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Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
war wrote:completely differently genre of music that requires far less, musically speaking, from far fewer musicians
Far less? Sounds like you haven't listened to the record. Just because it doesn't have shredding guitar and an orchestra doesn't make it "far less".
I agree.
While i haven't heard Santagold's record, saying that GNR's style of music requires far more than Santagold's style is a fallacy.
And as far as the music aspect of GNR goes, Axl didn't need everything he used on those songs. If he stripped some of them down a little they may be better. Better is a good example of a song that needs to be stripped down.
AFD was musically an amazing record and it was basically shit out as well.
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
I have stated for years that the reason the album took so long was basically Axl having to make Diamonds out of shit. The new band really weren't producing good enough material and Axl basically took years tryin to mold and whip average music into shape.
U hear it on CD.
I've learned in a lot of my years in music, that most casual/everyday listeners are more vocal/melody/beat/lyric people. Which is why music u hear today is top of the charts when in reality its one synth line repeated over and over.
I love music, guitar riffs *See Death Magnetic* intricate guitar solos THAT MEAN SOMETHING and various changeups in styles.
With CD there really aren't any changes in the songs. Prostitute sort of is like one big verse
IRS is one big verse with a few choruses but musically or stylistically, Bettter and If The World are really two that come to mind that really have that GNR diversity within the songs.
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
I do agree on the stripped down part. I've said since the demos that it would be awesome if they did an acoustic tour. just a few acoustic guitars a piano or two, and maybe a bass. that's it. No Mother fucking goose. No shredding solos. Just simple soulful acoustic.
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
No song is worth one million, and no album is "worth the wait". A true artistic vision cant be bought or perpetually delayed. While this is a great record, Santogold released an album this year that shits all over Chinese Democracy and it only took her a few weeks to record it.
Agreed. This has more to do with Axl's fragile emotional state and withdrawing from society.
I was listening to Falling Into Infinity the other day, and I thought to myself that "these guys [Dream Theater] put out a record every few years, and every single album they put out owns CD's ass in complexity. Even their fillers, seem like epics compared to CD, (even though DT isn't really a 'filler heavy' band)"
I know i'm pulling out the Dream Theater reference again, but it's mainly 'cause I got them on the mind, re-listening to their catalog.
CD is a great album, if not going to reach masterpiece territory imo. But there are other good albums out there, recorded in a fly's breath of the time that it took CD.
Hell, even Buckethead's albums, which he puts out 25 a year, are instrumentally more complex than CD.
If Axl would've just taken the handcuffs off Bucket, Brain & Chris, and just wrote lyrics and laid down vocals, CD imo would've been in the bag in two years, and would've been legendary. 
- jimmythegent
- Rep: 30
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
from the couple of times I caved and listened to This I Love (am def gonna hold out on Sorry and Scraped), I actually think Finck did a reasonable job of the solo. Certainly a nice tone. He's capable of far worse I can tell you - I'm about as far from a Finck nutswinger as is possible. Just listen to his god-awful solo on IRS for example, or check out any number of renditions where he murders classic Slash solos (Patience at the gig I attended was cringeworthy)
- shotgunblues1978
- Rep: 11
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
James Lofton wrote:No song is worth one million, and no album is "worth the wait". A true artistic vision cant be bought or perpetually delayed. While this is a great record, Santogold released an album this year that shits all over Chinese Democracy and it only took her a few weeks to record it.
Agreed. This has more to do with Axl's fragile emotional state and withdrawing from society.
I was listening to Falling Into Infinity the other day, and I thought to myself that "these guys [Dream Theater] put out a record every few years, and every single album they put out owns CD's ass in complexity. Even their fillers, seem like epics compared to CD, (even though DT isn't really a 'filler heavy' band)"
I know i'm pulling out the Dream Theater reference again, but it's mainly 'cause I got them on the mind, re-listening to their catalog.
CD is a great album, if not going to reach masterpiece territory imo. But there are other good albums out there, recorded in a fly's breath of the time that it took CD.
Hell, even Buckethead's albums, which he puts out 25 a year, are instrumentally more complex than CD.
If Axl would've just taken the handcuffs off Bucket, Brain & Chris, and just wrote lyrics and laid down vocals, CD imo would've been in the bag in two years, and would've been legendary.
I think you are completely right. I mean the whole thing about CD revolutionizing music or being "mindblowing***," there's never been any real indication that those were Axl's intentions. Those expectations were created by the media and fans who wondered what was taking so long, and what was so much money spent on.
The reason it took so long is because of personal, political (in the context of the record company) and legal issues. After seeing the final tracklisting is there any doubt that they could've put out a great album (assuming you think the songs on CD are great) back in 2001 or 2002? Hell no, and at that point the project would've only taken 3-4 years.
The reason it cost so much is because the record company gave Axl a blank check during a time when he was not necessarily in the best place mentally. There's that interview from 1999 or 2000 where he'd talk about going down to the studio having no idea what he'd be able to get done. Hours were spent on studio time where nothing much got done, and on music that was recorded and scrapped, other stuff that may end up on future albums. From all reports there was almost no oversight on the project by the label. You had engineers sitting around in a studio that was being rented at $2000 a day and nobody was there.
And then there's the other factor, which was that Axl may not have been mentally prepared to step back into the spotlight, knowing the inevitable media shitstorm that awaited.
I think that all this time, Axl's only real goal was to make a great rock album worthy of the GnR name. In my opinion, he's done that. This album is groundbreaking in the GnR world in that it includes stuff they've never done before, like Shackler's and If The World, but not in the music world. What it does, is what every GnR album has done, brought together a lot of different musical influences and put them together into one album. CD is not that different from UYI, aside from incorporating some additional other musical styles that weren't really included on UYI
***I really fucking hate the term "mindblowing" when it comes to music. I seriously can't remember the last time I heard a band or song that "blew my mind." Maybe when I was 11 and listened to Dark Side for the first time or something. Seriously, it's a fucking rock album. What could possibly be "mindblowing" about a rock album in 2008 (or 2000)? It's all been done
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
Yeah, Bucket should have been handed the keys to the vault and told to shine.
You know, all these years we've always said this project was too ambitious. Now that the emperor has been stripped, we can see that it didn't have enough ambition. When you release an album in 2008 that for all intents and purposes was finished in 2001, that's not ambition.
A lot of this stuff is just cut and paste jobs(Better being the prime example). What us fanboys label as complex is just a bunch of sounds being thrown at the wall hoping it sticks. None of those sounds are complex in nature. The songs don't really have a natural flow. If the World a good example of that.
War's comment regarding Santogold is hilarious in the fact he insinuates an artist cant create something that's brilliant musically or on par with Chinese Democracy. Hell, M.I.A. can go to a village in Sri Lanka, have some tribe lay down drum tracks that have never been heard before, and build songs around it that are light years ahead in "complexity" than anything to come out of these sessions. She didn't need 8 band members, an orchestra, and 10 years to achieve that sound. She needed a few months.
Sometimes I think we blow out of proportion the artistic merits of this album. Hell, there's a good chance this album was forced out, so it might have needed more of what George Bush used to refer to as "the vision thing".
I'd love to see whatever lineup Axl assembles next go into a studio for a couple months and create something a bit more organic.
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
Axlin08 wrote:James Lofton wrote:No song is worth one million, and no album is "worth the wait". A true artistic vision cant be bought or perpetually delayed. While this is a great record, Santogold released an album this year that shits all over Chinese Democracy and it only took her a few weeks to record it.
Agreed. This has more to do with Axl's fragile emotional state and withdrawing from society.
I was listening to Falling Into Infinity the other day, and I thought to myself that "these guys [Dream Theater] put out a record every few years, and every single album they put out owns CD's ass in complexity. Even their fillers, seem like epics compared to CD, (even though DT isn't really a 'filler heavy' band)"
I know i'm pulling out the Dream Theater reference again, but it's mainly 'cause I got them on the mind, re-listening to their catalog.
CD is a great album, if not going to reach masterpiece territory imo. But there are other good albums out there, recorded in a fly's breath of the time that it took CD.
Hell, even Buckethead's albums, which he puts out 25 a year, are instrumentally more complex than CD.
If Axl would've just taken the handcuffs off Bucket, Brain & Chris, and just wrote lyrics and laid down vocals, CD imo would've been in the bag in two years, and would've been legendary.
I think you are completely right. I mean the whole thing about CD revolutionizing music or being "mindblowing***," there's never been any real indication that those were Axl's intentions. Those expectations were created by the media and fans who wondered what was taking so long, and what was so much money spent on.
The reason it took so long is because of personal, political (in the context of the record company) and legal issues. After seeing the final tracklisting is there any doubt that they could've put out a great album (assuming you think the songs on CD are great) back in 2001 or 2002? Hell no, and at that point the project would've only taken 3-4 years.
The reason it cost so much is because the record company gave Axl a blank check during a time when he was not necessarily in the best place mentally. There's that interview from 1999 or 2000 where he'd talk about going down to the studio having no idea what he'd be able to get done. Hours were spent on studio time where nothing much got done, and on music that was recorded and scrapped, other stuff that may end up on future albums. From all reports there was almost no oversight on the project by the label. You had engineers sitting around in a studio that was being rented at $2000 a day and nobody was there.
And then there's the other factor, which was that Axl may not have been mentally prepared to step back into the spotlight, knowing the inevitable media shitstorm that awaited.
I think that all this time, Axl's only real goal was to make a great rock album worthy of the GnR name. In my opinion, he's done that. This album is groundbreaking in the GnR world in that it includes stuff they've never done before, like Shackler's and If The World, but not in the music world. What it does, is what every GnR album has done, brought together a lot of different musical influences and put them together into one album. CD is not that different from UYI, aside from incorporating some additional other musical styles that weren't really included on UYI
***I really fucking hate the term "mindblowing" when it comes to music. I seriously can't remember the last time I heard a band or song that "blew my mind." Maybe when I was 11 and listened to Dark Side for the first time or something. Seriously, it's a fucking rock album. What could possibly be "mindblowing" about a rock album in 2008 (or 2000)? It's all been done
I agree that it all cant be placed at Axl's doorstep as the fans and media blew the project out of proportion, but Axl allowed it to reach this point. In the NYT article, they mention he wants to make the greatest record ever made. He allowed band members to go around announcing that the material was "earth shattering, "mind blowing",etc. So the expectations were born in the GNR camp, and the media and fans ran with it.
- shotgunblues1978
- Rep: 11
Re: My guitar complaint *spoilers included*
Side note, it'll never happen, but I would love to hear an album composed by Axl, Bucket, Pitman and Brain. Just have them write an album of instrumentals with Axl specifically in mind, have Axl work on his piano. They can come add the layers on his songs, he lays vocals down on theirs, and you have an album. I'm sure it would be sweet. Never happen but it'd be cool
