Rovim

9 minutes ago, downzy said:

There's been a lot of noise that Beyonce's album Lemonade should have won Album of the Year in 2016.  Having never listened to it (since I don't recall any of the singles from the album did anything for me at the time), I listened to it over the last couple of days.

I don't get it. 

And what I also don't understand is how an album that is apparently so seminal and masterful receives little to no love from her own fan base these days.  

Looking at Spotify streams, its most listened to song "Formation" ranks 20th with 300 million streams.  That sounds like a lot, but relative to her top two songs (Halo at 1.4 billion and Crazy in Love with 1 billion streams), it's a small fraction.

Granted, those two songs are older.  But if you look at daily streams, the album doesn't do much better.  There are only two songs ("Love Drought" and "Formation") that crack the top 40 of Beyonce songs that are listened to daily.  None of them are in her top 20.

Maybe my reasoning is off, but one would think that if the album were that great, her fans would still be listening to it.

The same mostly applies to her last album, Renaissance, which came out two year ago.

Outside of the songs Break My Soul and Cuff it, none of the other tracks get the same number of daily streams as her older material.

Not trying to be too dismissive of Beyonce, because I do think she's talented (I really like her songs "Halo," "Crazy in Love," and "If I Were A Boy").  But she strikes me as an artist that gets by mostly on hype these days rather than putting out material that people will listen to longer after it's been released.

Then again, the same could be said about Chinese Democracy. 

Though, few people make the claim that Chinese Democracy should have won album of the year in 2008.  I do think eventually artists get by on their names versus the material.  But interesting how there's so much noise that any Beyonce album that doesn't win Album of the Year is a sign of bias or indication that something is fundamentally wrong.  But I think time has somewhat vindicated the decision not to reward her the award. 

Then again, the Grammys have awarded Album of the Year to many albums by artists that few people listen to anymore.  Anyone listen to Herbie Hancock's River: Letter's to Joni lately?  What about U2's How to Dismantle a Bomb?

True, but how many of them won a Grammy?  

just my opinion, but I don't think the same can be said about Chinese Democracy. you don't tinker with the same material for years and release it after a decade for it not to stand the test of time, artistically, not commercially speaking at least.

from various music sites with communities the opinion seems to be, even with non Gn'R fans and those who dislike Axl that Chinese is a good to great record and I still personally listen to it as well.

Beyonce doesn't even write her own material for the most part. she has a team of writers. her talents lie in her singing and dancing ability primarily so even if she won album of the year, is it really a win if she didn't actually wrote the lyrics/composed the music.

the band sounds great, Bent To Fly was great and Rocket Man is a fine cover imo. Slash on the pedal steel. very talented even if I prefer him on guitar.

On 1/31/2024 at 2:17 PM, Seb91 said:

I think the Power Trip reviews were more goodwill to Brian and excitement over seeing him back in the band. That’s certainly why I enjoyed seeing the footage and whilst he was undeniably ropy in places, his voice was pretty much as I expected. 
 

To be honest, I can’t think of any hard rock guys in their 60s and 70s who don’t sound ropy these days to a greater or lesser extent. I mean, Axl’s vocals generate a lot of discussion here and he’s over ten years younger than Brian. I mean, I completely get why Robert Plant opted to quit whilst he was ahead re the heavier stuff and change genre to preserve his voice. Saw him live twice last year and he sounded amazing because he wasn’t straining to sing hard rock all night. 

I think in the case of Plant that maybe he chose to do other styles of music not just because singing hard rock in his style was brutally demanding, but also cause he had an interest in exploring new styles so even if he was still able to do hard rock at his peak level, maybe he would still do other things and not just limit himself to hard rock. he did a lot inside the genre of hard rock and he changed his style quite a bit. just my opinion of course, I love his later day work and in Zeppelin.

37 minutes ago, DTV88 said:

Axl sucks at producing. Is that correct enough language for you?

no, it can still be improved. what's with the shit attitude? you don't have to agree or take Gn'R shit personally and get upset just cause you didn't like what I said in my post.  

7 hours ago, Axl_morris said:

When are we getting monsters

no way to know when an officially released version of Monsters will happen (if it happens) 

I think it will get released. maybe at some point next time Gn'R is on tour.

^^^

again, perfectionism doesn't mean high quality and your idea of what is good is not the same as what Axl thinks is good, great, or perfect. 

Chinese sounds like Axl obsessed over it, like a perfectionist went through it, tinkering with it for years. other respectable musicians also said as much in Alice Cooper and Brian May ("at some point it must be good enough"- Alice Cooper after working with Axl in the studio recording vocals for The Garden and "he's utterly meticulous like Freddie was"- Brian May)

15 minutes ago, DeNfr said:

 

his game has clearly evolved with his technique and the speed of execution has somewhat
taken precedence over inspiration, probably in order to remain relevant by following the
current standard of shredders, which is rather funny when you think that he didn't want to
take this path when he started because everyone played like Van Halen, and he declared
not so long ago that a guitarist like Buckethead had no soul...I imagine that wearing a
pacemaker must also have had an impact on his approach.
 

 

I speculate that Slash doesn't care about other guitar players and that the pacemaker has nothing to do with his current approach. what he said about Bucket years ago was that he's not interested in "that type of playing" or something like that. he has since changed his mind about Bucket as a guitar player or at the very least his work on Chinese. he also said that instrumental guitar music is not his thing.

when you're the type of player like Slash is, not really interested in sitting down and learning even your own material when it comes to solos and you prefer to improvise as much as possible with doing as little thinking as possible while playing (nothing wrong with that) then in your less inspired moment an easy out is to just noodle/shred and fill the space with....something. 

Slash also said that back in the old days his alcohol intake probably made him play slower or hang on a bended note longer. he also said that the excitement of playing live nowdays sometimes makes him play faster.

I think that he's not nearly as inspired as he once was. he wa always a noodler, but he could rely on his feel to give it way more direction. now it's much more hit or miss but it's a common thing among not only older guitar players but also in any age group.

it's not easy to not overplay and since being sober it seems that for whatever reason you choose to believe, he overplays a lot more and his phrasing is not as good or at least as consistant as it used to be.

3 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

The consideration on who would sing on his record likely took place in the second half of 2008 while recording of vocals seems to have happened mostly in the first half of 2009. By then the final legal battle between Slash and Axl had just ended (it was dismissed in August 2008) and maybe Slash was ready to normalize relations with Axl, or maybe he was bitter about the legal wranglings, who knows.

Regardless, Axl was definitely still not entirely over it in late 2008:

And positively opposed to Slash in early 2009:

So yeah, I don't think Slash seriously considered reaching out to Axl and ask him to sing on his record in this period - referring to wanting the record out "in this millenium" was just a little jab at Axl.

especially since the Angel Down sessions went fine with Axl guesting on 3 tunes on Bach's record and even writing his own lyrics and vocal melodies on Stuck Inside just a couple of years prior to Slash working on his solo album.

5 minutes ago, Free Bird said:

It wasn‘t a joke that he briefly thought about it but from my understanding he never considered to really contact him

it also wasn't a joke that Slash thought Axl could sing the shit out of any of Slash's solo tunes so the way you've presented it was misleading. He never considered to actually contact Axl cause he knew it wasn't even worth it to try cause Axl wouldn't want to talk to him. 

not trying to make Slash look bad, but this is what I think happened. 

27 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

heh sure... Slash didn't make that phone call for the reason he stated here, not at all because he knew there was next to zero chance Axl will want to talk to him after his failed 2005 attempt at reconnecting. adorable.

1 hour ago, Free Bird said:

That was more of like a joke by Slash and that he thought about it for a second. 

it wasn't a joke, Slash thought about it and how it would be a cool thing to do imo

3 hours ago, evilfacelessturtle said:

... wait, what? Are you talking about 5 O'Clock Somewhere or "Slash"? I've never heard that about either one.

he's talking about the "Slash" album (Slash and friends) Slash said at the time that he did think about Axl guesting on a track.

1 hour ago, Lio said:

 What territorialism here, jeez.

I for one would never have expected that people would get so emotional about The General video. I would say 'we need new music', but last year has shown that doesn't really help. Mostly the same people will invariably be unhappy with it. We've gotten two music videos in the past year and some unheard songs, we've gotten lots of completely unexpected deepcuts in shows. Still it's being called predictable and the band is lazy  I'm not saying it's a revolution, but I would bet one year ago all those people complaining endlessly now, would have never even dreamed of getting all we got in the past year. It is too bad if it's not to your liking (which is fine), but don't make it out as if we never get anything.

 

 

we do get some things, a release here and there but it's not very much is it? since 2016 we officially got 2 box sets and Absurd, HS, Perhaps, and The General. 

cool setlist changes as well and 2 music videos. I like what we got for the most part, and by now every hardcore Gn'R fan should know not to expect Axl to be prolific, but sometimes when you're starving and you get just a little piece of bread to eat, it can make you even more frustrated with the situation. Especially when it's been so long since Gn'R released a full album of new material and communication from Axl is non existant.

it's Axl's choice and his right to do whatever the fuck he wants to do or not, I'm just saying that it would probably be very easy for Gn'R to do much more, but Axl chooses to drip feed old Chinese era material and at least for me, the potential to do much greater things is still there, but I don't think Axl is in any rush to do anything, even if I believe it's possible they'll eventually really go for it and try to create something fresh which is something that a lot of fans want and still believe is possible I think.

4 hours ago, GNRRHCP98 said:

“Amen” being the first ORIGINAL composition from the semi-reunited GNR would be quite a hoot. 

Plus, they did say in the press release for the “TG” music video that it was meant to “kickstart” 2024… 

they say a lot of things to "sell" it, it's like a commercial. doesn't mean that Gn'R will definitely won't release more products this year in their downtime, just that anything promoted by them in social media should not be taken at face value. oftentimes, they hype it up to being something more than it really is, labeling it as "special" or some shit.

12 hours ago, Free Bird said:

 

Just guessing but it’s possible that Myles‘ guesting on the album. If it’s him on the first single they could add it to the setlist.

Myles being the guest singer on this new Slash solo album's first single would defeat the purpose of it imo. I'm guessing that's highly unlikely. I would also imagine that Myles would want to give Slash the chance to work with someone else, at least for the first single. The conspirators are going to release another full album with Myles anyway. 

27 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

I am sort of surprised that so many seem to almost loath The General, the song. I mean, clipping issues and poor mix aside and too late and not living up to expectations and all that, valid or not, to me it is still a decent rocking song. The chorus is very classic Guns to me, with driving power chords under a belting Axl. Axl even puts in some really fierce attack into the, "ones who understand". People always mention the bridge in Monsters, well, you have the same anger in that line in the General chorus. And the drums are great.

it's Gn'R doing Korn to my ears and it works for me. The chorus is catchy and strong and the part you mentioned is my favorite part of the chorus. only Axl can sing it like that. good outro as well imo.

this is a song that was mentioned 20 years ago with also Bach talking it up (not his fault) so maybe it's just another case of high expectations, it seems like many posters here just expected something else, maybe more elaborate or grand while others probably just didn't like the song, it happens.

I also think that some fans are just starved for new material, they want a full album so that potentially makes it worse cause everytime Gn'R releases a single or two and they're not feeling it, they make a big deal out of it cause Gn'R releases of never before heard material don't happen very often, 

still, most of us here seems to dig Monsters so maybe for some it's not specifically or only about The General, but also that it could have been some other song in its place that maybe they would have liked and now they would probably need to wait again until Axl decides to release more material.

honestly, my guess is that there are specific style of tunes that are more easily liked by a certain type of Gn'R fan: more old school or at least contains more classic Gn'R elements so while The General does include such elements like the power chords in the chorus you've mentioned and other shit, I think Monsters if more easily digestable and with a more melodic and familiar Slash guitar work.

Just now, Blackstar said:

I think it was Andy Morahan who definitely said it was a double. I don't remember if Slash has stated this clearly.

from what Soulmonster has posted and making fuckin' videos, I now think that it's very possible that it was a mix like Janrichmond said it was. as for Slash himself talking about it, I do remember an interview where Slash has clearly said it was a double, but I couldn't find the link before I got too lazy.

one thing I'm sure of and that for some of the shots where Slash emerges from the water, they used a double and it wasn't really Slash.

42 minutes ago, janrichmond said:

Maybe it was a mix of him and the stunt double in the end.

on second thought, maybe you're right and it was a mix. I just found this excerpt:

- They do reveal that for the second guitar solo where Slash rises up out of the ocean, he indeed had a stunt double (there's a cute part where he encounters the stunt double). Slash had to wear a wetsuit under his clothes for the parts of this shot that are really him.

Headbangers Vault - Heavy Metal Videos: Guns N Roses, "The Making of 'Estranged'"

Just now, janrichmond said:

Maybe it was a mix of him and the stunt double in the end.

but you can see it's not Slash if you look closely for the full duration of the scene iirc Doesn't look like Slash's body and not really how he moves.

5 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Uhhm, he talks a lot about the cold water so I am not sure.

JANUARY 17, 1994: THE SINGLE ESTRANGED IS RELEASED

Slash said it was a Slash double and that it wasn't him in an interview where the interviewer mentioned that scene. I think because of the risk involved.