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Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
Silk Worms and OMG feels suggestive of what CD originally was supposed to be. Industrial, edgy, alternative. Likely the poor reaction to OMG gave a 180 to those plans.
Going that route would have been a good idea despite the initial reaction. Would have been different enough that you couldn't compare it to the old band.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
Eh, the song sucks and only us could make it out as being "cool" but really it sucked. Just being honest.
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
misterID wrote:I'd love to hear a version with bucket. I really want to hear the full Silkworms demo. It was never a song I ever really cared for and always thought it was the wreakest of the new era songs... Until I heard that snippet. The guitar, Axl's banshee wails and filtered static vocals were insane.
Its always been assumed that both tracks came from the 2000 Intentions sessions. I wish more info had come out about that. An outrage that he wasn't asked about it by anyone during those chats. Pretty much last chance saloon for info on it. I doubt its ever brought up again, especially by the media.
The biggest downer was that he didn't do a chat here, where he would have gotten a lot of great questions and we would have had some killer insight to that whole period.
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
James Lofton wrote:misterID wrote:I'd love to hear a version with bucket. I really want to hear the full Silkworms demo. It was never a song I ever really cared for and always thought it was the wreakest of the new era songs... Until I heard that snippet. The guitar, Axl's banshee wails and filtered static vocals were insane.
Its always been assumed that both tracks came from the 2000 Intentions sessions. I wish more info had come out about that. An outrage that he wasn't asked about it by anyone during those chats. Pretty much last chance saloon for info on it. I doubt its ever brought up again, especially by the media.
The biggest downer was that he didn't do a chat here, where he would have gotten a lot of great questions and we would have had some killer insight to that whole period.
Absolutely.
He wouldn't get favorite burgers, favorite Disney movie type questions. It would have been all CD, maybe something regarding the issue over the name. No Slash rabbit holes to jump into.
- dave-gnfnr
- Rep: 16
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
I was always more interested in the silkworms, riyadh, oh my god type tracks than than the UYI III type tracks that we got with CD. Too bad we will never get that. Unless someone has those leaks and releases them.
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
I was always more interested in the silkworms, riyadh, oh my god type tracks than than the UYI III type tracks that we got with CD. Too bad we will never get that. Unless someone has those leaks and releases them.
Depends. Eventually someone is going to need the money and squeeze a buck out of every last demo tape.
Or Axl will do something crazy like burn it all on a massive funeral pyre.
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
I think you can really hear the potential the track had in the shitty Rock In Rio recording of it live.
Sounded much better than the studio version did to me on a musical level or whatever. Even with the terrible sound quality over it. Bucket's solo was great.
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
I watch that Rio show on a regular basis. Other than random youtube vids of any lineup, its the only actual concert I watch.
That lineup REALLY needed an album out. Its the only ingredient missing. They also needed to bust out more of their own material. Take out a few tracks and put in IRS, Riad, Better and a couple more and the whole story probably has a different ending. It might have forced the label's hand.
Re: Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Oh My God
This is one of the best songs from the Chinese Democracy era and certainly one of Axl's best songwriting moments.
It differs greatly from the majority of the Chinese Democracy material, save for "Shackler's Revenge", by employing the use of present first person. The remaining songs that appear on the Chinese Democracy album are largely passive third person, as if Rose were sitting all alone at a piano, in a studio, or in his own head, recalling the distant past. "It don't really matter, I guess you'll find out for yourself", "It was a bargain for a summer and I thought I'd had it all", "Seems like forever and a day". This sort of reflective storytelling occasionally works on songs like "Prostitute" and "There Was A Time" but a depressed songwriter often makes for depressed storytelling and the lack of narrative tension throughout many of the Chinese Democracy tracks suffer for it.
Here however, the present tense and use of simple metaphor are powerful and evocative tools in spinning a web of manipulation and self-deception. "What can I do when there's so many liars, that crawl through your veins like millions of spiders that seek out their victims and ruin the wiser?" and "Like the tides down on the ocean, the waves are already set in motion, the only one in the game who's lost is you".
The 4-minute hate fueled rant has a clear statement to make, yet provides the listener with sufficient latitude to make draw their own conclusions. It's not dissimilar to tracks like "Out Ta Get Me" from Appetite For Destruction in terms of lyrical directness, while sounding something like a distilled, new millennium version of the fan favorite Use Your Illusion I song "Coma".
The opening synth lines are catchy and interesting, throbbing and ballooning over a drum machine before some powerful drumming by the since departed Josh Freese. It's a rare moment on newer Guns N' Roses songs where the band is allowed to coalesce before Axl makes himself known which gives a fleeting glimpse of band dynamics and equips the proceedings an appropriate sense of grandeur. The guitar work by Robin Finck and Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro take a back seat to the tapestry of synth keyboards and electronic loops but provide the appropriate amount of growl to Rose's hellish soundscape.
Axl himself is convincing during his ranting missive although his vocal performance is noticeably weaker than the days of yore and isn't helped by a problematic mix. All criticisms aside, "Oh My God" is catchy and entertaining, sometimes only due to the sheer will of Rose's determination, and would perform admirably as a mid-tier song on a future record given a proper mixing and a couple of slight revisions.
As a post-script, the leaked clip of a revised version of "Oh My God" is a dumbed-down abomination and will garner no further comment.
