johnnycheekbone

Thanks. And if anyone's interested, I'm actually in a GNR tribute band called Appetite for Destruction, (gnrtribute.com), and we're based in New York. We've played BB King's in Manhattan, and we have a bunch of other gigs lined up.

Hey, everyone. This is my first post after joining yesterday. I was at the show last night, sitting in the lowest mezzanine, to the right. The show was much better than I thought it would be. I was skeptical because I'm a long-time GNR fan, and I saw them in '91 with Metallica and before that with Soundgarden at MSG.

Axl sounded great for the most part. Maybe it was where I was sitting, but Axl's vocal levels were all over the place all night. At the beginning of the night, Axl was manually adjusting his earpiece volume on his pocket receiver, but I'm not sure if that was related to the volume peaks and valleys (mostly valleys).

I'll just comment on a couple of the night's hilights, since most of it has been mentioned already. If I'm not mistaken, all three guitar players had at least one solo. Bumblefoot's solo was the least interesting to me, since it basically sounded like sonic armageddon. Maybe that's what he's known for; I don't know. But I enjoyed Finck's and Fortus's solo even less. For some ungodly reason, they decided to play an instrumental two-guitar version of Christina Aguilera's song "Beautiful." Everyone around me was saying the same thing that I was. "Am I hearing Christina Aguilera at a GNR show?" That was absolutely horrible. (It's horrible enough that I'm actually admitting that I know the song.)

Another thing. File this under: "just when you thought Dizzy was the most worthless member of the band." Chris Pitman, who's been in the band for a while, I just learned, was mostly just leaning all over his keyboard and it was swaying back and forth on a weird rubbery stand. To me, it looked like he needed to lay down or go to sleep, or pass out.

And as indifferent as I am towards Dizzy, he did do a nice piano solo before Better. It was an instrumental version of the Beatles song "Something." Then when Axl sat at the piano for November Rain, he mentioned he had a tough act to follow after Dizzy played a Beatles song.

One last little comment: I feel sorry for whoever needs to work the soundboard for these shows. In the old days of GNR, whoever was doing the sound knew that whenever there was a solo, all they'd have to do is bring up Slash's volume. Now, it's much more difficult since all three guitar players play solos, sometimes all in the same song. It made me realize once again just how irreplaceable Slash is.

Once again, a great show, and I'm glad I was able to see Axl again. I hope he does release the album this year so he can finally turn the page.