Mikey Whipwreck

GNR's legacy and reputation is their output from 1987-1991. It has more than stood the test of time and outside of the most rabid segments of the fanbase is all anyone cares about. 

The General is a curiosity, a 20 year old song reworked and released with no fanfare. It won't have any impact one way or another. 

Based on daily Spotify streams, TIL and Better have settled in right below the biggest of "big guns" so those songs had some staying power with a larger group of people, along with a few other CD songs but for the most part anything past UYI is not moving the needle, good or bad.

2 hours ago, rumandraisin said:

Ashba a never recorded with Guns. Although he did work on a few remixes and studio versions of his two guitar solos. 

This just reminded me of his take on Better,  which I'd previously blocked out. God it was awful. 

The only realistic things left are the remaining reworked CD era songs getting an official released, and more stuff from the pre-reunion vaults leaking. I'm interested in hearing whatever's left. 

Axl has shown no desire to write and record new material since 2007. He's creatively bankrupt. Everyone would be better off if he just admitted it like Billy Joel did years back.

55 minutes ago, JimiRose said:

Youtube update - 429k views in first week since release. Utterly embarrassing for a ban GnRs size. sunk without a trace as predicted by many. Why on earth they are choosing to release songs this way. 

 

Because the only person in this operation with decision making authority stopped caring a long time ago. 

22 hours ago, Flayer said:

I think the mix on CD is generally beautiful but it’s lacking in muscle. Bass is almost inaudible on a majority of the songs. I believe songs like Shackler’s, Riad, Scraped, and Sorry would have benefited from having a little more heft behind them.

It is certainly leagues above the production on any of the newer singles, which have all felt varying degrees of sloppy and careless (Perhaps being the least in that regard, and The General the worst).

Agreed. The drums and bass are too low in the mix for my tastes in certain places and they could have cranked the guitar overdubs up in places like Better verses  and Sorry chorus. Bass should be cranked up on CD and Riad like it is in the Village versions. But personal preference aside it's evident that a ton of care was taken on every track. Just a fraction of that effort could have seriously improved Hard School and The General. 

17 hours ago, bumcheecksmcghee said:

You need to do your homework then lol...

01/01/01 show, silkworms, finck is on the stage playing "absurd turd" ...

Village leaks.... cough cough...?? 

🤦🙋🤔😆

Read the post I was replying to.

Robin and Buckethead have nothing to do with these drip-fed officially released singles 

If you think these songs are shit, blame the people who composed them and played on the versions that got released. Not the people who played on a 25 year old demo that was completely reworked. 

12 hours ago, jacdaniel said:

Why are people still talking about Bucket and Finck? 

They helped to write these shit songs. I want to be done with them and this era. 

They have nothing to do with the released versions of any of these songs. They don't play on them and didn't write them (aside from Robin having a small percentage of the writing credit on HS).

The song would fit better in the context of an album than as a standalone. On an album alongside songs like Shackler's, Oh My God, State of Grace, original Silkworms, Sorry, Monsters, it works. I really like the pre-chorus and chorus as well as the solo.

The most disappointing thing is the mixing and mastering. They ruined the song there. CD got a lot of criticism for overdoing the wall of sound approach with a million layers but whether you liked the approach or not, that album was meticulously mixed and mastered and sounds great on quality stereo or headphones.

This flat, lifeless, overcompressed approach just sucks the life out of the songs. It sounds so much better live. Same thing they did with Hard School. Perhaps sounds decent for whatever reason.

Also in classic GNR fashion, of the best songs from the leaks (Monsters, SoG and Perhaps), they've only released one. And they managed to make the reviled Silkworms and mediocre Hard School worse. I have no doubt the 2007 version of The General is better than this. 

37 minutes ago, gavgnr said:

I think the key message is to take anything Baz says with a pinch of salt. For instance, he clearly mistook Monsters for The General. 

His description of The General would definitely apply to the chorus though.

"One of my favorite songs is this song called "The General", which is so… it's by far the heaviest metal tune I think ive ever heard Axl do, this slow, grinding riff with these high, peircing vocals, screaming vocals"

It's quite possible the guitars in that section were from Bucket and were more "metal" than this version although Slash's guitars on the chorus are thick and heavy.

52 minutes ago, Modano09 said:

I love Axl but he did have a tendency to think everyone was out to get him/everything was other people's fault. 

I just don't think Chinese Democracy era GNR/the album were ever going to be as successful as Axl wanted them to be - at least not by 2008. The album cost too much money for the record company to invest anymore in, it had become something of a running joke and the band was "not really GNR" to most people. Getting Best Buy to pick up the tab so the record company would actually release the album was in itself a minor miracle. 

Azoff's long-term goal may have been reunion and maybe he wasn't as committed to Axl's GNR as Axl was but given the band/Axl's history I just find it hard to blame someone else for the weirdness. Everything they do, to this day, has some degree of weirdness to it.

If Axl had competent management from 1997-2002, there probably would have been a couple albums released by 2004 and it would have had a chance to succeed. Not on the level of the original band, but still at a high level. 

Instead you had Doug Goldstein who had no clout or ability to make things happen with the label and who kept his job by telling Axl what he wanted to hear. 

Is GNR's lack of recording output the fault of the record label and the half dozen managers they've over the past two decades? Or the artist who stopped writing and recording new music almost two decades ago and has shown close to no interest in actually releasing new music in the past 30 years?

1 hour ago, rumandraisin said:

Wasn't it highly likely Azoff sabotaged the release and promo in order to force Axl in to a reunion. 

I think it's more likely Azoff sabotaged the tour. Remember how they were supposed to do a massive co-headlining tour with Van Halen that never happened?

I don't think Azoff cared about the album one way or another. It was just a hurdle that had to be overcome before a reunion tour could happen.

There were probably assurances made by the label and/or Best Buy regarding promotion that never came about and Azoff probably did nothing to address that. 

6 minutes ago, Rovim said:

he got the album released and managed to make a deal that was a good deal for the label but I don't think that was the only results his client, Axl in this case, was expecting. I think it's likely that Axl wanted a big promotion for an album that was in the works for 10 years and not enough efforts were made to push it in Axl's mind maybe. Especially for a musician like Axl seems to be, rushing the process of releasing Chinese was a dirty move and I understand his reaction if at least some of what I think happened there is true.

There was no scenario under which CD was getting a major promotional rollout in 2008 though, at least from the label. If he wanted that, he should have put it out in 2002. The record business was on life support by the time the album came out. 

Doing a retailer exclusive was the only viable path to breaking even for the label. but it guaranteed the label would do no promotion at least in the US.

If they had gone with Wal-Mart instead of Best Buy, they would've received a lot more promo and sold more due to wider availability. But they decided against that because Wal-Mart would've required any curse words to be censored. If you recall what Wal-Mart did for AC/DC compared to what Best Buy did for GNR it wasn't even close. But they made their choices and it turned out how it turned out.

30 minutes ago, AtlasShrugged said:

Axl sounds horrible but good to have it debuted. I like the studio version

I thought he sounded shockingly good given the current realities of his vocal ability and that it's a first live performance. 

The chorus and Slash's solo are the best parts and they translated quite well live 

Plans changed. Life got in the way. 

9 minutes ago, guitarpatch said:

Yeah. Azoff is notorious as a manager for creating reunions through isolation/manipulation. That’s his playbook. Why hire him? Unless you wanted to go down that road at some point? It never really made sense 

I think part of it was also his part in forcing the album out 

In the world of music management your choice is basically Yes Men, such as Doug Goldstein and TB, or snakes, such as Merck and Azoff and basically any manager that can actually get things done at a high level. The music business is as dirty an industry as there is, you don't necessarily want your manager to be a nice person. 

They needed a heavyweight who had the clout and ability to negotiate a release strategy that was amenable to UMG and the band. Given the mess that the process had been and the amount of money that had been spent, options were limited. In the end, Azoff got it done. 

16 minutes ago, Master Of Reality said:

I really hope they release it after all those years. If they did it when the reunion was still fresh it would have sparked a lot of interest. Right now, an album would be released purely to please the fans. Not a lot more... . The Perhaps video for example 'only' got 5 million views. Not bad, but nothing compared to bands their size. The interest for new GNR songs/albums from the general rock crowd is just not so big anymore. 

Other bands of that era and stature tend to actually promote their new songs and album. Advertisements, interviews, talk show appearances and so forth. 

Whereas GNR promotion for a new single is posting about it once on social media and never mentioning it again, outside of performing the songs live. 

2 minutes ago, StrangerInThisTown said:

I don't agree that an album or even EP is necessary in 2023, it's no longer an album oriented music world and it hasn't been for years now, all you need is a new single every now and then to keep your fans interested. Albums are so much work and they are quickly forgotten and fall off the charts very fast a few weeks after they're out, it's not like it used to be, where albums would only get bigger after they're released.

But I agree the one-two punch of The General followed by Monsters is awesome to listen to, they should keep that. Especially for the fans who confused Monsters to be The General all these years.

I agree that it's probably not worth  it from a financial perspective to do a new album. And that a new album would be largely forgotten in a few months. If pulled a Billy Joel and stated they're no longer recording or releasing new music it wouldn't have any impact on ticket sales, and their old hits will continue to bring in the streaming money. It's not like they raked in major cash off Hard School or Perhaps. 

But they have an older fanbase that comes from the album era. Artistically it's more satisfying to listen to a collection of songs that go together with this type of band. Metallica's new album "sold" 146,000 copies the first week, 134,000 of those were actual sales. Meaning the album did very little business in terms of streaming. A modern act that had 146,000 opening week, maybe 10% of that would be actual sales the rest would be streaming. 

And these songs were recorded two decades ago or more, with the overdubs and updates completed several years back. So wouldn't be any more work to release them together. 

3 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

How would you feel if they release The General on vinyl and Monsters digital only?

I'm with @Blackstar, I still feel like those two songs are tied somehow. 

Would be a mistake. They should release them together on vinyl.

The whole drip feed thing seems like an exercise in laziness, cash grabbing and fear of criticism.

Releasing the songs one or two at a time gets the few fans who still care about new music to spend $15-20 on the single multiple times instead of $15-20 once. And there's no real criticism from the wider world. An album or even 6 song EP would attract more scrutiny.

Yet it's counterproductive. The General reminds me of the kind of song you find on many concept albums. As a standalone it's kind of weird and off putting. But as a part of a larger theme or narrative it works. It really is enhanced by having it lead in to Soul Monster, regardless of whether or not they're directly connected. 

A doomy industrial album with Oh My God, Shackler's, Silkworms, Eye On You, State of Grace, Riad, Sorry, The General, Soul Monster, Madagascar, finished versions some of the instrumentals like PRL, Real Doll, Tonto and Zodiac

And a more traditional rock album with CD, Better, The Blues, If The World, Catcher, TWAT, Hard School, Perhaps, IRS, TIL, Prostitute, a reworked Atlas, finished versions of Oklahoma and Me & My Elvis 

2006 Rock Am Ring would have to be up there. 

If Axl had looked and sounded like that at the 2002 VMAs and led in with that Jungle performance, the perception of the reformed band would have been very different in the US. 

13 hours ago, Blackstar said:

The school bell and the spelling bother me, too,  but not to the point to ruin the song for me.

I don't get why it's such a big deal. It's not like there hasn't been cheesy stuff on GN'R songs before. "Cool ranch dressing", for example - I haven't seen many people being so put off by that.

I think the bell bothers me to an irrational degree because it's such a cliche 80s rock trope.

Where most Guns cheese, whether "Cool Ranch Dressing" or the vocal intro to Scraped, are at least unique Axlisms, not something you'd expect to hear on a Ratt or Motley Crue song from the mid-80s.

2 minutes ago, uzi your illusion said:

This is a guess? Or is that a phrase from somewhere?

I read it somewhere a number of years back. Probably just a guess or rumor. But it makes sense and would be a quality album title