bax

43 minutes ago, Sydney Fan said:

The bands that release stuff now wont match what they released in the past due to where the band and us fans were at a certain stage in life and where we are now. What guns do next will be interesting in terms of music and lyrics.

I hope so. Slash’s solo material is bland and uninteresting to me. Myles is just a generic rock singer and subpar lyricist. The song titles could be an REO Speedwagon record. Maybe Axl’s lyrics can elevate the material. We’ll see. I personally don’t want a rehash of the classic sound. Whether people bought CD or not, it definitely pointed to a continual evolution. I imagine anything they do will be very safe commercially.

54 minutes ago, RussTCB said:

While I don't believe for a second that the material actually would have been released in 2016, let's get assume it would have. Given the choice between hearing everything else that was recorded for CD and seeing the NITL tour, I would take the CD material being released all day, every day.

CD is my favorite GN'R album, so why wouldn't I want to hear everything else they recorded for it? On top of that, Slash isn't my favorite GN'R guitarist so seeing him back wasn't that big of a deal to me.

 

I can’t say it’s my favorite album. As a whole, it would be 2nd to Appetite. I do agree that the years of anticipation for Cd and the mythos that developed around it provided the most compelling  musical story of my lifetime. I‘ve been a fan since 1988 when I first heard AFD. For a 13-year old social misfit and free thinker a small Southern Baptist town, the fish out of water feeling of Axl and Izzy hitting the streets of L.A. bewildered by the debauchery which they would eventually embrace and carry to the extreme. Due to to my age and legal issues in Atlanta( Axl had a warrant for something after opening for Aerosmith in 87) I never got to see the original band. I don’t regret seeing them in 2011 with Ashba and co. any more than I regret catching the NITL tour in 2016. I can’t imagine seeing them again without Izzy and Steven though. It  has become a joke for bands to fall apart and eventually mount some sort of reunion. The tours are nearly always overpriced and the performances underwhelming. I personally can’t think of a single instance in which a revived band has released studio material on par with their earlier work. Without new songs, there’s only so much they can do without me relegating them to the category of a nostalgia act and just not paying attention to anything beyond the classic material.

33 minutes ago, soon said:

I find it interesting to note that some of us hold a position that says the associations made between rock and the Devil are absurd, and others of us are saying 'of course the Devil is part of rock.'

What strikes me about these notions in relation to Guns is that the painting Appetite For Destruction depicts the myth of redemptive violence. Redemptive violence - at an extreme the vanquishing of evil - is a core part of most God/Devil, good/evil archetypes. 

Clearly, at it's core music is a spiritual pursuit and musicians from Paganini to Robert Johnson to Led Zeppelin have been accused of making some sort of Faustian bargain to achieve commercial success. I don't think every 2 bit pop singer is a practicing Satanist however. Perhaps higher up the corporate ladder those associations could be made more convincingly.

Axl has addressed   both lyrically and visually the internal struggle between dark and light.  He  vents  his rage and frustration at external forces which he felt sought to control him.  I would agree this is righteousness of a kind as you suggest. If  the stories about his "lost years" wandering from one pseudo-guru to another in search of inner peace are accurate, one might conclude it was at one point the driving force in his life.

The whole "celebrity satanism" angle is huge on You Tube atm, up to and including  MK ULTRA mind control and even Satanic backwards messages . So, Niven's no dummy. I'm guessing he's exploiting his ties to GN'R in order to ride the latest wave back to relevancy. 

6 minutes ago, Gibson_Guy87 said:

The casual fans wouldn't notice or care. It's difficult though because Axl singing down an octave or two means that the band has to tune down as well. They're already in E flat tuning. Imagine Nightrain in Drop C. It just wouldn't sound as good instrumentally.

True. I'm just trying to envision some sort of scenario in which they could continue to perform without relying on digital trickery. 

Please don't take this as me disrespecting Axl's vocal ability. It's really more of an issue of age, lifestyle, and overall health that I am referring to here. Those in the "high-pitched growl" school of vocalists  rarely seem to be able to perform live consistently in such a physically taxing manner throughout their careers. Chris Cornell is one of the few singers I ever heard that could maintain it completely. Zeppelin's O2 shows forced the band to tune down a whole step to D to compensate for his lower voice, but honestly I find Plant's vocals were beginning to decline by the mid-70's at times. As magical as Axl sounds when he is "on," it can be uncomfortable to hear when he is not. It would seem a better way of moving forward to me to me if he were to sing in the same octave as his speaking voice a la "It's So Easy."  Future material ,if it arrives,  could be written and arranged around a more relaxed vocal delivery. On the other hand, GN'R's sound is dominated and in many ways defined by the way Axl sounded in his 20's. I imagine it would be extremely foreign to many fans.  Thoughts? 

14 minutes ago, username said:

The Black Crowes and Metallica did/do that too. I love it and I think it's a great model to cater to the fans. Pearl Jam are going one step further by also offering pressed copies, but even in a digital-only format it's awesome. I'd love it if more bands did this. I'd probabnly buy most concerts I've gone to. 

I saw the Allman Brothers several years ago, and they actually had it set up where you could order the soundboard right after the show. That model would work for most any artist  I imagine. 

Is a live album really  commercially viable in 2018? Sure, the hardcore fans will buy it. I can't see more casual fans doing so, even if there is bonus studio material. I would think they would be better off selling individual shows without much if any marketing like Pearl Jam. 

i totally see your point. In the sense that an album can be thought of as an all-encompassing statement of one's personal philosophy at a given point in time, i concur. i think it's clear that for whatever reason Axl rethought that approach and entered the cycle of seemingly endless touring that he is in now. Perhaps he's waiting for some sort of moment of clarity to move forward, or maybe the industry just beat him down completely.

I believe there are probably some fully formed instrumentals with no vocals. I have no idea how many or if departed band members' parts will be kept intact though.

There are tons of overdubs on CD and it doesn't seem excessive to me. I agree though, there's something about two guitarists playing off each other,each with fairly defined roles. There's also the problem of too many instruments in the same frequency range muddying the mix. it's damn hard work mixing numerous guitars and making them all sound clear.

i'm thinking Interscope sees this as a de facto noncompetition clause. GN'R cannot release the record anywhere else, It is highly unlikely CD 2 will be complete anytime soon so interscope won't have to deal with the headache of releasing it either. Stalemate and the tour continues.

In the 50+ years since Rock emerged, we've had countless subgenres, phases and fads--Rockabilly, Rock N' Roll, British Invasion, Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Heavy Metal, Glam Metal, Glam Rock, Synth Rock, Prog Rock, Sleaze Rock, Grunge, Industrial Rock, Rap Rock and tons of other subgenres.

Is there any place left for Rock to go, any other direction that could be explored? Is there still a great riff yet to be played?

Will Rock ever again be as relevant in popular culture as it was just as recently as the late '90s?

No, it's not dead. It is clearly time for some new ideas, and that comes from talented people hearing great new music. Just as Zeppelin and the Stones were influenced by their discovery of blues music, in a few years we might hear about a band that is inspired by the desert rock of bands like Tinarewan. and shoegaze like My Bloody valentine. It's all about growth, and you don't grow in a stagnant pool. Kill your radio. I don't think rock will every be as culturally significant as it iwas at it's peak,but artistically there are a lot of ideas yet to be explored.

I haven't listened to any of those all the way through.Judging from a few songs here and there, i would say no.

All except Ashba in my opinion.

I think it really does boil down to new songs, for me at least.

forward

Nothing short of new material would be exciting for me in the least. Playing a single unheard song at a show would give me some sense that this is a viable band.

If Buckethead would only take a photo wearing Ashba schwag this nightmare could end.

Tits.

i have to give it up for that one dude. The only difference is that the sloth is technically in motion part of the time,albeit extremely slow motion. if you watched a documentary on Axl, you would not be able to perceive any movement at all.

Throw them in a room full of weed, acid, and mushrooms. You might get something or not, but there shouldn't be too many long term effects. Except for Ashba, that dude would likely whig out imo. i've never seen anything productive come out of coke or heroin use-anyone that has a creative streak on those is most-likely doing it in spite of them rather than because of them.

i actually like it, but could someone explain what "post-metal" is even supposed to mean?

i despise the pseudo-hipster sarcasm of this bullshit. Write something better or shut the fuck up.

I know musicians ultimately want to play and they have to be somewhat frustrated, but why wouldn't every member of GN'R be constantly writing and demoing tracks, sending them to Axl and hoping that something they came up with would inspire him to finish the next record?