12 hours ago
Thursday, November 20, 2008
It seems the Guns n' Roses album Chinese Democracy is finally going to come out, first on myspace, then at Best Buy on November 23. But if none of the musicians, other than Axl Rose, are in the band, can it still really be Guns n' Roses? When the remnants of Talking Heads reformed without David Byrne, they could not call themselves Talking Heads. When Robert Plant and Jimmy Page performed, weren't they the Honeydrippers (2 out of 4)? Yet INXS and Van Halen went on (though not successfully) without their lead singers and they didn't change their names. So how is it that GNR is still GNR?
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"So how is it that GNR is still GNR?"
Easy- I listened to their bootleg song, IRS. It's real GnR, flourishes and all. The unknown quality of their work is still there, that "it". I'm listening to it now.
That "Buckethead" even sounds like a credible version of Slash (Peace Be Upon Him). May the Metal Gods Forgive Me for saying so, but it's true. It's not the same thing, it's another guitarist trying the same technique, but with his own style. It's very good.
The quality which is GnR is pretty clearly at mostly due to Axel's song arrangement capacity. That was obvious from the song, which I'll forward to you if you want.
I also could tell he was more than everyone said he was from from Slash's Snakepit: oh my God it was a disappointment. Little pieces of pure genius surrounded by lame-ass, weak song arrangement and mediocre rhythm guitar. It KILLED Slash's songs, just fucking killed them dead. They were a horror of disappointment, an Auschwitz of wasted talent. I could even tell where Axel would have made it into pure good. I could smell how he'd have added to it.
Look, I grew up hating him too, guys. I hated Axle and wore an "Axel Who?" shirt once too. But it turns out Axel was the songwriting anchor, and with the addition of a damned good guitarist trying in the Slash vein...turns out Slash can be replaced.
I *hate* to say all this, but the proof is in the product, and from what I've heard, Axel's stuff is really good and Slash's is really bad. I'm sorry to say it but the evil racist hick white boy is the better musician, in an overall sense, than the put upon guitarobama.
Hell, it should have been obvious: Axel was known as a perfectionist who spend more time than everyone else arranging the songs and recutting and editing, but he was only singing. That suggests he was doing the lions' share of the overall song making. It's no wonder he's really good at it: look at Appetite. It's really good, but it's also produced within an inch of it's life. In the studio, Axel's songs are the equivalent of spotless kitchens: not a single sound out of place.
I hate to say it again, but Axel was the basis of Gunners. It turns out the other of the duo was the expendable part.
I tried to listen to all of the new songs on the Guns N' Roses MySpace page. I couldn't make it. It sucks. It sucks an enormous donkey schlong. It licks the sweat off of a dead man's balls. If Axel Rose had any sense of decency, he'd kill himself. This albumn sucks that hard, especially when you consider that it was 13 years in the making.
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