22frets

3 hours ago, moreblack said:

Or they'll drop it from the set, it's not a life or death part of the setlist .

I'm sure they'll keep it for a while since they put all that effort to learn it, probably alternating between Perfect Crime and Bad Apples. Plus, it's a killer song! 

9 hours ago, Ralphelmo said:

 

Only 2 minutes :A

 

It's sad that he shits all over one of his best solos in the album the first time he ever played it live. Hope he eventually gets into his stride. 

1 hour ago, MaskingApathy said:

I love Sugar Cane, idk why you all don't.

The lyrics are a bit cringe but the guitar work is top-notch! 

At least Bumble had the decency to stop playing when he couldn't see instead of attempting it anyway and messing it up more, unlike Ashba nonchalantly playing the SCoM riff out of tune. 

1 hour ago, Lethalis said:

It's not a bad song, but I just don't like the ending. I would have liked it much more if the ending was guitars only. Axl's high pitched wailing is just too much.

Someone here likened Axl's vocals in the ending to Herbert the Pervert from Family Guy. I wish I hadn't read that comment because that's all I think about when I hear it now. 

14 hours ago, ZoSoRose said:

I do have to say, I am quite happy with Slash's solo in The General. It is good to have some unhinged Slash shredding on a GNR track, again!

So good that people taught it was Buckethead not too long ago. 

I'm just glad Monsters got leaked too, even if it has no connection with The General. 

Knowing GnR, it is possible that even GTA VI will come out before Monsters gets officially released. 

21 minutes ago, Slugworth said:

All you're listening to is a fan edit or the same version and you're trying to will a better mix into existence.

 

This same shit happened right after it leaked. That clown merged the songs together, spammed it everywhere,  and a handful of people said it was better than the leak.

Yeah, after further listens, it just seems like an EQ tweak. 

14 minutes ago, gibbinson said:

The new monsters and the General are different more beefy and guitars towards the front of the mix 

I definitely notice a difference in Monsters. The instrument separation is a lot better and the mix sounds cleaner overall. 

The General is better than before but couldn't notice that much of a difference from the old leak on the first listen. 

9 hours ago, Slugworth said:

The low quality of the leak is due to the leaker fucking with it.

As far as General and Monsters on any vinyl,  it's more than obvious by now the songs were not together.

 

I'm not talking about the leak. I'm talking about the vinyl itself which Fernando said was delayed due to poor quality. 

1 hour ago, GnR Chris said:

“The General and Monsters” listed together. And the leak of what we assumed was the delayed vinyl. It’s just theorizing. Not much to understand. We’ll probably never know. If the vinyl arrives with just “The General,” that still doesn’t mean the original pressings didn’t have both songs. As always in GNR-land, plans changed. 

I think the low quality of the original pressings might have been due to them trying to fit Monsters in there. They probably had to get rid of it to make it better. 

4 hours ago, Voodoochild said:

There’s a guy on my Instagram post arguing that I got it all wrong and that it’s actually Robin playing on The General. Really, I can’t even 

Ah yes, the same Robin Finck who is well-known for his tasty wah riffs. Wait... 

I understand the hate for Absurd as a song but it's got some killer Slash guitar on it. 

4 minutes ago, Miden34 said:

18th comment down on the old thread.  "these are real. makes sense why they were b-side. you cant mistake slashs playing."

dont tell me i didnt say it was slash when they first came out when i did. 

 

Alright, alright. But it sucks for you that you chose to die on the wrong hill. 

5 hours ago, KIKOZ3 said:

 

That's the problem with Slash these days.

 

He lost his good taste.

Instead of playing with emotion, nowadays he improvises and unceremoniously fries his guitar and the solo ends up being shit.

Playing fast has never been Slash's strong point.

He's not a technical guitarist.

I swear I can't understand.

I partially agree to what you said. In this case though, I wanted him to do the insane shred that he did in the leak instead of just the bends that he played live. 

Slash is a decent shredder, one who can put emotion into shredding and make it sound less sterile. He can also play a lot faster than he used to back in the day and do it well. The problem arises when he starts to shred when it doesn't fit the context of the song. I'm sure this approach is easier for him because he doesn't really have to think of a proper melody when he can just try to play all the notes in the scale, but it isn't that enjoyable for the person listening, especially when you expect a solo to sound a certain way based off the record. 

1 minute ago, uzi your illusion said:

So weird for him to play something totally different from what's recorded, if in fact what we have is the official version. It's not like Estranged or some of the others that he's probably a bit tired of playing note for note. Lends more credence to the possibility that the version we've heard might be Bucket?!

Not this again 

It's not unusual for Slash to improvise his solos live. He hardly plays his solos note-for-note. What he played today followed a similar theme to the one in the recording and was only missing all the shreddy parts. He probably recorded it so long ago that he couldn't remember the exact notes and just winged it on the spot. 

11 minutes ago, ZoSoRose said:

Ok here’s a brief write- up-

Some of y’all know I am from Michigan. My aunt and uncle live in Thousand Oaks and own a brewery that they opened like 3- years ago. I haven’t been to California since 2011. My aunt took me to all the GNR sites back then so getting to see them in LA was just a cool fucking thing to do. Why am I telling y’all this? I don’t know. I’m tired. Anyways, getting the chance to see the boys and Melissa in Hollywood at the iconic bowl when flights were dirt cheap and having an excuse to chill with my family made this show an easy call. I opted to only go to one show because my fiancé tagged along and she doesn’t give a fuck about GNR. I picked night 2. That was smart.

We landed here yesterday and man, LA traffic is fucked up. I would never fucking live here because of the traffic. An hour to go 4- minutes, fuck off, Los Angeles.

So, we ate lunch at Sugarfish (pretty good), and dinner at the Rainbow (fucking cool being in there). We thought that was smart because it was close to The Hollywood bowl and it’d be a quick Uber. Nope.  Traffic was FUCKED. Fuck the traffic, man. Uber guy was even going insane and took a detour and got lost in the hills. We ended up walking a half mile at the end. No big deal, shoulda planned to walk the whole 4 miles. Fuck traffic.

Hollywood Bowl. Logistics SUCK. Holy fuck. All the cars. All the escalators. Fuck.

But, all the bullshit aside, it’s a beautiful venue. Man, what a cool setting for a concert. We miraculously made the last 4-5 Black Keys songs. Sound was kind of weird, but they were good and I was glad to say I saw em. 

I opted for nosebleeds. We were center in row 4 up top. Honestly, I’m glad I got the cheapest tickets. I could have easily snuck up closer but I didn’t even care to. View was fine and the band were ants. There were 4 big screens that were always showing the band and then the center one for show graphics.

Okay fuck all that, how was the show?

Well, it wasn’t perfect. Before you all bite my head off, I was raving about the show I saw 2 months ago in Fenway but this was not the same level of performance. The band was more tired tonight, and this is by far the most I’ve seen Axl struggle in- person. I saw him in 2021 and earlier this year and thought he did a good job aLl tHiNgS CoNsIdErEd at those gigs, but this time it he venue reverb and live guitars and drums couldn’t really mask things. I don’t blame the guy, he’s playing long tours and long shows, but it is time to seriously look at singing lower more or downtuning some songs. There’s no shame in it. The backing vocals didn’t enhance this one as much as the Boston show I saw earlier. Aside from maybe carrying the choruses in Civil War and Paradise City.

My fiancé also made a comment that Slash played nonsense and the other guy (Richard) followed the music more. That made me laugh because I thought of people on here bitching about Slash noodling. 

Sound at the venue was also quiet as fuck. We could have full conversations with ease. Maybe it’s because we were in the back, but I’m no stranger to nosebleeds. It was QUIET. Sound was bad in the first third and got better as the show went on. 

I will say the second half got better. Axl rallied a bit but then ran out of some gas on Nightrain and Paradise City.

The length of the show is also something worth noting. Forget no TWAT or Locomotive, there was no YCBM. I don’t care about YCBM but they never not play it. Why play Wichita Lineman instead of Patience if you’re cutting the set? It was still a 2.5 hour show, but the Reckless Life/Shadow, YCBM, Loco, Coma, bonus Chinese songs were all cut. Idk, I’m guessing playing back to back days isn’t wise, anymore. No shame in that, either.

It is sounding like I hated this show, but I didn’t. It is still live GnR and I’m grateful I get to still see them. Glad my 10th show was in Hollywood! I had a blast seeing them in a great venue, and it does make me happy they’re still out there playing hard. I just thought there was a big difference compared to the show I saw in July.

Anyways, I thi- OH FUCK THEY PLAYED THE GENERAL. WHAT THE FUCK. 

Fuck everything I wrote. I got the debut of The General, bitches. 10/10 show. Hearing Axl say “this is a new song” is something I’ve been daydreaming about since 2008. Fucking SURREAL. He also went for it. That was a solid performance that he put his heart into. He was clearly tired from a long tour and a show the night before, but he fucking went for it and it sounded awesome. Highlight of the night, and one of those legendary GNR moments for the history books. I said I was hoping for TWAT or Locomotive, but the fact that I got the first performance of the legendary General makes up for not getting those. Maybe he sounded a lot better and played longer and did Locomotive the night prior, but after all the years of speculating and talking about The General on here, I wouldn’t trade that moment. Really grateful for it. Man, what a fucking thing that was. Hope Monsters gets its time in the sun. Man, that song rules.

Also, big thanks to a fan I Facebook messaged on a whim asking if theyd get me a litho. They came in clutch. Thanks fan, you’re amazing.

What a night, The General! 

Must have been surreal watching it in person. The recording truly don't do justice to how the band sounds live. 

34 minutes ago, metalavenger99 said:

One theory i would actually bet money on, is this:

They chose to rework Monsters with Slash to address the fanbase (as crazy as it sounds), the vast majority thought that the cellphone clip was The General, even Fernando vaguely joked about that, right? Think about it, why wouldn't they follow the path of Absurd and HS and just go for Atlas + Perhaps? Why would they specifically chose to release what was considered the holy grail and then its "follow up" which is actually a completely different song??? They could've saved themselves from the risk of messing up like this, and people would still be excited about another EP like the one we had in 2021... But it was a smart move to capitalize on the hype while pleasing the hardcores, (the 9 min mashup on youtube quickly reached like 7k views on YT before it was taken down, so no, while the vinyl money could be insignificant next to the NITL cash, it's not only 34 forum nerds the only ones who care about this). 

So, Monsters was the one meant to be released as a vinyl only hidden track after TG. Similar to "Her Majesty" on Abbey Road, it was going to start playing after some weird seconds of silence... this, as a nod to the hardcore fanbase (with the obvious main objective of selling the shit out of it, that as the end goal all along, of course). It was found out not too long ago that it was registered as "The General and Monsters" but they probably didn't wanted to give that away too soon, and that's why it was never listed as that on the official store, for like 2 months or so, maybe a month and a half ...

Enough time for Rock Radio Italy, which got that info (likely incomplete and not detailed), and since The General was the only track listed across all of the GNR official media and stores, they put out the exclusive news that The General was actually going to be released as a vinyl only track, never to be released on digital formats.

That's basically it, this could be one explanation for all of that i guess.

So what happened days prior to the 27th? That's where the other possibility may come into action here... the quality was a disaster and they tried to backup and get rid of Monsters and save it for a next release, but someone got it before they could follow trough without us knowing, it was too late.  

Now, if we only get The General on streaming services without the hidden track or without Monsters as a playable song next to it... then i'll be even more confident about this 👍

This is the theory that makes the most sense so far! 

7 minutes ago, Mickey said:

Better version here:
 

 

Looks like Richard is playing the Sitar riff. I thought it was played on keyboards on the leak. 

Frank is struggling to play it. Thankfully the rest of the band didn't get messed up by his terribly timed fills. 

To be honest, Slash goes pretty nuts on the outro solo of TG. I don't blame the untrained ear for thinking that it's Bucket. 

Hope he plays something similar live going forward. I really need to figure out what the heck he's doing so I can learn it myself. 

3 minutes ago, uzi your illusion said:

For the guitar players on the board, how close is Slash's live solo vs. the leaked version of the song?

The outro is something completely different, but the rest of the parts are almost the same. 

2 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Another possibility is that they originally intended to release them together (probably with Monsters as a hidden track) and that's why they were registered together, but then they found out that the quality on the 7'' was very low, so they sent it again for pressing without Monsters.

Great theory! It would also explain why these songs leaked together. 

Just now, Blackstar said:

To me the fact that they have been registered together logically means that they are being released together - not as one song, but as part of the same release. Unless the registration was a mistake.

The fact that Fernando said "The General is a monster" on Reddit two months ago makes me feel there is a connection for sure. 

1 minute ago, GoBucky said:

This set is bananas. Heavens Door early, Slash playing the Godfather and Sweet Child leas than two hours in

Is he really playing the Godfather? He hasn't played that in years!