[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
[quote]Dustin wrote:
[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
Guns n’ Roses have a cover album called “The Spaghetti Incident?”.
For a band I’m sort of on the fence about and not really a fan, they had AMAZING taste in other bands.
Holy crap there are some good choices in there. [/quote]
Could you sir please elaborate on your “on the fence” comment? I’d be interested to hear your pros and cons of GNR.[/quote]
Sir, I don’t want any trouble :D.
Before I get into the specifics I guess I should mention that their more complex songs generally irk me the same way most prog rock bands and Queen do [an exception would be “Civil War”- which has it’s charm]. I remember us talking about Zeppelin, and if I recall correctly I went into why I thought they were a shining exception to bands who chose to make musicality “complex” songs- namely that excess was everywhere in Zeppelin’s songs, the way they were arranged, lyrical subject matter [in some songs], the way they used their instrumentalists, and of course, Robert Plant. With that, you can sort of tell that powerful noise and excess were kind of Zeppelin’s aesthetic, so they “had the right” [poor word choice] to really go for complex music like that. How that’s related to the topic at hand, is I usually don’t like musically complex songs in a pop genre like rock unless it’s tied into an complete aesthetic like with Zeppelin. Otherwise the only way I like my rock [or hip hop] songs to be complex is conceptually.
For me GnR didn’t really get that when they went to do their longer songs like the ones on the Use your Illusion record. But when I judge them as a band I usually put this aside and judge them for their other songs, since that’s where I think they’re more intriguing, anyway.
A lot of it is just my not being able to peg what kind of band they were. I’m not a fan of hair metal for the same reason most who hate it do, but while they have obvious similarities it’s pretty obvious these guys were FAR more than that.
They’re much more in the vain of the Rolling Stones, where they could hit a stride with songs that were at once sloppy and focused. The Stones were better at this IMO, songs like “Monkey Man” for example. Overplayed as it is, Welcome to the Jungle fits into this mold. So do a good 5-6 songs on that first album. It’s just they did sort of streamline their sound to fit in better with what was in as far as hard rock back then, either consciously or not. So you never really get a classic record out of them, but you get some real great ones on each record, along with some real duds.
It’s kind of the same thing with Aerosmith. These kinds of bads don’t just toe the line between “dumb hard rock” and “gritty rock n roll”, they dance on either side from song to song. Hence my being on the fence about these guys. They COULD have been one of the greats IMO.
But based on your avatar I think I pretty much disqualified my opinion with that first paragraph :D.
Hope this wasn’t a waste of time for you.
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No, that’s a fair assessment. I’m actually not a huge fan of GNR. They have several songs that are fantastic - the aforementioned Civil War, Estranged (their best song, IMO) and November Rain to name a few - placed on albums with a bunch of other crap. They can hit a home run and then the next song you are left wondering what the hell they were thinking. Illusion I and II are prime examples of genius mixed in with fucktardedness (for lack of a better term).
I also agree on your comment about bands like GNR not toeing the line and sticking to a certain style of music. I guess some people would call it “diversity”, but with GNR, to me at least, it doesn’t come across that way. Perhaps it has something to do with the obvious musical (style) differences between Axle, Slash, and Duff.
And to add what I said about stylistic differences, I recently read a review of Chinese Democracy. The review mentioned that back before the original members split, Axle would always take the path of greatest resistance, whereas Izzy Stradlin (and the rest of the band) would try to simplify everything. That seemed to be the case in Chinese Democracy as well. I say all this to point out that perhaps this is why GNR was unpredictable on their albums.
