Dean Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 It sounds fierce and the length of it set a level of expectation for the song that clearly wasn't met, unfortunately. Definitely one of the better screams he's done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 It's definitely a great intro scream. You can tell at the end of it that he realises he's fucked himself for the rest of the performance, though.Considering how much he's running around, the getting out of breath is kind of forgivable. The lyrics mess-up is weird, considering we know they rehearsed for the VMAs.Maddy is pretty good here. But yeah, it's obvious that nuGNR was never going to be taken seriously after this. Rio '11 and Bridge School were much worse vocally, but this was worse for Axl's efforts to push nuGuns/Chinese overall. Even I heard about this event at the time and I barely knew anything about nuGNR/CD until CD came out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GnR Chris Posted February 22, 2013 Author Share Posted February 22, 2013 I think more so than how Axl sounded or looked, the band seemed like a freak show. I was a diehard Gn'R fan as a kid but didn't know much about the new lineup. I remember watching this and seeing them and I was just aghast, like, "what the fuck am I seeing here?" People weren't ready for Finck and then Bucket with a fucking KFC bucket.I'm not sure anything Axl would have done could have created positive buzz. People still wanted Slash at the time, honestly. They wanted what they remembered.And yet, if this is what we saw on MTV that day ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drtydane Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 If axl comes out singing like this in Australia ill b seriously relieved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunsfanoldie Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 I tend to watch this every now and then. Mainly because its a relatively short video that is supposed to be so bad that I want to remind myself why its not good.The problems have been nailed pretty much so far. Mainly, Axl looked stupid. Not even his outfit, which was dumb but could have been saved, but the hair and his face honestly looked so unclean. Like, his face looked disgusting, and as a heterosexual man, and as others have mentioned, Axl is a good looking person. At least at that time, all people knew was what they remembered him looking like in the 90s, which was rather beautiful (granted, he was much younger at 30 years old at the time). Him looking weird and pretty disgusting in a close up. Strike one.Strike two was the band. Whether it was the intention or just an accident of how it was filmed, the video ended up looking like the Axl Rose show with a really weird freakshow band. You never got the feeling of a real band there, which is what Axl is always trying to push, and they seemed like backup musicians for Axl Rose, the sole original member. Buckethead is semi forgivable, because as Fallon mentions, people knew who he was sort of and it was a certain look that almost looked cool rather than weird (remember this was 10 years ago when that was brand new to take in).The rest of the band looked pretty dumb, again whether intended or accidental. I still think the shot of Finck at the beginning is what kills it. It looks like a really dumb goth, doom metal version of GNR, and it looked like Axl pulled together a group of a ridiculous people off the street. That specific shot for me, just made it laughable because its such a stereotypical goth look that it can't be taken seriously. Sorry, but its TV and that was important. On top of not showing the band or who was playing what at all, it gave off the sense that it wasn't a real band.Strike 3 was Axl's singing/song choice. He starts off with a good scream, but when he starts running, the thing DIES. He's out of breath and you can just see he's trying waaaayy to hard. He has very few ok bits in this version of Jungle but overall it is just a horrible out of breath version that when watching with other people, makes you put your face into a pillow and hesitantly say "yeah, I'm a Guns N Roses fan". Jungle and Paradise were logical opener and closers. The problem was always the middle, with the opening and closing being ruined by horrible singing.As has been mentioned, Madagascar doesn't sound that bad at all, but its a weak song to pick IMO and just a weird one to choose as representative of the new GNR. It sounded nothing like old GNR, and once the song kicks in, I feel you can almost sense the amount of people rolling their eyes and going "seriously?! This is the new song?!" Would it have been better to play something else like Chinese Democracy? Perhaps, although any song he chose might have not gone over well just because back then they all sounded alittle weird because they were so different.The problem was he couldn't also just play old songs because then it was the definition of a tribute band. The point was, he needed to play something new, and what he had really wouldn't have screamed out to anyone "it was worth the wait." He sings it well which helps, and the shot of the guy high fiving him is one of the video's saving graces, but overall its just such a bland song that its a weak middle section that rather forgettable. It tuned people out IMO.Then you close with Paradise City with some of Axl's worst vocals ever. He's not singing on time, he's so unbelievably out of breath, he once again looks really dumb with his moves and look. It just looked like a really bad Axl reborn. There was no saving it. The confetti at the end could have been a celebration, but after that horrible performance it just translated into further over the top crap. Add in his ridiculous, laughable, and idiotic "round one!" comment and you have the icing on top of a really terrible performance top to bottom.Without sound, its admirable how much energy he had, but the energy couldn't cover up the horrible singing. He sort of changed over the next 10 years, but that video implanted in the minds of many that Axl Rose was over the hill and washed up. I agree that this performance seemed to fail in every single way possible, and succeeded in making GNR a joke. Whether people would still feel that way after a better performance, we'll never know. But this certainly didn't help in the least.The phony horrible interviews at the end just further top off the crap that is this video. Jimmy Fallon (who I watch and enjoy all the time) being like a mentally retarded kid who is incapable of saying anything negative about someone being the first part of "post show jerk off Axl session", then adding in Kurt Loder, one of the biggest Axl jerkers out there, and you have almost the perfect recipe of a constructed way to congratulate Axl no matter what happened. Axl's explanation of the whole thing actually makes alot of sense too, and you can't fault him for no new music because he does indeed say "not soon" as in you won't be getting it anywhere near this year, but the whole thing just falls flat in so many ways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimb0 Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 I was a huge Axl mark back then. Someone posted the 2006 Rock AM Ring Jungle... if that was what the world saw that night, perception might have been a lot different. I just don't understand how Axl is so hot and cold / bi-polar. From his voice, to his performances, to his weight. He's a man of extremes. One of the huge problems was... look at what Axl had to live up to. His VMA's in 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1992 to me, are some of the greatest performances EVER in the history of VMA's. And sadly in 2002 the new band, and a new Axl failed to live up to the legacy. I will say physically Axl tried to go out there and give it his best shot. However he just didn't have the wind or the rasp to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AXL_N_DIZZY Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 I always wondered why they chose Maddy instead of Chinese or even TWAT.I'm sure Madagascar was going to be the lead single at that pointI always felt they played "Madagascar" b/c Loder compared it to a classic Beatles track in his RIR III review. More likely though- Maddy was chosen as a "breather" and b/c it had a section that could fit well in-between the parts of WTTJ and PC they probably knew they wanted to play. Medleys must be a real pain in the ass to arrange come to think of it...Anyway- yeah wrong time for all that. I've always felt Axl would have been better off making an unapologetic "industrial/techno" comeback in '99 or so with the Finck/Stinson/Freese line-up (assumedly with strong label backing) OR holding off until 06/07 when CD was somewhere in sight. 01-02 was a disastrous time though IMHO and kind of caught him betwixt and between a lot of stuff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trqster Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 It was an epic fail for Axl's new band. It was really a torture to see it as a fan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prettytiedup88 Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 The opening few seconds were great - the introduction, the curtain opening, the riff, the scream, then BANG...it all fell apart.Funnily enough I think the opposite. I thought it was actually pretty decent when I first watched it, then I watched it again...and again...and each time realised it was actually a total dud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunsfanoldie Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Anyone ever know what that meant when Jimmy says "they're even taking requests"? I never understood that, but the comment about them being on time was very clear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russel Nash Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Mtv 2002 was a great moment to me, while jungle was a bit off, Madagascar that night was something special. I remember ppl asking a lot for that song at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useyorappetite Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Am i the only one who loves Madagascar?Well i loved it the first 10 times i heard it. I still like it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndreCC Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 It was a complete disaster! There's a part where Axl starts to scream in Madagascar and he completely loses it. Goes completely out of breath. How can anyone like that is beyond me.If you take 2006 as an example then i would understand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trqster Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Everything was weird about that performance, Axl's hair and new style, his freaky guitar players and a shitty voice to wrap it up.Even Axl once said he'd resume the MTV '02 performance as a 'catastrophe'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AXL_N_DIZZY Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Everything was weird about that performance, Axl's hair and new style, his freaky guitar players and a shitty voice to wrap it up.Even Axl once said he'd resume the MTV '02 performance as a 'catastrophe'.Yeah. About the only thing "positive" you can say about it was that it was not just a catastrophe- but a GRAND catastrophe. They (and particularly Axl) didn't just go out there and turn in a "ho hum" performance. They went out in an epic ball of flames. Kind of the mirror-image opposite of '88 and '92. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndreCC Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 I wonder what Slash, Matt, Duff and Izzy thought of it when they saw that LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Seeker Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 This was so long ago, I'm trying to recall my intial reaction and contrast it with how I see the performance now. I'm 28 now, I guess I was about 16 then, in high school and without youtube. I saw the performance during a rerun after somebody telling me NuGuns was the surprise last performance. I remember everyone who saw it sayiing it sucked and that Axl looked and sounded terrible, so I went in with low expectations. Welcome to the Jungle and Paradise City were sub-par for sure, but I remember Madagascar really standing out to me. I loved that song from the first time I heard it, which was that performance, and I think he nailed it. Unfortunately that was overshadowed by his poor renditions of everything people were familiar with. At the time however, I was a less knowledgable, more casual fan and honestly I didn't even know Madagascar was a new song.I thought maybe it was something old I had overlooked or forgotten about. It sounded UYI-ish enough to me. I enjoyed the performance then, I still do now. Despite some cringe worthy moments I put it up against other VMA performances. Axl sounding like shit, doing a medly, looking wierd and being out of breath beats any performance involving some lame ass born in the 90s lip-syncing to the auto-tuned vocal track written by some studio song writer, which is standard content now. It doesn't stand up to the standard Axl set for himself in the early 90s, but it still beats the crap that lands onstage year after year these days. Remember, you can only tell Axl is winded because his mic is plugged in, that integrity should count for something these days. It isn't an excuse, and in terms of public perception and publicity it was a disaster, but I appreciate the integrity shown in just going for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnrsucksdotcom Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 His monitors weren't working. Not making excuses but as a musician myself it's very hard to control your voice's power and accurateness if you can't hear yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheesecake Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Am i the only one who loves Madagascar?Well i loved it the first 10 times i heard it. I still like it though.I love it! You are not alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juan Pablo Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Maddy was ok. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guns n' Swedes Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 That is one awful performance. Weak and without rasp.His clothes are awful, his hair and even trying to do the snake dance.I think his current style is at least more soothing on a number of levels. AND his voice is much better than that...even in 2011-2012. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinaski Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Crazy to think that that performance was less time from the Argentina 93 show than we are now from that VMA performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magisme Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Crazy to think that that performance was less time from the Argentina 93 show than we are now from that VMA performance.Christ. It's obvious, but I hadn't thought of it like that. Shows how little has really happened over the last 20 years. 20 fucking years, Axl! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
volcano62 Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 I always loved this performance. I rememebr when Fallon made the annoucement we all ran to the tv and went bat shit crazy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rustycage Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 ^ yeah rightI cringe at the end of PC where he completely loses it on the "hooooOOoooooome" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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