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- Mama's Good Boy
- Rep: 25
Re: Big Surprise - We're almost all on the same side!
Yea the early version of The Blues was great with Robin. That was how they should have released it too.. No improvement needed. But if they do the song now, I won't complain.
- Intercourse
- Rep: 212
Re: Big Surprise - We're almost all on the same side!
Intercourse wrote:You obviously are one of those fans who takes the whole "sides" thing a bit too seriously.
Nope. I'm one of those fans who sacrasms.
Axl has a history of stage fright - fact.
This has led to insane shit with gigs starting hours late or not at all - fact.
It has caused the injury of fans and employees with the violence that has ensued - fact.
Axl has had voice troubles in recent times- fact.
If he is worried about that while now finding himself back under the same level of public attention as the UYI days he could have a meltdown - pure conjecture but not unfounded.I hope the guy nails the fuck out of it and slays the critics.
Slash is not "my boy" , he's a guitar player I particularly admire - nothing more.Your thinking is yesterday's news, tired, done to death and boring. I wish all of these guys the very best. I want them to destroy every other act out there right now.
Regarding the guitar playing on CD, most of it is pretty standard with a few wanky finger tricks on the guitar that 99.9999999% of the world won't even register as missing.
Give me a soulful Slash solo anyday.Cool
fair enough Lomax, sarcasm lost in translation..my bad..cheers
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Big Surprise - We're almost all on the same side!
I disagree that he could've improved every song on the album.
I think if you factor in slash working on them during the creation phase it would be really interesting.
Here's my take:
Please Keep in mind CD is one of my favourite albums - so don't anyone take my "suggested changes" as bashing what we got - i'm just interested in the concept of tampering with it like so many others did!
Chinese Democracy: To me adding Slash to this is like adding Bucket to the back catalogue. It would work because you are adding a good guitarist to a good rock song - but in a way it's unnecessary. This is one of the areas on the album I thought the bucket-robin tag team actually worked - the back to back solos are cool as they are. That said the song has the kind of groove that would easily work for Slash. I just watched DJ do it on the more recent boots and you can easily imagine slash nailing those. So this one I'm not sure what slash would have added in the studio but he'd rock it live.
Shackler's Revenge: At first this sounds like a song you'd be surprised to think of the old band developing. It's got almost a dance beat - and there's a lot of bucket's tell-tale tricks. But if you ignore a lot of that and think about the chords and the rhythm riffing underneath the pedal effects and stuff I can imagine an alternate universe where this song musically was changed to something like "Shots Fired" from Apocalyptic Love with Axl's lyrics and chorus added over it. It would be a very different product but it would def work.
Better: This is one of the easy ones to imagine Slash improving as the outro solos very much are in the standard blues guitar mould. Even the intro while very robin could be adapted to one of slash's little riffs like Superhuman / Sweet Child / Ghost. The whole last part really kinda apes classic GNR to me so it's not hard to think the old band would do it well.
Street of Dreams: Another easy one - basically this track could have been on UYI. While I can see what James means with "Slash not required" in that it was always a great song - to me given the UYI nature of this song that it's hard not to think the guy who did NR and Estranged and all that somehow wouldn't have smashed this one out of the park.
If the World: It's hard to think of how this one might be changed by the old band because the style of this seemed to be to ape a james bond track / black exploitation film soundtrack (going from Axl's 09 Osaka comments). Although I've seen a lot of hate for this song online I really love how well it succeeds in doing what Axl said....and to be honest I love bond songs....it's a weakness of mine....so this one to me is one of the "not much need for change" areas...although that said....I'd be curious to see what Slash did if detailed with working on a Bond song.
There was a time: To me those epic Axl screams are his best vocal in anything. I'll get hate for this but to me the bucket solo was an improvement over the earlier demo in that the song was calling out for an epic outro. However, the solo although loved by fans to me is just sort of serviceable. It does the job but it's never touched me. Taking a GNR song to the "next level" with an epic guitar outro is basically Slash's speciality so yeah...I'm sure it would be better with slash.
Catcher in the Rye: As someone else said. Amongst Axl's best lyrics. Great piano part too. Very much a UYI track - I enjoy the bumble version of the queen style solo - but once again....it's hard to imagine Slash not doing something wonderful with this.
Scrapped: This is one that would have to be redeveloped entirely to really make it make sense for the old band. It's more a case of rather than get Slash to play a solo over that, i'd take Axl's melodies and find a new instrumental here. You guys will think i'm nuts...but I'd have been interested to hear these vocal melodies over something like "By the Sword" or "Back from Cali"
Riad: Again - another one where i'd change the instrumental rather than make Slash play a solo. I can imagine this one over a rockerier VR instrumental like "Big Machine" or "Sucker Train Blues" or possibly something like "Come on Come in". I think it would be amazing - the industrial nature of this track makes people ignore that Axl's vocals are fun as hell on it.
Sorry: Much like "Street of Dreams" I feel the existing solo here was fine but given it's a blues guitar solo and slash is a blues guitar master specifically...i'm sure he'd have been great on it.
IRS: Hmmm...fucking love this song...I feel like slash would have made the soft parts a bit rockier...I'm not sure if this track was the "quick song" they spoke of back in the day but it does have a sort of a "smells like teen spirit" loud/soft thing going on except in a GNR way. I agree with james though that the shred version from bucket sort of nails it. To be honest if I was going to mess with this I'd get Axl to redo the last verse a little more like how he did it at Rock Am Ring 2006 where he screams out the "Argrrhh going to get the irs" bits a little more than on the studio version. Don't mess with that epic scream over the solo though! Hmm...be curious to imagine what Slash would do with this song - I'm so used to the bucket one it's hard for me to picture it - maybe a run like on "Don't damn" me or the crazy bits of coma? Be fun to hear at least.
Madagascar: Hearing this song on the Rio3 boot was the "Axl's Still Got it" moment for me. Beautiful inspirational song. Unlike most fans though I never "got" the bucket solo - and that and the samples are sort of the weak part of the song to me. With one of slash's blues solo in the middle I think this song would be vastly improved and hit the level it deserved.
This I love: To me one of Axl's most beautiful melodies and so on. Perfect UYI stuff. Think of slash doing a "Elan - street child" type solo here and you instantly hit Estranged/Breakdown/November Rain territory to me.
Prostitute: this is the one song on CD that always felt "unfinished". I love the vocal takes...and the musical outro is very pretty too...but I feel there's just something missing from it overall....be interested to see if Slash found what it was...as it's quite intangible to me...just seems to need something else to complete the journey.
So yeah...I love CD as it is...but as you can see i'd very much like a re-dux CD if I could be producer 
- Mama's Good Boy
- Rep: 25
Re: Big Surprise - We're almost all on the same side!
I am in the minority, but Robin on November Rain was pure gold for me.
Re: Big Surprise - We're almost all on the same side!
I am in the minority, but Robin on November Rain was pure gold for me.
Me too.
The one CD song I am itching to hear Slash on is Catcher. It could be epic.
