bumbleslash69

Could the General be an instrumental if it's a physical only release as a b-side on a 7" in 2023? It's possible. Baseless speculation. But it's not crazy. Could the General be some sort of unaltered CD2 recording? No lol. Not at all. Slash and Duff are going to be on it. These guys are here to make money and they've outright told us they've re-recorded a handful of Chinese leftovers. If they weren't going to be on the General we would've gotten a random live song as a B-side or Abusurd or Hard Skool or Atlas Shrugged/unreleased song. My guess is we hear a bit of an altered song than what we're thinking. We know how long a song on a 7" can be and we've heard how long the General intro is. But that's all speculation as well. We'll know everything in about a month's time. Can't wait. Just hope this thread doesn't go the way of the original Perhaps thread lol.

Perhaps the reason is because the news hasn't come from the Universal itself. Universal Italy is a brand/subgroup of UMG. It offers a ton of credibility to the General being a physical release only, but it's not the definitive authority on the matter. It doesn't help its credibility that it still has the old original copy for the Perhaps single that was changed out fairly soon after the announcement. Also leaves a bit of wiggle room in the interpretation. Perhaps the General won't be released as a part of the Perhaps single on streaming services. It's not there as of now or greyed out and unavailable. So that wouldn't be wrong if the General showed up on an album or comp or something down the line. Hard to say though, as with most with things with this band, nothing makes a ton of sense. I think the language would be a bit more concise across different countries and stores if it was going to be a physical only release.

There is a chance the General is the cellphone clip, old show intro, and simultaneously something we've never heard before. One of the things we've seen with the Village sessions, recent singles, and leaked remixes along with speculation about the Village track listing is that certain elements were lifted from some songs and put on to other songs. The orchestral piece may be "the General," the cellphone clip may have been the full "General" meant for CD2, and the single may be a Slash/Duff-ified version resembling neither of those two. For my money, the 06 intro is the General. It's all but confirmed. I also think "the General" may refer to more than the actual song. I think it was remixed in a way meant to time up with the band's walk-on and lead in to WTTJ. I'm not expecting 90 second intro before the song starts on a 7".

It was my understanding that the record pressing industry has been severely backed up the past few years. Which sort of made it a surprise there'd be physical releases so soon after the Perhaps announcement. Obviously GnR runs on a different scale than bands who rely on physical media, but, usually a month or two out is when highly anticipated vinyls will start popping up. Again, for "normal" bands, it's not a huge concern since their albums will be released on streaming services first. Maybe with GnR there are extra precautions in place - i.e, the records aren't being sent directly to stores, a small first run pressing that's easily accountable, the record isn't being produced at a larger commercial facility, etc. Precautions may not be the best term. I doubt any of it has to do with avoiding a leak. It's likely done to get the albums out asap and making shipping less of a pain in the butt.

If it really doesn't find its way on a streaming service, it could be something like that. If there is an EP/LP of Chinese leftovers on the horizon, maybe they hold it until then. I'm thinking we're up in arms over nothing. It'll be out on streaming services. I did have a dream though that it was an instrumental :| there were just horns and it sounded like a film score.

OMFG

Hmm. How weird. Clicking top songs on Apple Music here in the US is “all songs” really. So you can see Paradise City from the Cant Hardly Wait soundtrack (ironically a movie named after a Replacements song) and a few other oddities like that. That’s the only place I can see Oh My God and it’s on the End of Days soundtrack.

If you click on top songs and expand it so you can see all songs, it should be way near the bottom by a few songs off the clean version of Live Era

Tinfoil hat theory: it won't be streaming on the Perhaps single, but'll show up on a CD Leftovers comp/new digital EP down the road. The single doesn't have two tracks on streaming services, so it would have to be its own release one way or another. Really the only way I can get that to make sense in my mind. If that's going to be the case, but they're even mentioning the song name on their social now...so, yeah. I can't see it being an album only track.

The Italians must have really taken the Spaghetti Incident seriously dropping all the news about the Perhaps single before anyone else. I still think it ends up on a streaming service, but if it doesn’t we’ll have high quality rips of it a week or two before the actual release date when people start getting their records early. Or we’ll have it as soon as they do get them.

Honestly getting this song and having it announced is more surreal than the actual release of CD. I'm sure a good deal of us on this forum have waited over half our lives to hear this song since it was first mentioned in ~03. And that's not an exaggeration. Plus it is still some 15 years or so since Baz gassed it up a few years after that.

I knew you’d notice the Slash screw up. I think I’ve seen you mention it before lol. But still, even if they’re not overdubbing, they’re creating content on the road. It makes more sense to me they’d use a studio for any kind of editing than whipping something together on a MacBook. They’re a full scale circus handling giant social media platforms with an unlimited budget. They’re going to pull out all the stops to get even the simplest task done.

For a band like GnR there are a few reasons to hit a studio outside of new music. Good chance they’re mixing and overdubbing soundboards to post as music on Reels and in promos. There is a clip of Slither on a recent promo that’s doctored up. Not that they couldn’t be recording new music, but they operate a whole different scale than most bands and have a lot more uses for a studio than new music.

There is no definitive information on if we have all of the Village session disks, right? There could be a Zodiac with vocals out there. It’s anyone’s guess on when Axl finished recording vocals. I don’t think there is that much more than what’s on the locker disks, but I would guess there are more sets and collections of demos in a similar vein out there. Maybe not in circulation, but some producer somewhere probably has 25 disks of Buckethead solos and Oh My God variations.

That's where I'm at. They'll give Perhaps time to breathe. They had the full rollout with it so they'll be trying to sell as many T-shirts and Magic 8-Balls as they can. I'm thinking mid-September will be when it drops. Gives people more motivation to buy tickets, shirts, pre-order the vinyl, etc. Releasing it when the 7" drops makes zero sense. There'd be no more shows left to promote (which is where the real money is, not in streams and record sales) and Perhaps (the single) will have lost all its steam by then. But it's GnR, so who knows lol.

More than the money, it cost serious time and time at the top studios where other artist could be producing hits. If record labels operate as ruthlessly as they reportedly operate then Chinese Democracy could have sold 13 million copies and Axl would’ve still fell out of favor with the execs. Dr. Dre was still producing hits and bringing artist like Eminem to the masses while making Detox. Axl became a meme before memes were a thing. You could see why he would have beef with Dre.

It likely cost the GNR camp a lot less and didn't risk putting the contents of those emails on to the record to simply pay off MSL. If any of that is true. Which maybe a little of it is. It was always hard to tell when exactly MSL was working the crowd and when he actually had material of interest. I always laughed thinking that there was some sort of sick social experiment at play where someone sent a dozen or so hardcore GnR fans songs off the Village sessions and watched how they interacted with themselves and the forums for years on end lol.

Correct. If we’re playing the speculation game and Axl is a primary source, all we know is that there was 26-32 songs, a second half to Chinese Democracy, and a remix album. For all we know, the 32 songs could have contained remixes.

I’ve always felt this was what most likely happened. More so than the Village leaks influencing anything, I think there was a whole shelved album sitting there. There is a ton of mystery on the release of CD2. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a correlation in the album being shelved, nuGnR disbursing, and the reunion lining up. No clue in what order those events transpired or who made the call. The general mystery of the band and CD will always be more interesting than the actual music at this point.

Generally there are themes to albums even if they’re not lyrical themes. If CD was to only have two mid-tempo piano rockers, one on each side of the album, then Perhaps had to beat out the Blues and CITR. I like Perhaps and think it’s one of the best songs released by the band since OMG. I just don’t think it had a chance of being on CD. IMO, CD the album was meant to show all the different styles GnR was trying to perform. I think if there was ever a CD2 to or CD3 they’d be sort of similar. A few rockers, a few industrialish songs, a few experimental songs, a few piano ballads, etc. We can sort of get an idea of that too with the three singles, Atlas, State of Grace, and presumably the General all being six different types of songs.

Marketing lingo to trick people into thinking it’s new without saying it’s new. What it actually means it’s the first time Axl has recorded and composed music with Slash and Duff in 30 years. Compose doesn’t mean the whole song was built from scratch. It’s a half truth statement.

Unfortunately I do not. It had a skeleton sitting in a desert. It looked legit and had a few things that the amateur graphic designers mess up on - I.e, clean logo placements and a proper font that isn’t Helvetica for the song title. There was even a little hidden GnFnRs logo hidden that looked nice. Searching the photo didn’t result in any obvious hack jobs someone would make as fan art. Again thought, could be a fake. There are plenty of great graphic artists out there that are huge Guns fans.

I guess I can’t discredit or prove anything. Especially when it comes from 4chan and there is that oddball chance it’s factual. My guess is it was an educated guess based on context clues. If you take a step back from being a “GnR fan” and look at the clues it’s a fairly easy prediction to make. We knew Perhaps and the General were on set lists and soundchecked. We knew GnR has a US tour and a goddamn NASCAR on top of it. So it’s easy to see that a single would release. And last time they released a single another one came out mid-tour. So it tracks for Perhaps and the General. Atlas is a bit more bold of a call. Still, we have Slash’s quotes on reworking music. We knew Atlas was all but complete. And November is holiday shopping season. However, I feel there isn’t enough time to release another 7inch in time for Christmas and there is no tour on the docket for early 2024. So I’m having a hard time seeing Atlas coming out in November. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems a stretch. They had sick artwork though on Reddit when they mentioned that 4chan post.

He’s all about this! Was on the GnR sub too hyping Perhaps and the General. Big moment being in a video pointing at folks.

Please, just please be an actual song about chicken wings.