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Most important album of the last 25 years.


Damn_Smooth

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It's still Nevermind. Whether or not you like it, it changed music forever.

Relax man, I didn't write the article. Although....I'm not too sure that changing music into something that led to Nickleback was such a positive thing. ;)

This ^^^^ If I wanted to listen to a whiny smackhead complaining about how much he hates his life I'd go hang around the bus station at rush hour. :rolleyes:

Edited by Dazey
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Good find!

Article isn't that long, most of the pages are pictures. Here's the whole thing:

Guns N' Roses' seminal album Appetite For Destruction came out 25 years ago this past Saturday. I was 9 years old when a foreign exchange student taped me a copy of it. I had heard "Welcome to the Jungle" about a zillion times before. But several seconds after W. Axl Rose's "Hunh!" ended that song, the real fun began. My pre-teen brain was warped forever. The opening bass riff of "It's So Easy" was like nothing I'd ever heard before: simple, raw, stripped down and direct.

Sure, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" similarly melted my brain a couple years later. However, Appetite gets broken out quarterly, spun obsessively for a couple weeks and then retired again. On the other hand, I turn the dial when songs off Nevermind come on the radio.

It's not that Nirvana were a bad rock band. It's just that Nevermind is a mediocre record. Clearly in tune with a Zeitgeist that craved a hard rock world outside of poodle hair and shiny animal print spandex, Nevermind broke open early '90s popular culture in a manner we probably won't see again. Perhaps that's why it seems so dated in 2012.

In the words of Kurt Cobain, "It's closer to a Mötley Crüe record than it is a punk rock record." Appetite, though, sounds more like a punk rock record than one by Nikki Sixx and company. While Nirvana might have been the last band to catch the record industry with its pants down, G'n'R were the last band to live the rock and roll lifestyle with no apologies. In its salad days, the band lacked both the cutesy-poo "good clean fun" mugging of bands like Warrant and Poison as well as the too-clever-by-half anguished earnestness of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.

Booze, tattoos and floozies. That's what G'n'R were about. That's a message I can get behind, even today. Early '90s divorce rock? That hasn't aged so well.

The important parts of Appetite are the deeper album cuts. "Nightrain" is the band's undisputed anthem, an ode to the pleasures of fast living and cheap liquor. "Mr. Brownstone" stands as the most straightforward heroin ode ever written, with an up-and-coming musician protagonist who "just keep tryin' to get a little better / Said a little better than before." "Out ta Get Me" tells a gripping story of paranoia with the standard Axl Rose lyrical directness ("I'm fuckin' innocent / So you can suck me") and post-coda admonitions ("Take that one to heart!").

The entire "B" (or "Roses," as the band titled it in their blithe arrogance) side is dedicated to ladies. "My Michelle" was written with brutal honesty about band associate Michelle Young. "You're Crazy," an electric reworking of an earlier acoustic song, stands as the most punk number on the album next to "It's So Easy." Appetite closes with "Rocket Queen," a song including audio of Rose allegedly fucking drummer Stephen Adler's girlfriend in the studio.

While Nevermind kicked off the mainstream grunge explosion, reignited interest in punk rock and inspired 10,000 garage bands, Appetite is the superior album and a damn sight more "punk" in a lot of ways (provided you're using bands like the Dead Boys, the Heartbreakers and Iggy & the Stooges as a point of reference). You might fancy yourself a deep thinker while trying to figure out what the lyrics to "In Bloom" mean, but I'll take the sublime simplicity of "Turn around, bitch / I got a use for you" any day of the week.

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I totally agree with that article.

AFD and GNR changed the face and the sound of music with this album. Before that was all the pop metal hair bands. don't get me wrong, I loved most of those bands, but when GNR came out, they were the change that was very much needed.

This album is in your face, don't give a fuck, rock and roll. They played the music and at that time lived the life style. Like the Rolling Stones before them, no band was bad-ass like they were. They played what they wanted to play and acted like they wanted to act. When the government was saying "say no to drugs" GNR wasn't listening. lol

AFD is as relivante today as it was over 25 years ago. Like Led Zepplin's Stairway to Heaven, Welcome to the Jungle, was an anthem then and it is still one today.

Whatever differences these 5 guys had and still do, this is one of the most important achievements anyone of them will ever make in this album. whatever is said about GNR, AFD has and always will be one of the most amazing rock albums of all times and for future generations to come.

I hope in years to come GNR is remembered for their amazing albums and not their inner demons.

This is one album GNR can be most proud of now and forever!

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This album is in your face, don't give a fuck, rock and roll. They played the music and at that time lived the life style. Like the Rolling Stones before them, no band was bad-ass like they were. They played what they wanted to play and acted like they wanted to act. When the government was saying "say no to drugs" GNR wasn't listening. lol

Question is...will we ever see this happen again in todays ridiculously politically correct world?

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This album is in your face, don't give a fuck, rock and roll. They played the music and at that time lived the life style. Like the Rolling Stones before them, no band was bad-ass like they were. They played what they wanted to play and acted like they wanted to act. When the government was saying "say no to drugs" GNR wasn't listening. lol

Question is...will we ever see this happen again in todays ridiculously politically correct world?

I certainly hope so. Music isn't meant to be politically correct. It's supposed to make you think and feel and respond.

Besides, that's what those warning labels are for! lol

Also, I don't see anyone worrying about the shit those hip/hop singers sing about. why should rockers worry?

Rock music has and always should be about rebellion and for years many many people have tried to stop it, but guess what? It's still here and I believe it will always be here and one of the reasons is because of albums like AFD.

If GNR doesn't do it again, I'm sure there will be other bands who will continue to push the envelop in the name of rock and roll.

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There's no disputing that Nevermind was a great album and Nirvana a great band, but for me personally after an hour it's just boring. The emotional undertone in any one song is the same as all the others. AFD and GNR in general has so much more emotional diversity. No matter what mood you're in there's a GNR song to suit. Nirvana probably thought they were too 'cool' to do songs like SCOM or Don't Cry but I actually think they didn't have the guts to put themselves out there like that.

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I'm not too sure that changing music into something that led to Nickleback was such a positive thing.

It wasn't a positive thing at all man. :anger: It was the stupidest thing that could've ever happened to music. :angry:

nicklecrack sucks. Big-Time. And I'm Canadian. Chad's a complete poseur AND a pompous dickhead. Nothing but a big GOOF!!! :hahafyou:

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nevermind changed nothing

It changed music more than Appetite for Destruction did.

AFD changed absolutely nothing in the music scene. Gn'R was just another hard rock band in that era with Mötley Crüe, and a few other bands during that time. 'The next Rolling Stones' is not original. It's just the 'next Rolling Stones' that happened to tail off Hair Metal.

Do you know how Nirvana changed the music scene? Because there was simply nothing to compare to them before and since. They were original and they did change music a lot more than Gn'R ever could. Nickelback may be a terrible band, and so are many modern alternative bands, but it would be safe to say they are influenced by Nirvana more than Gn'R because Nirvana changed music. They didn't just write some cliché hard rock album in the '80s like many bands before.

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nevermind changed nothing

It changed music more than Appetite for Destruction did.

AFD changed absolutely nothing in the music scene. Gn'R was just another hard rock band in that era with Mötley Crüe, and a few other bands during that time. 'The next Rolling Stones' is not original. It's just the 'next Rolling Stones' that happened to tail off Hair Metal.

Do you know how Nirvana changed the music scene? Because there was simply nothing to compare to them before and since. They were original and they did change music a lot more than Gn'R ever could. Nickelback may be a terrible band, and so are many modern alternative bands, but it would be safe to say they are influenced by Nirvana more than Gn'R because Nirvana changed music. They didn't just write some cliché hard rock album in the '80s like many bands before.

GNR were more like a kick in the ass and a reminder at the time of what rock and roll is supposed to be about. Nirvana were essentially doing the same thing, except they were coming from college radio/indie rock world, with a more cynical point of view about things.

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Nirvana just bitched about things and cried about how depressing everything was. Guns (AFD) were more about "where's the party....where are the chicks".

Yeah and how was it any different than Girls, Girls, Girls by Crüe. Their style, personality, and story has all been done countless times. That is why AFD being important is absurd and downright puzzling.

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