GoodOlJohnnyK

Either way, it doesn't work. Listening back to it, it sounds like they added the vocal effect to make the vocals sound more current with the backing track. It certainly worked better this time than it did on Hard Skool. I always associated it with Mary Jane's Last Dance, by Tom Petty. But that song, Sweet Home Alabama, and Dani California also share a sort of bouncy rhythm that I'm not crazy about.

Spent the morning with the officially released single, and listened to it immediately after also listening to the Village Leaks version. Overall, of course, my opinion is unchanged on this song. It's just not for me. I think it's a boring dirge - maybe a good idea, but not fleshed out enough to be a full song. There are some upsides though: THE GOOD 1. The recording does sound better, for the most part. The Village Leak version is way too busy, for such a simple song. At first I thought I'd miss the lead riff throughout the verses, but I don't. They just distracted from the verse melody. Similarly, the band was wise to remove the high lead line on the "I want to know how it feels..." section. It was needless and a little annoying. The new version with the backing vocals singing a simple ascending "oooh" line with the chord changes is much more effective and actually builds the song with a touch of subtlety, which is nice once in a while from this band. It's also the most 'natural' sounding of the three released singles. Absurd was cool, but it sounded like Slash threw a fresh coat of paint on an old song. Hard Skool is my favorite of the bunch, but in that case it sounds like they shoehorned Axl's old vocals onto a modern track. This song is 20 years old, but if I didn't know that, I likely wouldn't be able to tell. That's a good thing. 2. Slash and Duff, like on Absurd and Hard Skool, simply make this song better. I just won't accept any "the NuGuns fit the song better" bullshit. The NuGuns version sounds like everything else from that era - a bunch of very talented virtuosos playing over each other rather than with each other. This is better than that, and it's because of Slash and Duff. Their parts are slapped on to an existing track, yet somehow still sound more organic and 'fit' the song better than the original tracks did. Slash's verse riff is down in the mix in a good way - the type of riffing we saw a lot on the Illusions, where you have to actually listen for it rather than having it knock you on the head. Duff's bass is prominent, if maybe a *shade* too high in the mix, but I'm not gonna pick that nit. It's a good bassline and it gives the track a bit more swing. 3. TouchTunes fiasco aside, it is nice to see them release something, whether I like it or not. More importantly, they even went so far as to release an actual music video. Live/backstage footage or not, it's refreshing and encouraging to see something resembling effort and a real release from a band of this magnitude. I don't know what it means for the future, and I refuse to get my hopes up, but for one day it feels like something actually happened, and I'll take that. THE BAD 1. Not *all* of the mixing decisions were good. I personally find the drums way too low in the mix - there are moments where the snare in particular gets totally lost or just sounds weak. Furthermore, I thought the addition of the low vocal was a nice touch...but they mixed it too high and at the expense of the *vastly* superior high octave. That scratchy high octave vocal was the best part of the song! Pumping the lower octave up in the mix lessens its impact. Also - that's not the 'demon' voice from Shackler's Revenge, as others have stated. It's just Axl doing a lower octave in the style of Brownstone or Bad Obsession. The demon voice is something different (and likely wouldn't fit this song anyway). 2. Slash's solo is not as bad as everyone says it is, and Robin's wasn't anything special. But it is kind of aimless. There are a few issues with the solo, and one of them isn't Slash's fault: starting the solo a beat early is part of the issue with the transition. It starts on the 8 beat, or on the "4-and," and it's jarring. It sounds like a minor squibble, but it's not - it causes the transition to sound clunky. They actually do the same thing on the demo, but it's not as emphasized due to the mix, and Robin's high bend sort of covers for it. Furthermore, the solo starts good and then just meanders and ends. I think the issue is that the solo section is too short. Slash underplays it at first, which is fine, but then it's never given time to build. Given that these things are often comped together, I'd be curious to hear what Axl and Caram left on the cutting room floor, because something tells me the solo could have been quite good if they'd doubled the amount of bars and actually let it build to something. But they didn't, so it's just there until it's not. 3. The song itself still doesn't have enough going on. It's the bones of the song that are too brittle for me. The verse melody isn't captivating at all, and the "heys" and "mmmmmmaaaaaahhhh"'s and other vocalizations only further accentuate that there's simply not enough substance there. The decision to put two verses back to back to start the song is also a major mistake - that first chorus takes *way* too long to get to. I don't know what else they would have done, but I think that's the point - there's no section of the existing song that would have worked as a transition or bridge, and so they should have written one. This song is undercooked. There's the foundation of a song here, but they didn't see it through, as evidenced by the lyric. They didn't finish it. It's just two verses, a chorus, a solo, a verse, and a chorus. Which would be fine, if it were something catchier and punchier, but it's not - it's plodding and stilted and it just simply needs something else. 4. The lyrics are also half-baked. I don't know what happened to the razor sharp wit and silver tongued lyricist who wrote Locomotive, Breakdown, Dead Horse, and Coma, but he's not here. There's vague and then there's lazy. This is the latter. THE SURPRISINGLY HAPPY ENDING I'm actually thrilled that this is out, because I hate the song so fucking much I just wanted it released so we could go on speculating about the *next* release, if there was ever going to be one. I was actually sad, because I was certain that this would come out and that the next one would be either Atlas Shrugged or State of Grace, two songs I also loathe. I figured that all I had to look forward to was bitching about another bad song. Thankfully, and surprisingly, we got the news today that the next release is The General, which is a song I haven't heard outside of a muffled guitar line that could be slightly made out over a barrage of bar chatter. Now *that's* something newish. That's something I haven't heard. And that's something to be cautiously optimistic about. So on a day where Guns N' Roses released a song I don't like, I'm somehow left with some hope for the rest of the summer as we inch closer to The General's release. And that's something!

A lot of bands have a keyboard - if not live, then certainly in the studio as a pad to fill out the sound. It's often subtle and low in the mix, but it's there more often than you'd think. The idea is to not stick out. Not sure how much it helps live, though. Her main function live seems to be hitting high harmonies or filling out Axl's voice.

It's hilarious that the song is both brand new and also a classic rewind.

Yeah, it's interesting that this has a little more push than Absurd and Hard Skool. It's giving borderline "uh oh" energy, with regards to ticket sales.

Huh?

The band released this statement? How on Earth could they call this a new composition?

Agreed! No, certainly not.

Here's the Diceman backstage with Duff and Tom Mayhue from Dice's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CwBcar9AKQv/?hl=en

I know he's an acquired taste and not really relevant in 2023, but I always make it a point to go see Andrew Dice Clay when he's in the Baltimore/DC area. I love him. He's hilarious. Here's a vid from his Instagram with Duff and everyone's favorite, Tom Mayhue: https://www.instagram.com/p/CwBcar9AKQv/?hl=en

And half this forum would applaud and call it an improvement. Strange days.

I would imagine it gets a release on New Music Friday - so tonight at midnight. I'm reserving my comments on the new recording til then. I listened via TouchTunes on Sunday, but I'd like to hear it in my studio set up to get the full experience. I don't know why, but I'm even iffy on the quality of radio/digital radio.

Well I'm a semi-regular here and I haven't seen it discussed. I'm not running through every thread every morning to sift through 49 new pages of "Robin Finck is better than Slash" to figure out if Richard played on Absurd. That's why I asked. It's not that I doubted, per se. But if Frank's not on the new songs, it made me wonder if Richard was.

At this rate, that “new material” likely wouldn’t materialize for another 5 years or so. Gotta figure there’s at least 3 more songs in the can - State of Grace and Atlas Shrugged and possibly The General. That will, at the very least, cover the *next* North American tour, probably in about 2025 or so. Then even if they wanted to start writing and recording, that would be 2026. So then I’d estimate the official release date would be 2027 at the earliest. Which means, after the inevitable delays and false starts, we’re looking at 2028. I just don’t see it happening. Did Richard play on Absurd and Hard Skool? I remember speculation that Slash just played all the guitars on those, but don’t know if that was ever confirmed.

Of all the legitimate reasons to hate this single, I don’t understand the hate for the cover art. I think it’s actually pretty clever.

I’m just glad you posted first. I didn’t want the first post to be me saying that, officially released or not, the song’s still a boring, aimless piece of shit.

The Seeker as well, at least in 2016.

I agree with all of this. Forget about Beta and Fernando: no one gets beat up on here as needlessly as Slash. Fucking guy’s out there slaying Double Talkin’ Jive and the solo spot every single night with fresh improvs that kill. He improvises through the classics because, like most players, he gets tired of playing the same fucking thing every night, and people lose their minds. I’d take a Slash with broken thumbs over the bleep bloop fire alarm bullshit his successors brought to the band.

This. Axl himself credited Paul Tollett of Coachella for getting the wheels rolling. I’m assuming that he offered Axl an obscene amount of money to get Guns N’ Roses to headline Coachella, and made it clear that the offer hinged on getting Slash and Duff back. The money talked, and eventually so did Axl and Slash. Axl simply told Fernando to reach out to Slash’s team to initiate a conversation and, fair play to Fernando - he did. He did his job. But NITL happened because Axl wanted it and Slash agreed, and it seems to have worked out for everyone in the end. I’ll disagree that TB was against the reunion, though. When Axl told Fernando to call Slash, Fernando’s reply was something along the lines of “if this is a joke…” which implied, to me, that Fernando may have pushed for this before and was finally getting what he wanted. I could be wrong, of course. I was thoroughly checked out of this band post-2008 so I don’t have any recollection of anything disputing that.

This might be a bit of a stretch, but Michael Jackson from 1979 on, where he really found his footing as a solo artist. Leaving out the Jackson 5 stuff, which I understand is a big part of it - Michael Jackson was on top of the world. He released a handful of smash hit albums, including one of the biggest and greatest albums ever in Thriller. Guns had Appetite. Blockbuster tours and fans screaming his name. Dominated the late 80s and early 90s. His last release in the early 90s was a huge success, if perhaps a little bloated and overwrought. Then there were some personal problems, to put it lightly - this would be Guns' breakup moment. Then he became a joke to the press, like Axl. Then he had a comeback album in the 2000s that tried to update his sound, but didn't quite hit the way he wanted it to. Then he just regressed back into being into being a recluse. Then he announced a big comeback tour (This Is It). Unfortunately, this is where it ended for Michael. But for a while, I thought their trajectories could be at least comparable (although Michael was truly on another level in terms of fame). Still, he's gone now and Guns N' Roses are not. So, new music or no new music, I'm glad they're still around and lived to fight another day.

Not quite as unexpected as I thought, considering I thought you meant Pele the guy who used to post here. Now that would have blown my mind.

I find the lyric to be a bit trite and I could do without the intro, but I quite like the song too.

I’m not blaming Fernando. I just find it wild that TouchTunes wouldn’t be able to handle something like this. My previous employer was magnitudes smaller than TouchTunes, but if the software malfunctioned or went down on a weekend, someone was available to fix it immediately. That’s not uncommon.

This is splitting hairs to an extreme degree. But isn’t that nuts? Obviously this isn’t a Guns management thing, but you’re telling me that on a Saturday, TouchTunes just…shuts down? It’s a service provided to thousands of bars across the US and, apparently, the UK! That’d be like Spotify not answering the phone if they accidentally leaked Perhaps.

To try and get this thread back on course, the biggest surprise to me out of this whole debacle was how long it took to get the song taken down off of TouchTunes. I didn’t check the forum at all on Saturday. I was only informed of the leak when I looked at Facebook on Sunday evening and Rolling Stone had written an article about it. I figured I’d missed my chance. I couldn’t *believe* it was still up by Sunday night. I figured it would have been taken down.