Pedrolg
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Posts posted by Pedrolg
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Good that everybody had a blast. Axl does look to be in great shape and very excited do perform. Sadly, from what I heard, he is still struggling a lot with his voice. Better than Hershey, but still pretty attrocious.
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1 minute ago, Popcorn crew said:
I tried but still nothing.... nothing is growing on me.....
Absurd. Absurd.
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17 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:
I listened to the streams and although Axl wasn't good all the time, for most parts he was. It was a fun show and Axl clearly gave it all at times. I got the occasional chills and could only imagine how it must have been to be there. It just came across as a great, fun party of a concert.
Yeah, I actually agree with you on a lot this. I'm firmly against the notion that Axl is lazy or not passionate about his performance. The nature of what Axl does is not something you get out of bed and do, regardless of talent. I'm absolutely, 150% sure that he has put astonishing amounts of work on building, developing and maintaning his voice, and his performances are quite intense still, he puts a lot into it. The shows are very fun.
Still, Axl has been having severe vocal issues for a while. I encourage you to go and listen to the last few renditions of Nightrain. There are severe issues everywhere, it doesn't sound good, and that's the case for a lot of the classic songs. Sure, they are great when youy are having a beer, at the venue, seeing them live, but you will never be able to play a live version of a GNR song from a post 2016 show at a friends gathering or a barbecue. People will force you to change the track, unless they are true fans, familiar with Axl's struggles in the past few years and willing to put up.
I used to shit on Axl a lot, but I don't do it anymore, having a bit more knowledge due to personal experience what goes into developing and maintaining one's voice. Not going to turn this into another voice discussion (I admit I'm a bit too interested on the subject). I hope that Absurd kicks off the release of more material, and material that fits old Axl's voice better. Hope that people who attend whoes have a blast too.
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26 minutes ago, allwaystired said:
"No rock band in the world can hold a candle to this band live"? Oh, come off it! Sure you had a good time and that's great, but that's a ridiculous thing to say when you think of some of the bands out there and the shows they do. Crazy.
Or perhaps it's you that needs to "get off your ass" and see a few more rock shows? Because most people here, I would imagine, have been to a vast selection and have seen what other bands do live. It's not a case of "naysaying" at all...it's a case of calling shitty performances what they are when they happen.
I mean, I'm in a GNR high at the moment, with the new song, but I really REALLY haven't seen them be passionate in a while. Which is why everyone is so excited at new material rather than playing the old standards and hoping they get some passion back......which they certainly do look bored by. And who can blame them?
I think their performance is fine, even Axl's, in terms of how much work goes into it, the intensity etc. There are two issues with the band, imo. First is obviously the lack of material, which hopefully will change from now on, and hopefully with material of a less absurd variety. Second is the state of Axl's voice. His voice no longer suits a very big part of the loved GNR material. I'm all for fans going to the shows and having a great time, I'm sure that attending a GNR show is still a lot fun, but anyone who listens to yesterdays performances and thinks they sound great has a hearing problem. Axl is desperately struggling out there vocally.
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So I have those friends who are GNR fans. Not to the extent we are, but fans nonetheless, people that listen to GNR whenever we get together for a beer, went to the 2016 reunion shows with etc. They are familiar with Chinese Democracy and all of them are into deep cuts from AFD and UYI. Proper fans.
Anyway, I showed them "Absurd" yesterday, and it's not that they hated it, they simply couldn't react to it. They just looked confused, then played it again a couple of times. Just this weird, confused, WTF is this reaction. As much as I don't like the song, a part of time actually thinks it's kind of cool that GNR can provoke a reaction such as this. Sure, GNR could release a bunch of canned rockers, throw in a ballad or two, do what AC/DC has been doing, but stuff like this will, at the very least, get people to talk about.
I don't think that's intentional, but who knows. I listened to yesterday's show and Nightrain shows clearly that Axl's voice is completely gone at this point. It's an unprecedented amount of struggle in every part of the song. "Absurd" fits rightly into his strong zone, which makes it a perfect song to go for if his voice does not return. He actually sounds quite powerful at those "absurd!" screams
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38 minutes ago, IncitingChaos said:
Also saw the biz markie tribute..Axl can’t hold a note currently. I’d assume he never had any musical training if I only heard him sing that. Sorry if I’m being too critical. It just might help if he gets the technical parts of his vocals back!
Axl is done vocally, to be honest. I was listening to some renditions of better from 2018 yesterday and things are so much worse now than they were back then (and consider they weren't great by any means).
As I've been saying, Axl's voice is damaged, the best way to find some enjoyment in GNR is to make peace with the fact that there won't be another vocal ressurgence for Axl. Hopefully he finds a way to use his regular voice more in songs.
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The song is so weird that it will be talked about. Maybe that is what Axl is going for with the song being named "Absurd" and all that. Who knows with him.
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Unlike "Absurd", this sounds like a decent rock song and a bit more GNR-like. Vocals seem to be well outside of the range Axl sounds okay these days. I'd bet it is firmly set on mickeyland, so not getting my hopes up.
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12 minutes ago, denin said:
I'm convinced it was. They've been doing market research pre-tour by reading this forum, methinks.
Axl heard them out on tempos and stuff, but when talks shifted to new songs, a malevolent grin appeared on his face.
And to add to that, there is a hint of humour in Axl's performance of the song. Sometimes it looks as if he is having a little too much fun as he belts out "Absurd! Absurd" in that weird voice that comes from god know where inside him.
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surprised that some people like this song
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Well, I do understand where you are coming from, Downzy. I am annoyed, but I do understand. I'm not gonna say that I don't have $15 dollars to spend on something, but for us Brazilians right now, with covid and currency devaluation, $15 dollars is a bit on the steep side of things. Adjustinf for cost of living, I reckon it would be the equivalent to something around 70 dollars for you guys.
This is great forum and I will consider donating, but I will work a bit internally to cement inside my mind the belief that I'm investing in this community and not shelling you yet another bit of my hard earned money in something related to GNR.
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On an almost positive note, Axl sounds slightly less terrible than he did at the first leg.
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Just a very weird song. Doesn't feel like GNR or even like something from Axl. Just weird.
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9 minutes ago, Towelie said:
Lame analogy.
So Roger Federer is still world class, Axl isn't. If a random guy went into a karaoke bar sounding like Axl did the other night he would be booed and heckled off the mic. He doesn't just sound bad compared to his prime, he sounds bad full stop. No professional singer should let their standards slip to the level where they no longer sound like a professional singer anymore. He sounds dreadful 90% of the time. That's just a fact. If you played this show to anybody who wasn't invested in GNR, they would tell you the brutal truth, that this "singer" simply can't sing.
That. It is not that he sounds bad when compared to 2006 or 2010 or 2016, or that he sounds bad for Axl Rose. He just sounds bad, period, getting booed at a karaoke bar bad.
He will improve a bit, for sure. The first few shows of a leg are always the worse with Axl. Still, it's the absolute worst starting point for a leg of his career. Up until 2018 we never had those cracks, failure to hit notes or even refraining from attempting to do so. They have been getting worse and more frequent each year. It really seems that he doesn't have much left.
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I don't think this has nothing to do with lazyness or fitness. This vocal damage/loss of range. Axl sings way above the healthy range for his natural register. With extreme amounts of drive while at that. This time was always going to come for him, he lasted quite long.
No vocal coach, vocal exercises or time at the gym will bring him back. He needs a realistic approach to the songs, and tha takes time and experimentation. He is probably so proud of his range and power and might be struggling to come to terms with age catcing up to him.
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Wow. It seems that this could really be the end of the line for Axl, or at least for Axl as we know him since 2011. It's been downhill since 2016, to be honest. His voice sounds absolutely fried, he has no control, no power.
I honestly think he overdid it with AC/DC and the endless touring. I hope he has the clarity to take a step back and consider tuning down or reworking his approach to his songs.
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1 hour ago, 19AT5 said:
Interesting post. And having sung in bands for years, I'd agree with this. I think Robert Plant managed his latter years voice really well. He changed keys to suit and tried different approaches. In all honesty, Brian Johnson has actually aged fairly gracefully as well. Then you have Glenn Hughes who is just freakish!
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah! I absolutely agree about Robert, he is the blueprint for how a singer should sound as they age and reinvent themselves. Brian still sounds good for what he does for AC/DC, but if you listen to his early stuff both with Geordie and with AC/DC up until 1983 you will notice that he did enormous amounts of damage to a voice that was absolutely beautiful.
Both Robert and Brian are examples of the damage done by abusing drive an constantly pushing into the upper limits of their range. Both of them cope with their limitations and adapt better than Axl this days, but I'd say that they lost their range much faster than Axl did. Yet another indication that Axl is a singer who knows his instrument and maintains it.
Sometimes singers are really just too proud about their range and hitting their notes, and I think this might be the case with Axl. Hopefully he comes around to considering approaching songs in a different way, as imo he has much more in the tank than a lot of singers that have sounded better than him in the past few years.
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On 3/18/2021 at 1:02 PM, t-p-d-a said:Axl doesn't practice enough! Look at 2016 and his live performances for AC/DC. That was a older Axl who definitely practiced enough! Overall 2016 was a great Year for Axl.
Well, for many reasons both personal and professional I have been studying vocal techiniques and working with a vocal coach for the past year, and thought I'd chime in. Unfortunately Axl's singing has every indication of someone who studied a lot of vocal techniques, applies them and seems to be working hard on getting around his sadly increasing limitations.
There are a few examples. When Axl screams or sings a longer vowel, note that his tongue is pressing against his lower teeth. That is proper singing techinique, is something that you study and train or body to do as it ensures optimal projection of your voice. Check how Axl frequently presses his hand around his midsection, just a bit under his sternum, particularly when singing some harder parts. He is keeping his breathing in check and making sure his voice is coming from the right place. Once again, this is singing technique.
Axl's drive or rasp post 2010, particularly with AC/DC in 2016 is also properly technical. There is a basic exercise of training your drive called the "fry" that basically involves doing it on your regular speaking voice and then gradually working your way towards higher notes. Once you train it a bit and get the hang of it, you will notice that it's the technique Axl uses. You will also understand why he seems to have an easier time hitting his drive on high notes, and seems to struggle a bit in his mid range. You can, in fact, use drive on the mid range, but it is much easier for me to hit it with power as I go a bit higher. Anyways, this is the right way to use drive, one that can still be damaging to your voice, but it's much less damaging.
Vocal techiniques have to be constantly trained and ingrained into a singer. When it comes to vocal health, there are two huge danger zones: singing constantly way above your natural register, and singing constantly with loads of drive without proper techinique. Well, the things a singer should avoid were Axl's bread and butter for decades. This is a dude that would sing a whole show with that throaty rasp, smoking a few cigarettes while at it.
See my posting history and you will notice that I'm far from an Axl defender. I'm actually the one that started the "Axl's voice thread". Being a bit more informed these days, though, I'd say that the notion that Axl is this bum that falls of his bed and goes singing is ludicrous. He is a technical singer that has been working hard to get around the physical limitations that have been surfacing since 2011, and the work that he's been able to do with AC/DC is a testament to how resourceful he still is. See how Axl changes his approach and finds some new voices when something seems to be failing him (like he did in Better in that 2017 show that was soundboarded)? That is someone who understands his voice, and that comes from work.
Trust me on this, Axl works a lot on his voice. Unfortunately some of the GNR material is in a range he can no longer hit confortably with power and specially drive, so he has to resort to falsetto to hit those notes. There is no amount of practice, weight loss or rest that will restore him. Reworking the songs, tuning stuff down, finding different ways to sing and writing new material that fits his current voice (that still has a lot in the tank) is the way to go.
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19 hours ago, ChrisMaciel said:
Show us.
It's the middle of the carnival in Brazil. I've been drinking for a few days and it has seriously affected my rasp
I'm in a great mood and cracking jokes though, but definitely not less bloated.
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I find it a bit crazy that people have created this image of him being lazy when it comes to his voice and doing absolutely nothing. The dude had dozens of different voices throughout his career, and whenever he had vocal issues (and he had them a lot) he kept finding different ways to sing and to bring something out of his voice.
We are at a point where he had to remove a song he really enjoyed singing from the setlist, after butchering it live and being unable to belt it out. Cardio and weight loss are really, really not the answer here. Losing weight would do absolutely nothing for Axl's voice or his performance except making him possibly look better for some people. That's the extent of it. Bon Jovi is in terrific shape, has been for years and can't sing anymore.
Doing the full rasp thing destroyed Axl's voice in 2010, and he started 2011 sounding like a joke. He recovered, but never fully, never to the same level. He then spent 2011 to 2014 carefully dosing how far he would push his voice, and being shat on by us (me included) at every mickeyed phrase. 2016 came, he took the AC/DC gig, and suddenly was under insane amounts of pressure as the lead singer of one of his favourite bands with most people expecting (and some rooting for) him to fail. Against the wall, he did the full rasp thing again, this time also singing ridiculously above his register. This is the range that obliterated Brian Johnson's voice in his 30's in 3 years. It once again destroyed his voice, but now he is 60, and I can't thing of a single vocalist that sounded shot like he does at that age and made a recovery.
There were loads and loads of signs along the way. The cracks started appearing with AC/DC in the NA leg, and then transferred themselves to GRN songs where they had never, ever appeared before. They got worse and more frequent, and Axl kept singing through them, his voice becoming less gritty and sharp progressively from 2016 onwards. RIR 2017 was terrible. The Forum is all over the place, with Axl looking for new voices to be able to sing some songs, and a forced and really unhealthy rasp at some songs like Prostitute. Then came the Berlin show where Axl couldn't sing, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. Although his first few gigs are always extra rough, the decline is a progressive thing through years.
I don't think Axl will ever sound like he did in 2016 again. I don't he would be able to perform with AC/DC today, and I don't he will ever be able to do that again too. It's been almost 4 years since he sounded good, and ten years since he sounded like proper Axl Rose. The insane vocal range/rasp era is done, it's over imo. Expecting it to return at all, even in a diminished state, is setting you up for disappointment.
What I think Axl could do was recognize that and try to seriously study a way around it, something he is very capable of. Tune everything down if possible, use his regular register (which is still great) as much as possible, the increasingly weak falsetto as little as possible. Work on song selections that suit his capabilites, choose carefully one or two moments per show to belt out a scream, not more, and stop going for notes that are too high. Maybe record some new stuff in line with his current voice. A concentrated effort would wield better results than current ones. It's really, really bad right now. I sound better at a karaoke singing some GNR songs than Axl Rose.
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Well, it's a shame that youtube links are no longer allowed, but by Abu Dhabi in dec 2010 Axl was already starting to struggle a bit with his voice. His performance was still very acceptable, specially by todays standards, but there was already a very noticeable difference from earlier shows such as the acoustic ones or Paris or Budapest.
It's more prominent on some songs than it is in others. YCBM for instance is a great example. In Arnheim, Budapest or Dublin Axl gave monstrous, full on rasp versions of it. By Abu Dhabi he was already full mickey on it. There are other songs where the fall is apparent (Better, RQ), but YCBM is the clearest one.
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2 hours ago, lame ass security said:
Come on, you know the drill. Axl will try to sing himself into shape as the tour progresses.
He will, but things are different this time. He is no longer physically able to sing stuff like This I Love. I reckon that will never hear him sing something like Twat ever again too. Not that those are essential songs, but he shows that his capabilities are diminishing.
I seriously think he might be aware and considering touring until he is no longer able to.
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2 minutes ago, Caedo said:
I think he's just starting to get old and is losing his range, unfortunate but you can sort of understand it given how unnatural his high voice is to pull off
Also he went all in for those AC/DC shows and probably overdid it.
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Finally got around to watching videos of most songs from the Miami show this year. Wow, Axl's voice is in shambles. It's at an all time low. His upper range is absolutely fried, whenever he goes for a high note the cracks are everywhere, even on basic stuff like "I wanna hear you scream" at Jungle. At every single video there a comments from casual fans puzzled after hearing how he sounded at the start of the reunion.
Imo it's really, really bad. Also he looks like he is putting in a lot of effort and trying really hard to sing. I think he might need a long layoff and a lot of work to sound good again. At this rate, with the endless touring he had reached the bottom and might keep digging.
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08/08/21 - Detroit, MI - Comerica Park
in 2021 Tour Dates
Posted
It's true that you don't notice quite as much in person, I was skeptical in the past but I've been there. Still, it doesn't make it a good performance by any means. The show and a few beers are still a fantastic way to spend an evening, but I still wish Axl would have a bit more in the tank.