs because of me had decided to fuck over the entire community by leaking them before it was time. Not only would we not get more songs, we’d never even know what they were. The boards went crazy as everyone scrambled to get the songs, but while everyone else was ecstatic, I was crushed. I’d just been told the songs would be coming in minutes.

MINUTES!!!

It was all over because of some stupid fuck who probably got the songs from a friend of a friend of a friend of someone I trusted. I didn’t know what I should do next, but I knew I needed to do something fast. I decided my best move was to email Mr. Portugal and Portugal 2 so that they would find out about the leaks from me instead of from someone else. When you decide to work a con, you have to work it until there is no work left to be done, so I emailed them an angry letter accusing them of screwing me. I acted like I thought they’d leaked the songs themselves since in theory they already had my money (which was really a guitar, which didn’t exist). Mr. Portugal called me immediately. Before he could say a word, I started cursing him out for leaking the songs. He was caught so off guard that he immediately apologized and blamed Fake Spain for the leaks. Apparently, Mr. Portugal and Fake Spain had been arguing all day since I played them against each other the night before without them realizing it. Mr. Portugal theorized that Fake Spain leaked the songs to punish us. Afraid that I would cancel the guitar, Mr. Portugal promised to immediately send me another song.

And he did! Wow, I was on a fucking roll. I’d been completely betrayed by whoever “leaky” was, but despite the leaks, I managed to get yet a FOURTH song. I thought I was dreaming for sure. I put the song on and couldn’t believe my ears. There Was A Time. Perfect quality. New intro. Just amazing. Fucking unbelievable. I now had an incredible new version of my favorite new GNR song. Soon, you will too. Throughout everything, I’d never posted a link anywhere or uploaded any leaks. I never will, for obvious reasons. GNR management could decide to target me, even though they wouldn’t have much success and uploading the songs online or actively participating in the leaking is just not something I could be involved with. A few of my friends have the song. When the time is right, I’m sure they’ll do what they know needs to be done. However, at this point in time, there was still work to be done. I managed to convince Mr. Portugal that I had nothing to do with the leaks and Portugal 2 said they’d send me a new version of Better with acoustic guitar.

I never did get the new Better, although I tried my hardest. At the end of the day, Mr. Portugal became too suspicious. He decided I wouldn’t be sent Better until his guitar arrived. There is no guitar and it is never arriving. It was now early Saturday morning and I’d only slept 4 hours since Tuesday. I’d only left the house twice to get sandwiches from the Quizno’s next to my house so I would only have to be gone for 8 or 9 minutes. It was time to accept that there would be no more songs. It was time to get some rest and try to take care of everything I’d neglected during the course of this experiment. I posted “The Truth Is Coming” and went to bed.

There was never any money. There was never an expectation for anything more than maybe a clip if I was lucky. I did not do this to hurt Guns N’ Roses. I did not do this for personal profit. I don’t know why I did this. There was no way to know when I started what “this” would actually become. I did have an overwhelming desire for us to have Chinese Democracy and The Blues, but I didn’t think there was anything *I* could do about it. I was willing to try though. You can thank “darknemus” for that. He made me realize that maybe brains was enough to get us songs. Once I realized that, it seemed kind of shitty to not at least try to put my brain to use. Even if just to see what would happen.

Well, what happened was pretty fucking crazy. What is written here is just some of it, but it’s enough of it. I’m already up to page 8 in MS Word. Right now I’m picturing hundreds of replies telling me this was too long and that nobody cares. If that’s the case, that’s ok. Writing this has made me feel much better. It felt good to get it off my chest. It feels good to have done what I’ve done. However, hearing the songs is what feels the best. I can’t wait to buy Chinese Democracy and I hope everyone else feels the same way.

I learned a lot these past ten days. I learned that greed will make people do a lot of foolish things. I learned that you can’t assume people will do what is in their own best interest. I learned about a secret cabal of GNR fans in Portugal and found out way more about them then I ever thought possible (hint hint, GNR management, I’ve got names, numbers, emails, and addresses of people that stole the disc(s) from your band). I learned that “GNR Sucks” gave the songs to prominent admins/mods in hopes it would lead to him being accepted into their club. I learned that Mr. Portugal used the songs to become friends with “Jarmo” months ago. I learned that sometimes being determined to do something is all you need to actually do it.

But most important, we all learned that Chinese Democracy is definitely going to kick a lot of fucking ass. I can’t wait. Thank you to everyone who supported me. Hell, thank you also to those that didn’t support me because your negativity fueled me to work even harder. Let’s hope that in a few short months, these leaks are nothing but a distant memory as we rock out to the new CD.

Let the countdown begin.