Propaganda

Either LA or Vegas! I'm going for LA and single gets released in September. My bet!

10 hours ago, jimisbatman said:

Apparently someone made another remix inserting 'bitch like you' line into Absurd 

It probably will sound misplaced.

The 2000 Village Sessions leak, which sounds like the HOB/Rock in Rio 3 version minus the chorus and the extra guitars from Finck, and also the acappela doesn't have the guitar part.

The 2006 leak with Bumblefoot Guitar parts.

And now Absurd.

Somewhere in between 2000 and 2001 there's a perfect version of the song (Just like it was played at rock in rio 3 or HOB), if you like the industrial first version of it, but it has never been leaked or released. 

Absurd is a pretty cool version of it though. I've been listening to it nonstop since it came out. Can't get enough of it. The fact that it's not a demo, it's full stereo and the sound quality is amazing, it really revamped the song for me!

My prediction based on solely speculation and my guess is that we will not get a full album.

"Absurd" will carry at least half of the tour. Then we'll probably get a second single sometime when half the tour is gone (Hard school). If we get very lucky, we'll get a third single during the European Tour (maybe Ain't Going Down for the release of the boxset). Then they will keep releasing individual songs when new tours keep happening, and they keep refreshing the tours with new singles from time to time (I hope I'm wrong though, because I would like a full album instead).

Somewhere in between 2021 and 2022 the Use Your Illusion boxset is released, maybe fall of 2021, that's my prediction too.

2 hours ago, DTJ80 said:

The original version had its own charm TBF. And it IS odd hearing Absurd without it.

It was probably a situation similar to Riad. Remember that artist who claimed Riad's intro on the final version was his?? They probably took out the intro from Absurd to avoid anything like that again.

But I'm a big fan of the intro too and the industrial guitars.

4 minutes ago, goldentobacco said:

Honestly, this song is really fucking fun to play! I'm trying to convince my band to try covering this.

Made an ABSURD cover of it!

You make it look easy!

1 hour ago, GNRfan2008 said:

 

Are you sure it's #7? I'm looking at the iTunes main chart right now and it's showing #19. Still pretty good considering the strange style of the song and the fact that rock music isn't very popular these days. 
 

 

Only crap music in front of "Absurd" so I'm happy with the 19th place!

14 minutes ago, Dean said:

I seen this posted on Reddit, unsure if it's been posted here...credit to hhxhxhxh. They're asking if this is real, which would indicate that a physical release is infact in the works, but who knows, could very much be a good mock up!

@RussTCB @ToonGuns

It looks awesome!

23 hours ago, Sweersa said:

I believe the Village version drums are Josh, and the Bumble leak was Brain of course. (Both these versions are quite different)

I hope a studio version of the one they played at the HOB show leaks with Buckethead, the vocal track at the time, etc. 

Yes! I would love to hear the 2001 version as well!

I loved the song! I'm not gonna lie, I feel a bit nostalgic because I liked that 2001 version of Silkworms that we heard on Rock in Rio, and probably we will never hear it now. However, "Absurd" sounds amazing! The production is amazing, the guitars are amazing and Axl's voice actually sounds great with the effects (which was my fear, because I didn't like the effects on the Bumblefoot's version of the song that leaked), but on this one the vocals stand out more and are more loud which is great (obviously the other one was a demo so that's why too).

The acapella was awesome too and I love the lyrics. It's the perfect spitfire song for someone you don't like lol I wonder what the song means to Axl though... Would love to know what the song is about.

I have a question though... If they can do this with their supposedly worst song from the Chinese Democracy era and turn it into an awesome song, imagine what they can do with all the other songs??

I can't wait for Hard School, The General, Atlas and the rest!

Right now I have my dear "Silkworms" (it will always be called that way for me, on loop, for days now.

People that read my posts, know that I will criticize, when I don't like something, so I'm really enjoying this.

1 minute ago, HollyWoodRose84 said:

To Axl’s defense, and at this point it’s getting hard to defend anything he or this “band” does, Absurd is easier on his voice than Hard Skool. No way he can pull off the middle part rasp and rapid fire delivery in the vocal shape he’s currently in, especially on the one song that is quite possibly the single to the new album. It would be abysmal.  Better save it for when he knows he can do it, which may take a few more shows. Let’s see what happens tomorrow night. Maybe me being there will be good luck. 

I'm betting on LA for Hard School. We should do a poll on this lol It would be fun!

14 minutes ago, youngswedishvinyl said:

I think the mid-section would sound a lot better if Melissa sang the falsetto thing instead of Axl.

They messed up that part. If you notice, the acapella instrumental starts, and Axl doesn't sing, then frank pounds his drums to start the heavy pounding, but Axl comes in late and starts to sing, so the acapella goes a bit further and then Frank finally pounds it again and it goes heavy again. If you haven't noticed, take a listen again, it's a bit funny! lol

I answered "It might grow on me" simply because I prefer the Rock In Rio 3 industrial version better.

I like the new name better than Silkworms, but I prefer the village sessions demo. All that demo needed was the guitar parts that were missing, the removal of that annoying black & decker kind of sound, the absurd line and the new acapella and there's your song.

The one they played yesterday sounds more like the 2006 Bumblefoot version, which I don't like as much. All in all it was great that they played that song, because we hadn't seen them rehearsing it, and it was a total surprise.

I hope the studio version is as close as possible to that first industrial demo (but I know it probably isn't). The whole intro and industrial guitar vibe is so cool! It would be a waste not to get that version released in my opinion.

On 7/29/2021 at 6:20 AM, jamillos said:

A good point plus an absolute nonsense. 
- The good point: the excuses – Covid, or that "can’t release an album with what’s happening in the world right now", "would be unfair" and similar bullshit. Considering other artists have been very productive. 
- The nonsense: the years you state it’s been in the making. The fact that Axl may and probably will use some of his older ideas from the CD sessions or something post 2008, that does not mean we could say in this unique situation that the waiting started in 2008. This band has gone through a complete refurbishment, remember? And since Slash and Duff only came back in 2015/16 (and Slash brings his own contribution on the table), this is the year we can start the counting from. Not to mention the first two years were almost exclusively filled with touring, plus AC/DC, so I didn’t realistically expect them to have seriously worked on anything. In any case, the counting starts with 2015/16 and not a year earlier. 

Well even though they reunited in 2016, half the way is done... Vocals on Hard School, Atlas Shrugged etc have been done for years. All it was missing was Slash's and Duff's parts. So maybe there's like 3 or 4 brand new songs and those took some months to complete, but there were some songs only needing a guitar track and a bass track, so is it really fair to start counting from 2016? Even if it is... it's been 5 years!...

Realistically Chinese Democracy started in 97 so Chinese Democracy took about 11 years to make and release.

This new album however, it's safe to say that some of the work for it started in 1999 and was fairly complete by 2000. It's been 21 years in the making... But let's give them the discount and pretend that they only started to work on it in 2008, to discount all the line up changes and parts recording by the new guys. Well it's still been 13 years in the making.

At this point, the Chinese Democracy time release record has been surpassed. Yes there was a reunion, yes there were line up changes and yes there was even Zutaut being quoted somewhere saying that the record was going to get released if the reunion hadn't happened. 

The World has been kind of quite for this last 1 year and a half, there was no touring and I'm sure they have studios at home, even if they're not allowed to go in a public studio. It's been 5 years since the reunion officially happened. How hard can it be to release a fuckin' record?!?

The last one I heard in the press was that the pandemic was bad for business, and people wouldn't go to the store to buy the records, or the "people don't buy records anymore" one. Actually, when people are at home and have nothing to do, they tend to buy more stuff, because they have nothing to do... they go to amazon a lot more etc... and there's other artists releasing records and doing good business. So that one was a lame excuse!

In what circumstance wouldn't a GNR record do good business?!? Even Chinese Democracy did good business and it only had Axl from the founding members, let alone THE Reunion album...

Didn't Axl say something about Matt Sorum's drums kinda ruining the UYI albums, in the chats? Or Am I confusing anything.

15 hours ago, Creed said:

The only good version is the HOB one.

Listening to the studio version of that version would be sweet.

I love the 2000 version of Silkworms, but I like the acappela better on the 06 version cause it's equal to the Rock in Rio version. The rest of the 06 version is pretty weak and repetitive though.

So ideally I think we still didn't get the best version of Silkworms, I think that should be around 2001 or 2002 version (The Rock in Rio version).

On the 2000 version the main guitars on the chorus are gone and there is no (what can I do... with a bitch like you), unless that chorus only existed on the live version, kinda like what he does with Double Talkin' Jive (the home fuck part).

9 hours ago, rocknroll41 said:

So I just did some math that I wanted to share here:

Both Slash and Matt say in their books that 36 songs were recorded for UYI. Out of the 30 that made it onto the final albums, this does NOT include Civil War (cause that was recorded before for Nobody’s Child), KOHD (cause that was recorded before for Days of Thunder), Don’t Cry Alt (cause that’s just the same music as the original version), or My World (cause Axl did that one all on his own without the rest of the band even knowing about it).

So that leaves us with 26 songs. So what were the other 10? Well, we know Ain’t Goin Down and six songs from TSI were all recorded here too (with Gilby later replacing all of Izzy’s parts). So that brings our total up to 33... So that means there are 3 other songs from the UYI sessions that we don’t know about.

Any guesses as to what those 3 are? Hopefully they all show up on the boxset!

Crash Diet, Just Another Sunday and another song. I'm guessing

On 26/05/2020 at 7:20 PM, kever20 said:

When I first heard it, I thought I had heard it before, too. I could not figure it out, but the guitar and drums sound familiar to me. 

I thought Tommy demo sounded like the intro song of Californication (the show).

2 hours ago, rocknroll41 said:

Yeah there’s a lot more professionally-recorded audio and video from the UYI era than there is from the AFD era. Also, unlike the AFD stuff, the band actually OWNS most of the vault stuff from the UYI time period.

For more AFD stuff, they would’ve had to work with Canter (who they don’t get along with right now for whatever reason), or any channel that professionally filmed them at the time like mtv, Fox, etc. They don’t really have that excuse this time around, so hopefully that means we’ll get more shit this time!

And don’t get me wrong, the AFD boxset was pretty decent, given the circumstances mentioned above. I just hope they take this opportunity to make something even better now, is all.

They either pull off a lazy effort, with just the remastered illusion albums, 1 cd of demos, unreleased and released, making the fuckin videos and some rings and gimmicks.

Or they pull out all the stops and give us like 3 cds of unreleased, alternate mixes and demos, the cd remasters, some live shows or live tracks, documentary from that time, Blu ray of the remaster, making the fuckin videos (which honestly I would pass), and maybe a physical tape or two.

I'm inclined to think that this boxset will be more appealing than the Appetite box, because now they will have better feedback from the fans. So i'm confident we'll get something good.

1 hour ago, ToonGuns said:

If it is full of pointless trinkets marketed in a way that makes you think you cannot live without it then it'll be "Useless Illusions".

You'll probably get the trinkets...Rings posters, pics, key chains and what not, but it will have the good stuff too. I'm confident that this will be cool! I think we'll get some demos and all the good stuff we want.

I thought about some names for the boxset:

- "Wall of Illusions"
- "Garden of Illusions"
- "A Box of Illusions"
- "The Illusions Incident"
- "Loaded Illusions"
- "Dead!"
- "The end of an era" box
- "Look at your Illusions"
- "Failure to communicate"
 

I'm sure they will come up with better ones though. Mine sound more like bootleg titles lol

On 17/06/2020 at 12:28 PM, Blackstar said:

He discussed it at the forum chats in 2008, like @alfierose said. Not much about the details can be made out of his answers though, because he sent a long text that was compiled of his answers to various questions asked by fans without quoting the questions (that happened because he had entered the forum the previous day wanting to discuss only that subject, but some fans kept asking irrelevant questions so he was pissed off and left, and then sent his answers without the questions) and the result was that the text wasn't very coherent - plus his writing style makes it more difficult. But it's clear that he vehemently denied that he made Slash and Duff sign it under duress before a show, and said that Slash's various claims (Slash has given contradictory versions over the years) about it were lies. He also said that the thought of wanting the rights to the name signed over to him came to him because Alan Niven had suggested to the rest of the band that they should fire him (or tried to get him fired), which would take it (as an idea) as back as early 1988.

As far as I've researched, two copies of that document (partnership agreement) "leaked" (it's probably discussed in @Lio's links, too). One was a copy of the full document, which was presumably an exhibit in Slash and Duff's lawsuit in 2004 and can be found here (images of the pages and transcript):

https://www.a-4-d.com/t3745-1992-10-dd-guns-n-roses-partnership-contract-memorandum-of-agreement

And the other was only the page with the name clause and the last page with the dates and signatures. The respective pages of the two documents are almost identical (the content and dates are the same - there are only slight differences in the spot where the members' initials were placed).

The name clause was clearly an amendment/modification in the existing document, as it was typed over as an asterisk at the bottom of the page. So it couldn't have been added earlier. It either was added at the time the document was signed, which was in October 1992 when the band was on a tour break, or at an unknown later time on the already signed document. 

As you can see in the image and in the link with the transcript, the initial clause said that if any of the partners became "terminated" (i.e. if they quit or were expelled), they wouldn't have any rights to the band name. The asterisk at the bottom added the exception for Axl (i.e. if Axl quit, or was expelled, or Slash and Duff quit the partnership, he could maintain the rights to the name).

Slash gave different versions about the circumstances over the years. It should be noted that there were two different events related to that whole story: one was in 1992 the earliest, when the above document that granted Axl the right to keep the name if the band broke up was signed; the other was when Axl used that clause in 1995.

At first Slash said that he hadn't realised what he had signed in 1992 and that it was the attorneys' fault:

Slash: As far as contractually - and this is a discrepancy between myself and our attorneys - apparently Axl owns it. Now I should have known that, because I could have then said: "Okay." I don't give a fuck who owns the name. But I find out later that Axl legally owns it - apparently. [Metal Hammer, November 1995]

Slash: That's something that happened. I was blindsided by it, more or less a legal faux pas. I don't know what he's gonna do, as far as that goes. But I'd be lying to say I wasn't a little bit peeved at that. It'd be one thing if I quit altogether. But I haven't, and the fact that he can actually go and do that without the consent of the other members of the band... [Addicted to Noise, January 30, 1997]

Later he would say that when he and Duff realised it (which was probably in 1994, as it was then that there was the first mention in the press about Axl owning the rights) they just let Axl have it:

Slash: When Duff and I quit, it was a question as who wants to deal with the name. And me and Duff were like, “We don’t want it. What are we gonna do with it?” you know? (chuckles) And Axl chose to keep the name and go on, and promote it as such, so... [Musikbyrån SVT, December 9, 2000]

Then he would say, seemingly about signing the original agreement, that he and Duff had signed over because they wouldn't want the name if the band broke up:

Slash: We had a revised contract stating that if the band breaks up, Axl could keep the name. Izzy and Steve were already gone, so Duff and I said, "Yeah, go ahead - we don't want it. If Guns n' Roses breaks up, what are we gonna do with the name?" [Classic Rock Revisited, July 2001]

But a little later, he said that he and Duff might contest it, and he was looking for a legal loophole to do that:

Slash: And what happened was, the guys in the band said, “If we’re not in the band, what do we need the name Guns N’ Roses for?” And so we very easily said, “Yeah, Axl, take the name. Anything, let’s just get out of our hair,” okay? […] But he chose to do it and we allowed him to do it, which at this point I think it’s come up a few times where we might contest that, because it doesn’t seem... […] People are walking around with new Guns N’ Roses jackets not knowing what Guns N’ Roses is (laughs). [The Howard Stern Show, September 7, 2001]

Slash: That's actually a topic which we're trying to get to the bottom of. Originally, the other guys in the band gave it up. Now that I know a little bit more about this stuff, I'm trying to look for a loophole [to get some control back].  [Chart Attack, September 12, 2001]

And then, in 2002, he changed the stories he had told before (that he didn't know what he had signed in 1992 or that he had agreed to it) and said that Axl had blackmailed them before a show:

Slash: Before a gig one night in ’92, [Axl] hands us a contract saying that if the band breaks up, he’s taking the name. Unfortunately, we signed it. I didn’t think he’d go on stage otherwise. [Entertainment Weekly, November 2002]

Slash continued telling the blackmail/under duress story in 2003. Then Duff said that it happened at the show in Barcelona in 1993, and that it was Doug Goldstein and John Reese (tour manager) who had blackmailed him and Slash on behalf of Axl (Goldstein had being denying it saying that he wasn't even in Barcelona when it supposedly happened, then in Mick Wall's book he said he was there, then he again said that he wasn't there).

Curiously enough, Slash didn't write anything in his book about the circumstances under which the privilege to keep the rights was signed over to Axl and jumped straight to 1995. Maybe he just didn't remember, so he chose not to say anything, knowing that it was a very sore point for Axl and not wanting to piss him off too much (but he didn't avoid that, lol).

Also oddly, Steven talked about the issue, too, and claimed that Axl had approached all the members and offered them money to buy the name (it should also be noted here that the reports in the press after Slash left were that Axl had "bought" the rights to the name, which, if true, would mean that Slash and Duff were compensated). Steven's claim could give credit to what Axl said, i.e that he was thinking about it in 1988 already. But Steven said that he was approached after he was out of the band, which doesn't make sense at all, as Steven wasn't a partner anymore then so he wouldn't have any rights to the name to sell. 

Steven: [Axl] went by person-by-person [trying to buy the name]. First I was out of the band, and I said, "I am not in the band, go ahead, give me some money." […] "Show me the money, you got it." "Show me the money, you got anything." [The Howard Stern Show, January 22, 1997]

So either Steven made it up or there was truth in what he said,  but it happened at an earlier time than he said.

------------

In my opinion, Axl obviously wanted the rights to the name, and probably insisted on it and put some pressure, but I doubt the story of the blackmail before a show happened. I think Slash and Duff, in the state they were at the time, agreed to sign it over not thinking it might have any serious repercussions (and according to Tom Zutaut, the label and the lawyers themselves who drew up that contract didn't believe it would have serious repercussions either). But I wasn't there, of course, so who knows.

Thanks for clarifying with further proof!

It seems that they didn't care much about it, because they didn't believe Axl would do something with it in the future without them being in the band, but then Axl found these new guys and started promoting a possible new album (CD) and before that "Oh My God", and suddenly they were like... "Oh Fuck! He's really gonna do it!"

There's gotta be other demos with other versions of Oh My God and Silkworms... Those songs didn't have just two demos each.