Voodoochild

Yeah, I remember when Axl said that. He did say "we" and mentioned the possibility of releasing it, though it was later dismissed as just "dat" recordings of rehearsals. Judging by Big Daddy's SCOM and his comment on really getting into details - "little less reverb, little less double bass" - I'd say he rerecorded vocals too. But that's just a guess, of course.

Well, at least he did recorded the WTTJ as we have from the Village leaks. That was a rehearsal, but still. Maybe Axl wanted it for the Black Hawk Down movie. Also, do we know if Axl recorded vocals for those other AFD songs?

People here said it was indeed the case, confirmed by someone from the band (at the time was still Goldstein?). But I still doubt it. I think it was a misunderstanding and Riad was always supposed to be on the setlist anyways. The had to have it rehearsed for sure. If Oklahoma was also rehearsed, I don't know, but IMO this was always just a misunderstanding. When the first bootleg for that show surfaced, people were naming the song Oklahoma even though Axl clearly said in the intro "this song is called Riad and the Bedouins".

That's not Perhaps. Probably Dizzy just accidentally dropped the congas on the keyboard.

Yeah, I do. And I also believe there’s more than those songs. I don’t think 3 dollar has anyone but Robin. It’s clearly his demo, much like there’s Bucket-only demos and those two Tommy’s demos.

I think the guitar arrangement - which pretty much is the majority of the instrumental piece in GNR - could get credit. The solos should be considered songwriting too, but I don't think it is the case. Don't know what Fortus was about, but I think he considered the guitar arrangement in Better when he said he wrote that part. The original 3-Dollar Pyramid demo was almost the same, just with a different approach in the chorus. The first 2006 leak already had the chorus. And keep in mind that, from CD's booklet, Paul Tobias played on the song, although we don't know if he was still recording when Richard joined the band in 2001/02 (I think there's also some confusion about when he actually joined the band). I love the song, for me it was the best one from the Village. But why should we care if people will like it or not? I don't think people will, regardless. Even The General.

The person who mixed this song must really like drums. So damn loud.

The guitar arrangement on this demo is amazing. It's also great how Finck's solo kinda starts in the chorus already. Those amazing layers of guitars are mostly gone judging by the rehearsal, though I can't really hear anything Richard is doing unless he's only doing the power chords like Slash. That's what I've always thought. Also the joke about the End of Days instrumental piece referring to a really cringy scene from the movie.

Oh that one. There is another recording of the full song out there too. Slash's rhythm guitar on this seems a lot like 14 Years. It's cool, but the song feels empty compared to the demo.

Can you post the video? The one I knew had some uninteresting footage from those guys feet or something like that. That's pretty much what I think. Back then he probably had some titles and/or knowledge that there was reworked Better versions, so he added some more stuff to pass it as real. The reason why I believe this was his scam to lure more people in believing his was actually an insider is just that he would've been confessing some cybercrimes: invading personal device (hacking), reading personal documents, stealing personal documents and then blackmailing the victims. If any of this was real, he would be in jail for data hijacking and extortion. Simple as that. Nobody in the band would want to make a deal because he was already being public about the whole thing, any additional leak of these supposed data would only increase his sentence.

I've been writing stuff and I'm always comping the solos myself, it's just a lot easier. Wonder if Axl and Caram would have this with Slash. I doubt it, I think he has total control of his own input in the recordings now.

Are we back to the whole "Pele was right" thing again? Let's keep it simple: the Village leaks were from 1999. We had at least Shackler's, Sorry, Scraped, Better and This I Love that weren't finished or even considered as A-list back then, but still those were finished and released on CD. Also we had reworked OMG, Silkworms and Going Down, which were not released, but clearly had additional studio time. That's already proof that they spent time working in something else besides the 1999 demos with vocals. The release of those tracks does not represent everything they've worked on. You can keep the "only believe when I see" thing as much as you want, but this just doesn't make sense. I remember back in 2004 when people argue that there was no CD album either, especially because there was an interview with Slash saying that someone told him that Axl didn't record any vocals to that point, which we obviously know now that was wrong. I'm not talking about the quality of those songs, but to me it's kinda obvious that Buckethead and Brain came up with lots of ideas during the 2001-03 period, and I believe Robin and Tommy also did some stuff. If Axl liked it enough, I'm sure he worked on them too just as he did with those other CD songs I mentioned above. It was comped, but Robin's style is like that too, you can see in his live performances and work in the Ghost of Mars OST. The comps were most likely made with segments, not lick for lick. TWAT to me sounds like they comped a Bucket phrase at every 4 bars.

Haha me too. I think stuff like Robin's IRS solo is the extreme case, but also his TIL solo has some of this weird tempo (lot of sudden stops) and attack with lots of micro-slides. This is why his solos are way harder to play exactly on his style. His tone too: 20 years later and I'm still trying to get it.

Could be. I believe Slash considers Robin's style way out of his own, but I don't think his solo in Better is that far from Robin's one compared to how he plays Bucket's solo in the same song.

I don't believe Slash was actually talking about Robin's solo in Better. He said "some of the stuff", probably meaning stuff in the album in general, like the whacky solos from Bucket and Bumble. I honestly believe he was talking more about Bucket's mid-solo in the song, which is pretty much what he described (no "serious melodic significance"). And he plays this part live doing whatever he feels like.

I don't think Richard was wrong on that, but I get what Nuno was saying at first. His response to Fortus was childish indeed. I tried to watch Rick Beato interview with Nuno and let me just say that I couldn't get past the 5 min (it was over an hour long). Hahaha. He's Portuguese, I believe?

I'm sure there is a Brain mashup remix called TV Eye On You with Axl and Duff sharing vocals. I love Robin's solo in that song. It's weird and unexpected, just as his best works.

Oh cool. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. He may overpower his lower register too if the mix isn't right for that, which would explain his extremely loud ABSURD shouts.

Here in Brazil I think we never had the AFD cross cover as default, so to me that original cover was always the one. Only when I started to use Internet back in 1998 that I found out that the cross cover was the official.

That's some very cool info, thanks for sharing. What do you mean by "less than hearty signal"?

The songs itself probably didn't, but they made some headlines. Surely it would help if they did interviews and actually promoted the thing, but those articles made aware that the band was on tour back then.

I know, but the compressor could only go so far. Keep in mind that we're talking about a guy who's constantly talking back in forth with his crew and can be pretty vocal (no pun intended) when things go wrong with his in-ear piece. Always wondered about that. But why nobody else have problem with this?

Yeah, compression and gain. Before the in-ear monitors, Axl used to have a lot of problems with feedback noises on stage because of this same reason, I believe.

That's great news. Looking forward for some unexpected collabs. I don't know if Axl would be on it, as it would drag way too much attention to the lack of GNR new music. But I wouldn't take the "more blues-oriented" comment as meaning it would be all traditional blues. Maybe it's a good opportunity for Slash to show his more mellow ideas, with less gain on his guitar, but still a blues-rock album.

You don't need loud monitors to hear everything, and for singers, this is a game change. You don't have to sing louder than the guitars and everything else, because you would be able to hear yourself clearly. The problem with Axl is that he sings in different volumes - the higher the pitch, the lower the volume because he uses less of his chest voice. I believe his in-ear monitor engineer have to manually adapt the volume to Axl's singing register/pitch on the fly. This is would also explain why the Glastonburry broadcast had those problems with the vocals, although it wasn't the only reason as far as I know. For guitarists, there's also the thing that you don't need those huge cabinets on stage. Some people use virtual amps on a laptop, so there wouldn't be other way to actually hear themselves. Also, I think @HollyWoodRose84 brought something very important to the table: you can hear everything at a lower level in your ear. But it's very important to keep both ears plugged, it's very dangerous to stress just one ear with the monitor.