The Village leaks are a snapshot of the Village sessions. There's only 1 version of ITW and Catcher in those leaks but obviously they were still considered for CD1.
Back when they intended to release albums on a regular basis, I'd guess Hardschool was either on the A list or high on the B list.
Although I agree about the production, CDs had an excellent producer and mixer with Andy Wallace and it didn’t sound that different by then. Maybe because Axl was still too much involved, I don’t know. I’m not saying that this was a problem because I like the songs even with some questionable production.
Actually not really. IRS and TWAT are the same from the Village, but seems like Catcher and HS’ arrangements sounded slightly different.
Im not sure if HS was really considered for CD1. I got the impression that by the Village sessions, it lost some priority because it didn’t have any other version in the discs. Same for Perhaps.
Are those other charts really impressive now when it still barely even entered the "main" music chart at #98 on the opening week? I don't understand the relation, when you're really great on a small chart but really bad on the big one, is it a success or a failure? Did he win the battle, but lost the war - so to speak?
I just remembered that last night I had an inception-style dream (where I went two levels down) and in my dream within a dream I heard loud thunder and I still don’t know if it was from the real world or if it was all in my head lol