Twinaleblood

1. One In A Million 2. Cornshucker 3. It Tastes Good Don't It 4. Look At Your Game Girl No, seriously 😅 Double Talkin' Jive Better It's So Easy Yesterdays

Oh I would love to get studio versions of both Wichita and The Seeker.

Some of these topics are also being discussed in The General & Monsters sticky thread, but I decided to start a new thread to recap and discuss what's still unknown about these songs and their release/leak, open for theories/conspiracy theories/speculation (while any comments regarding the music itself can be left for the other thread). If mods feel this is pointless, feel free to lock this and we'll move the discussion to the main thread. 1. Why The General and Monsters were registered together, as far as copyright goes? They seem to be written by the same team of collaborators. Theoretically speaking, "merging" them as a single entry would mean sharing royalties for one song rather than two, but then again even Axl, Slash and Duff would get money for just one song in that case, so it doesn't make much sense. Perhaps there is some legal reason we are missing. Someone saw them as a "mini suite", but besides similar orchestral work by Beltrami they don't seem to have much in common either musically (different keys etc) or lyrically. The hidden track theory: theoretically, it could be. Then again, why would such an interesting song, in hindsight with even more potential than The General, should be released just as a hidden track? Furthermore, if this was true and the hidden track was removed from the vinyl for sound quality reasons, it could have been left for the cd release, which had no space constraints. As we know, this didn't happen either. Anything else? 2. Who leaked the songs and why did they leak together? It's probably the first time we get leaks and nothing is known about the source. One theory I read more than once mentions a generous hoarder who wanted to make the fans happy and avenge the botched official release. This doesn't add up. For example, the mixes include Slash and Duff. After the whole locker leaks mess, do you think GNR would let slip new mixes out? After all, they managed to keep stuff like The General unheard for 20+ years, it's not that if something exists it must necessarily leak (and because of this it's fairly safe to assume no hoarder had heard the real General before, otherwise someone would have at least said "this is not The General" in regards to the cell phone clip from the after show party). The other theory is that the leak came from the GNR camp themselves. Yes, they handled the botched release poorly, to say the least, but if they really wanted to throw us a bone, why don't simply release the song digitally and just move the release date for the physical version? Afraid people would cancel preorders after hearing the song? Sounds far fetched, given that the band eventually played it live before its release. In hindsight, though, there is something to consider. Let's say that, after the botched release and the shitstorm online, the camp decided to actually release The General on digital platforms back then in late October. Can you imagine people's reaction to the "real" The General in that context, without hearing Monsters too? It's then fair to assume that the songs were leaked by someone who knew very well fans thought Monsters was The General and they might have been leaked together to "clarify" this. This also disproves the theory that the leaks might come from sound engineers or people working in the studios where the band tested the mixes. These are professionals: would they leak stuff, especially on a fan forum? I don't think they know or care that a few hundred hardcore fans online mistakenly assumed that the song Monsters was thought to be The General because of an ambiguous twitter post from 2010 (or whichever the year was) and a crappy cellphone recording. Feel free to add anything else that I might have overlooked.

I paid for worse things in my life, you don't wanna know 😅

Just received my 7" from the UK store 🎉

But we know Seven was written by Brain and I think Me & My Elvis predates his involvement with the band (the date on the rough mixes cd is 3/23/2000)

Oh, sounds interesting. Never heard about this. Sources? More info?

The European press for sure. As far as I know, the US press is plagued by horrible inner groove distortion unfortunately. That was botched badly.

I have just received (today, November 8) an email from GNR's uk store announcing that the release date for the Perhaps 7" I ordered has been delayed and it's now scheduled for December 8. They could have waited a little more before sending the email. 😂

I think it's just an AI module made to speak like Eddie Trunk and Robin (actually, I don't think I've ever heard Robin's voice except singing Sossego). I actually used some free online AI modules reproducing celebrities voice to send prank voice notes to friends.

Lol, never saw this before. That's indeed a very odd choice for a happy birthday post. He could have easily picked a picture of the two of them together from back in the days 😅

Has anyone ever tried to ask Ashba about that song on Twitter or something?

Monstrosity (sometimes spelt Monstrocity) was never 100% confirmed to be a GNR song. As far as I remember, it was first mentioned by MSL in his flash drive list. Later on many ""insiders"" tried to spread the rumour that it was an Ashba song. While the title might be true (we heard for the first time about Tonto and Going Down in that MSL list, after all), I highly doubt it's really an Ashba composition, as it seems he never did any actual studio work with GNR (unless we consider that version of Better that leaked as "Ashba remix", which I really like btw, except for the solo).

Exactly. We hadn't really heard about Perhaps either, yet it was reworked and officially released before Atlas, which on the other hand is still unreleased despite being a song that was much talked about and almost included on CD.

Same for me

Actually the filename was "Chicken Dinner". It leaked on my birthday and it was an unexpected present 😁

I don't know. There's another thread open because she is apparently sick and might have pneumonia. That's why I was asking. No idea if she has already skipped the previous show.

Pardon the little off topic, but these posts triggered memories: before mygnr I used to post on gnrsource, which was a small but lovely forum. Was anyone else on there under different names? Some gnrsource users like @Mango or @FuddMckagan were also here on mygnr, but haven't seen any of them posting in a long time.

As I said in the other thread, this makes things even clearer! When GNR's twitter referred to The General as the most played intro, it's now safe to assume they were talking about the one mostly used in 2006/07. Because of the similar Beltrami approach, we wrongly thought that the one from 2010 was part of the same song, while it was Soul Monster all along instead. The fact that, as you found out, they were never played together, confirms even more that they are two different songs. Possibly meant to be played back to back and legally registered together, but born as two distinct tracks. Thank you for the effort, great job!

Great job, this makes things even clearer! When GNR's twitter referred to The General as the most played intro, they were then talking about the one mostly used in 2006/07. We wrongly assumed, because of the similar Beltrami approach, the one from 2010 was parts of the same song and it was Soul Monster all along instead. Thank you for the effort!

Word on which street, exactly?

Has Melissa recovered?

They have been registered together for sure, we saw that. So, as far as copyright goes, they're legally one and the same. Despite that, they can be still released back to back as different, separated tracks on a record.

Yes and no. I mean, the orchestral intro played before the concerts included bits that we now know belonged to two different songs, as some can be found in The General and others in Monsters. For all we knew then, the intro seemed to be sourced from the same song, and the band itself confirmed that the most used pre-show intro was The General, so our ""confusion"" was certainly legit. How were we supposed to know that the intro was using bits composed by Beltrami for two different songs? But yes, if The General was released alone, without Monsters, it would have been so surprising not hearing the most famous orchestral part, the one from the phone leak/Evader's reconstruction. That said, I don't think Axl decided to pair them because the fanbase thought Monsters was The General. It's more a case of what Bach said: this song is supposed to go lyrically with this other, etc. The songs came out of the same songwriting sessions, they share a certain common ground musically and Axl might have purposely written the lyrics of one in consequence of the other, with the intention of having them back to back as a "mini-opera" or something like that. EDIT: I just wanted to add that it would be very interesting to know if @Mindray11 remembers anything about the "real" The General, as @Blackstar asked a few posts earlier. Perhaps they were played back to back that night as well.