Powerage5

You’re right that that is a fair point to consider, and there are a few people making that point in a reasonable way (Like yourself). But there’s so many more people taking the approach of “there’s no precedent of an artist ever releasing a vinyl exclusive track, real musicians just don’t do that”. That’s just factually inaccurate. You don’t know that the vinyl will be low quality, and nobody will know that until we start getting it in our hands. Yes, there’s a definite possibility that the pressing will not be good. But you can’t really generalize that just because GN’R blunders in the music business quite a bit, that it will be - they’re two things that don’t necessarily correlate with one another.

Thanks for completely misrepresenting everything else I said in that post. As I said above there is a way to add local files to your streaming library from a computer. I use Apple Music personally and it’s quite easy to do - I know you can with Spotify also but I don’t know the exact process.

You can absolutely add that stuff to your Spotify/Apple Music library from a computer. Takes all of 3 minutes to do. But everybody feels like they’re owed instant gratification nowadays, which is one of my big problems with the streaming business model as a whole.

And even if a few…hundred? Thousand? People download it illegally, they’re still making more money off the sales than they would off of millions of streams. Maybe they just feel like doing something the old school way for a change, and I don’t see the harm in that. Everybody who wants to hear it will still have an excellent quality rip eventually (Assuming the pressing itself is good) even if it takes a few days/weeks longer, and the people that choose to buy have no issues…so everybody wins in the end as far as I’m concerned.

It floors me so many people are shocked by this. We have a song that’s a b-side to a 7”, which was never announced (as of yet) to be a part of anything else, and no mention to the fact that it would be streaming other than a cheeky, one word comment from Fernando on the day the 7” was announced which if taken literally at face value means “I don’t know, but maybe”. There was no reason to ever have a strong belief that it would be streaming - sure people on here are claiming there’s never been a studio GN’R song that hasn’t been released on streaming, but not taking into account the context; there’s not much historical precedent here since GN’R has hardly released anything since streaming became a dominant form of music consumption. Yes, almost all of the old b-sides have ended up on streaming also…because they were re-released as part of the various AFD reissues. Whatever people on here think, this isn’t an uncommon practice for an artist to release a song as a vinyl exclusive. Plus you still get Japan getting exclusive tracks for many, many releases. The amount of records I’ve purchased because of exclusive tracks is sizeable, and this isn’t even a hard one to get a hold of. One of the bands I collect I had to track down a specific German pressing of an LP because the record label forgot to take a song off the 2x10” version that had been axed from all other releases internationally. If something similar happened here, then I could maybe understand the reaction people are having in this thread. On top of that, at least they’re choosing to give us actual new music on a record, unlike so many artists out there that release 20 different color variants of the same damn record hoping everybody goes “oh that’s pretty, I need it!”. There’s many, many things I critique GN’R over, and I’m quite vocal about it. This release is not one of those things. As for the possible delays in shipping/release - the record pressing industry has been in absolute shambles since COVID, the delays on vinyls have been both frequent and lengthy across the board. If there are delays (which we still don’t entirely know), it’s not something you can hold against the band specifically. That said it’s true they could be communicating potential delays better. But all of this…talk about turning an ant hill into a mountain

And if we were deleting posts (Let alone banning users) we'd have people screaming about censorship - it's a no-win situation as far as moderation goes. Ultimately it's not anything harmful, nor does it actually break any forum rules. And it's not like it's cluttering this thread up with how rapidly it's growing in size (I had seven new pages to catch up on when I checked back in after five hours), so...

Portnoy seems like the type of guy that's happier the more projects he has going on - I don't think him being back in DT makes it a dealbreaker for any of his side projects to coexist. It's not like Dream Theater is a band that tours nonstop either. I'm by no means a big Dream Theater band, but Portnoy was the heart of that band for me. I lost all interest in them once he left. Glad to see he's back.

Despite the fact that I do really enjoy Steel Wheels, there’s some definite duds on that one to balance out against 2/3 of an album that’s very strong IMO. If we’re talking strictly about consistency, I think I’d agree it’s the most consistent since Some Girls. Definitely at least Tattoo You.

I don’t remember exactly, but IIRC it was sometime between the Antiquiet leaks (Mid June) and the album announcement (Late October).

Like I said I honestly can’t remember where I saw it - I just remember I did see it somewhere at some point. It’s a vague enough word that it COULD be a coincidence that someone was BS’ing and it ended up being a real title, but… If The World first appeared on a setlist pic posted on the old GN’R website by Del in a tour diary. It also included Riad (Still spelled “Rhiad”) and Perfect Crime. The Rio setlist is the first I remember seeing Going Down from an official source. The MSL video was definitely earlier that year. If I remember right, that setlist was also our first reference to Riff Raff, which got played for the first time in the second night of the tour.

This is going back a page or two at this point, and it was off topic to begin with. But since it dominated about 10 pages worth of discussion… I had definitely heard the title Perhaps before the song leaked in 2019. I can’t say for certain where (Maybe it was the list from MSL?) or when, but it was a long time ago. When it first leaked I remember scouring the GN’R sites looking for earlier references to the song title without any luck - I had originally thought it was a song title that eventually got debunked, mentioned in the same breaths as 2,000 Intentions, Cock-A-Roach Soup, etc. But it was pretty easy to find that wasn’t the case. Some sort of info MSL put out there in the early 2010’s seems next most likely, as it wasn’t a song title @Dexter was asked about when he confirmed song titles from a list of rumors. The other reason MSL as a source makes sense is a lot of his postings have been scrubbed from the internet, both here and elsewhere. At the time of that data dump from him we were handling moderation differently than we do now (we used to actually delete posts, nowadays we only hide them so that we still have a permanent record of anything we need to take down) so it would be hard to find anything on here, m.sl doesn’t exist anymore, and he got banned from at least a couple other forums at the time too. For the record I’m not really someone that’s privy to any sort of info that isn’t public knowledge. It’s possible I got shown a screenshot at some point by somebody in private but that doesn’t ring any bells with me. But I’m absolutely certain I’d heard that song title well before 2019.

Finally got around to spinning the album - it’s very, very solid. The Stones are such a hard band to make comparisons, they’ve released some of the most iconic albums ever, in the purest sense of looking at an album as a full work of art. At the other end of the spectrum they’ve released some real crap, especially since Tattoo You (That said every album has at least a few standout tracks). This album definitely falls in the good/great area for me. The production is modern but still has the Stones’ DNA all over it. The songs are mostly really good (Though a few fall short for me). It’s an album that knows what it’s going for, and delivers in that front. Steve Jordan is killing it on drums as he has been in the live shows, and it’s nice to have Charlie on a few songs as a proper send off. The standout tracks to me are Angry, Depending On You, Bite My Head Off, Tell Me Straight, and Sweet Sounds Of Heaven. The weakest songs for me are Dreamy Skies (Feels too much like an imitation of earlier country-tinged Stones songs), and Live By The Sword (This one pains me since it’s got Charlie and Bill Wyman on it, but I just am not digging it).

You laugh, but on Alice Cooper’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare the vinyl exclusive bonus track was literally three minutes of heart rate monitor noises…

The first shows have been announced for 2024: September 1 - RAC Arena, Perth, Australia 4 - Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Adelaide, Australia 6 - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia 10 - Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, Australia 12 - Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney, Australia 16 - Spark Arena, Auckland, New Zealand 22 - Sky Hall Toyota, Aichi, Japan 24 - Osaka-Jo Hall, Osaka, Japan 26 - Tokyo Garden Theater, Tokyo, Japan 28 - PIA Arena MM, Kanagawa, Japan Further dates expected to be announced in North America and South America as well.

It was first played on release day.

I would argue the Stones’ status in today’s culture is more built on their live shows than their music. They’ve always been a band that does an exceptionally good job of giving everybody what they want; all of the big hits for the casuals, plenty of obscure deep cuts for the diehards, rotating setlists for the multiple concert fans, they do it all. They’re still one of the best sounding and energetic, and dynamic live acts even into their 80’s. They maintained a steady core lineup for 45 years and it took a death to break that. They put on an no stove and exciting stage productions, particularly between 1989 and 2007. They’re smart about the touring business; they tour often enough to ensure you never forget about them, but infrequently enough that it’s still a big event with a lot of hype. They basically wrote the rules of what it means to be a stadium touring act - nobody did things like they were doing before Steel Wheels. Well the last couple decades isn’t the most fair metric since they’ve only released a covers album since 2005, but there were plenty of successful radio singles between 1981 and 2005. I’ll admit the albums viewed in their entirety were less consistent after Tattoo You.

I listened to about a third of the set on a long flight I had last night - truth be told, Brian is sounding better than I expected, generally speaking. A few songs rougher than others (Back In Black namely) but some of the songs people on here aren't too happy with sounded fine to me (If You Want Blood springs to mind). I'm pretty well convinced at least that he doesn't have problems stemming from his hearing loss anymore, but it's just the fact that he's 76 years old and a lot of AC/DC songs are an absolute bastard to sing well.

if you’ve still got your second copy of HS and want to sell it, I might be interested. I’ve been wanting to track one down. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you want.

I posted my pics with the band back in the day in the show thread for Auburn Hills. A longer version of the story (And my thoughts on the show) are further down on that page IIRC.

I wasn't there so I'm not exactly in a position to weigh in I haven't heard hardly anything yet, but plan on listening to one of the audience recordings tomorrow when I've got a long flight, very interested to hear it at least.

Even if Maiden's start wasn't delayed though, there's absolutely no way they slotted in enough time to change over from Maiden's stage set to GN'R's - I think it looked to be about 40-45 mins? Either way absolutely not enough time.

…Until the vinyls start shipping. A few more days until we hear it.

The upper level was closed due to poor sales, and my man @ZoSoRose had a hunch on what hotel the band were staying it. Given how public the knowledge was that the band had been doing M&G’s outside the hotels during the Axl shows we figured we’d go down and check it out, and he guessed right. We met everybody except Cliff, everybody else was fantastic.

I'm really happy to hear some many positive comments about Judas Priest's set the other night, especially considering the amount of flak they took once they were announced as Ozzy's replacement. While it's true they don't have the mass commercial appeal of the rest of the bands on the bill, they're not as small as some people like to suggest - and they are fucking good live.

For Maiden you mean? We'll be getting a US leg next year - hopefully you can make a show. It's one of the best tours I've seen them do for sure, looking forward to some more next year...