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Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
FTR, to clear my name of any charges of contrariness, i wanna say i fucking love with all my fucking balls those songs except for Yesterdays - & even in moments of weakness i can even rock out to it.
Civil War is poss my favourite GnR song, in the top 5 at the very least & seeing Slash play it in what was once my local students union was one of the greatest concert moments i've ever experienced. (& i think it's a bit shitty of Axl that he has dropped it from GnR setlists, it should be a staple alongside SCOM/YCBM/PC/Nightrain/Nov Rain.)
PC to this day still kills me. even if i know Paradise City doesn't really fucking exist - for those 6mins it does. it does get a little stick these days but i don't recall anyone shitting on it to the degree Axlin claims. (and let me be perfectly fucking honest here, there isn't one nikki sixx song fit to be played alongside PC)
Breakdown is also one of my fave GnR songs but this time we're talking top 20. there was a phase i went thru when it was up there around the #1 & #2 spot on my faves but i've gone thru it now & out the other side.
i would take them all to a desert island before My World (except Yesterdays)
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
I've asked people over the years, casual fans and diehards, why they don't like GN'R (and for some reason the Yesterdays issue comes up ALOT). I love Yesterdays.
So I always question them, and they'll come back with GN'R is too southern rock.
Like that's a bad thing. Southern rock smokes the ass of industrial any day of the week. Mick Jagger circa 1971 would rip out Marilyn Manson's throat and shit down his neck.
These same people also have a tendency to cite "My World" as one of their preferred GN'R songs.
So that's why I went there.
i will go listen to NIN, but when i'm good & ready!
obv GnR, since AFD, have played with a variety of styles & genres all based around the hard rock formula. i was just saying by way of comparison, if they released a streamlined album i'd prefer it in the tone of My World/Silkworms than Lies of the Beautiful People/TIGH
with axl at the helm GnR always will be a mesh of different styles. it's one of the reasons they're the best [hard] rock band ever, i was just sayin y'know... My World is p great is all..
I think Axl gets that from his Queen-influences. All of Queen's records have all kinds of rock stylings. Although the albums were cohesive, they did all kinds of different things.
I love that about GN'R & Queen. If I were to cut an album, i'd do the same thing. No offense to AC/DC, but recording the same song 11 times on a record and putting it out can bore a bit, but maybe that's just me.
I like that Axl does all kinds of stuff.
I just think if Axl is going to rely on a core sound in 2011, it needs to be Sixx:AM/DJ tracks, just for some identity and marketability.
Make the singles for the casual fans (duh)
Make the album cuts - for us. That's when you get everything from Estranged II to Silkworms.
Now that's how I like my GN'R albums 
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
like i said in the sixx:am thread, i don't really want casual fans or gnr to be chasing them down
i'd prefer gnr to be only capable of playing small venues than attract the fair-weather fans just in it for the hypebeast-popularity-contest, just there to listen to Nov Rain & SCOM
i want GnR to be playing setlists that have Coma instead of KOHD, Cornshucker instead of Brownstone, TWAT instead of L&LD.
i don't want them pandering to a majority that doesn't really give a shit about the majority of the music. casual fans spoil it.
i also don't really care about their marketability. in fact the lack of it makes me like them more.
i guess i am contrary..
but the more people shit on gnr & diss them & rip on axl, the deeper i get into liking it. it's almost like those casual fans dilute what is special to me about axl & gnr.
tho having said that, gnr should be one of the biggest bands in the world (presently opposed to historically) & by & large axl has fucked that up.. we could have had it both ways but he wasted too much time. we coulda had the credibility & catalogue & popularity of zeppelin but he just wasted too much time.. TWAT/Better/TiL coulda crossed the divide in a similar way to SCOM/PC/Nov Rain but the chance of that was blown a long time before they even got an official release.
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
Problem with that theory is Universal Music Group calls the shots on that.
Axl can be Axl and be eccentric if he wants, but Uni dictates some things, and after the lack of singles on CD, they're gonna be even more hardcore on him next time, especially in the iTunes-era - we want something we can PUSH!
You can push Are You With me
You can't push Silkworms
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
I've asked people over the years, casual fans and diehards, why they don't like GN'R (and for some reason the Yesterdays issue comes up ALOT). I love Yesterdays.
WTF.
Yesterdays is
Great song and killer peformance.
It's actually one of those stand out tracks to me as it shows how the band just fucking killed any song they touched.
Same with "Since I don't have you". Not their song. Wrong genre. Makes no sense as a song to cover in comparison to AFD. Yet Slash and Axl both own that track in the deepest way!
On the scale of things YEsterdays is not a massive artistic statement or an epic like an Estranged, Coma, Novermber Rain....it's more of a 'normal' song....but damn it's just so good.
Which goes back to why I'm a hardcore GNR fan, as to me, on the scale of GNR tracks - even the less impressive songs are hundrededs of times more awesome than stuff I write, or indeed most people write. To my taste anyway.
GNR has always been a love them or hate them band I think. I've read people in guitar forums taking potshots at slash which is insanity in my mind. And lots of people can't seperate Axl's music from a negative experience that may have happened at a show or his dress sence or some other kind of bullshit.
Part of being a GNR fan to me has always been the fact that some people just don't get it. And in the modern era where my fandom of original GNR has now blown out to also being a fan of Chinese Democracy, Snakepit and VR - then it's all the worse - as now even large portions of the people who do get old GNR don't get something I like. But at the end of the day to me it's all and fuck what people think 
- Mikkamakka
- Rep: 217
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
like i said in the sixx:am thread, i don't really want casual fans or gnr to be chasing them down
i'd prefer gnr to be only capable of playing small venues than attract the fair-weather fans just in it for the hypebeast-popularity-contest, just there to listen to Nov Rain & SCOM
i want GnR to be playing setlists that have Coma instead of KOHD, Cornshucker instead of Brownstone, TWAT instead of L&LD.
i don't want them pandering to a majority that doesn't really give a shit about the majority of the music. casual fans spoil it.
i also don't really care about their marketability. in fact the lack of it makes me like them more.
i guess i am contrary..
but the more people shit on gnr & diss them & rip on axl, the deeper i get into liking it. it's almost like those casual fans dilute what is special to me about axl & gnr.tho having said that, gnr should be one of the biggest bands in the world (presently opposed to historically) & by & large axl has fucked that up.. we could have had it both ways but he wasted too much time. we coulda had the credibility & catalogue & popularity of zeppelin but he just wasted too much time.. TWAT/Better/TiL coulda crossed the divide in a similar way to SCOM/PC/Nov Rain but the chance of that was blown a long time before they even got an official release.
Good post and I'd agree with, but...
Axl calls the shots and as it seems, he's quite comfortable with playing an AFD rehash setlist with overplayed covers added. Nothing on the world is keeping him from playing a very different, fan-orientated setlist. Nothing. I'm bloody sure he could have left Uni a long ago, if he had more balls and didn't want it big.
Face it, he's not an underground artist. No underground artist spends 15 millions on an album. He's living in his own eccentric world with expensive studio bills, expensive background musicians, expensive parties, models, escorts, cars and paintings. The lack of marketing actions on his side are not caused by some 'underground artist' behaviour - au contraire, my friend, he wanted Universal to spend millions on the campign and when it wasn't as much as he expexted, he threw the hissy fit. Axl has needs of a huge rockstar, but his motivations are below a huge millionaire rockstar's spoilt child's will to do something.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
^ I agree with some of what you've said in that he's not an underground artist, but I wouldn't agree with the spoiled child bit.
I think at this point Axl just does what Axl needs to do to keep his sanity.
Being as famous as he was circa 1993, or even as famous as he still is today in terms of name recgonition and iconic status of an era of music probably comes at a tremendous personal and emotional cost that is difficult to handle. Axl was clearly always a sensitive type of person and that probably makes it all the worse.
He has shown tendancaies to value his privacy since about 1994 or whenever - and given the potential earning power of a man of his fame - I'd suspect that with some financial planning and or lifestyle adjustments he could easily retire GNR and never be seen in public again untl his dying day - if he chose to do so.
Classic hits setlist or not - I'm glad to see that sometimes he still shares his gifts with us fans - and that he usually appears to have a good time doing it. As a person who admires his work - I always long to see more of it published and out there - but at the end of the day he's a real person with a real life - and his needs may not necessarily reflect our desires.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
It's Axl's way or it doesn't happen.
True...but then the music business is full of predators. I don't doubt that there's a lot of folks waiting to screw over any band, so if you've got to Axl's position there's probably a certain security in having specific requirements.
Also I'm pretty sure most bands have someone that calls the shots. Can't see metallica doing a lot of stuff that lars was against, or megadeth doing anything dave didn't wanna do long term.
In some ways I view Axl's power bid for control of GNR as a way to obtain some security over an unstable situation. Axl must know that he has a temper that gets him into problem , and he knew the other partners in the business had serious substance abuse problems, and he knew that many in the industry will screw you as soon as look at you, and that sucess in music is often temporary anyway. Add those things together and it's a volatile situation. So as much as ethically and creatively him taking control is kinda a dick move as everyone in old GNR had a hand in generating that success, I can also totally also see how in his situation its also kinda a common sense and self preservation move. So these days he gets to be CEO of the GNR machine....and I see it more as about survival and limiting the unknown than about being a brat...but that's just my persepective.
Re: Azoff-Axl Lawsuit Settled: Includes "comprehensive touring agreement"
If you don't think bands do things thay don't want to do all the time, you don't understand the music industry at all. Nobody's saying you have to like the game, but you can play it or not play it. If you choose not to, you can't complain when they don't back you either.
