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Does anyone else love the UYIs AS IS?


Vincent Vega

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I know it's popular to denounce the UYI albums and UYI era since the Alan Niven interview, but does anyone love them as is? I think they are a perfect follow up to AFD and showed the band wasn't a one trick pony in many ways. Alan Niven can say "Elton Rose" all he wants but at least GN'R wasn't another AC/DC, remaking the same album every year.

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Guest Len B'stard

Yeah i love it like it is but not because it's the perfect follow up cuz it weren't in the proper sense of the word perfect, i loved it cuz it was a big sprawling throw everything but the kitchen sink at it type production and i've always loved those kindsa albums, sort of like the beatles white album, if you've got the talent in your group to do it (and GnR did i think, just about anyway) then you can make it work and they did, bless em.

I don't put it on the level of the white album but at the same time i don't think there's a bad song on all of em although i never really thought much of Coma, still, not a bad song though. In fact i don't see a bad song on all of the albums like i said, My World but that ain't really a song is it, it's a little fuck about that they just slung on there and if you treat it as such then yeah, it's cool too in it's own way.

So yeah, i love em as they are, warts and all as the saying goes.

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I know it's popular to denounce the UYI albums and UYI era since the Alan Niven interview, but does anyone love them as is? I think they are a perfect follow up to AFD and showed the band wasn't a one trick pony in many ways. Alan Niven can say "Elton Rose" all he wants but at least GN'R wasn't another AC/DC, remaking the same album every year.

Totally agree.

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I would have liked to have gotten one more album in the vein of Appetite, that said the Illusion albums are great follow ups. Considering the success of Appetite, they stand on their own as two amazing records.

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They're good but I agree with what Axl said that had they just taken the best 15 or so songs and made a single album it would've been "more effective and powerful." They could've used the other songs as b-sides to then be put together as an EP when the tour ended. I would've preferred that over The Spaghetti Incident.

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UYI 1 is my favorite GNR Record, but i remember that i thought the Illusion records were very boring when i first got to hear them.

I literaly had just listened Appetite before and was in bed at 4am, i put in Use Your illusion 1 and i remember i listened to the first song and thought it was killer, and then when Dust N'Bones came, by the end of that song i told myself i would listen to the album later, then i put UYI 2 listened to part of Civil War and said the same thing.

Then the next day, i tried to listen to Use Your Illusion 1 again, and i started out with the Singles... November Rain, Don't Cry and Live and Let Die...then i said to myself... fuck it, let me hear the rest... put on Dust N'Bones again and enjoyed it, even though i thought it was a filler at the time.

Then put on Perfect Crime and i went nuts... i went nuts when i heard Back Off Bitch as well (at the time i had just broken up with my gf but i still liked her and i thought she was beautiful but a real bitch) So i really could identify myself with the song (face of an angel with the love of a witch, Back off, back off bitch).

Really liked The Garden, Don't damn me, double talkin' jive... i liked everything besides the "country kind" of songs....Dust n' Bones, You ain't the first, Bad Obsession ( i didn't like those too much at first).

Then i listened to the Use Your Illusion 2 record... i and i did the same thing...i had to listen to the well known songs first... so You Could Be Mine followed by Civil War, followed by Don't Cry 2 and Estranged and Yesterdays...then on Use Your Illusion 2 besides those the only song i liked from that album was Pretty Tied Up.

I didn't like Breakdown and Locomotive at first, i thought those 2 were the fillers of that album....

Get in the Ring was not great but fun to listen to, and Shotgun Blues was so so...

At this point Appetite was my favorite record still obviously... but with time and as life went by i got more involved lyrically and emotionally with UYI 1. And that's why it's my favorite album.

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I like them as they are, but it's clear that they had two albums worth of material with songs from different eras. There are were some songs that were fit for B-sides (ie Bad Apples, my world) that made the cut that didn't need to for sure though. But at the end of the day it's pretty irrelevant. I would rather have it out there and released like it was rather than having heaps of unreleased music like it is now with the Chinese Democracy stuff.

A8R

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  • 2 weeks later...

To me it's like when movies are re-released with new footage or director's cuts. I suppose it's, in a technical sense, "better," but it is overriding the fact that these albums were the artistic creations of the band from 1990-1991 Yes, the Use Your Illusion albums have some throw away tracks on them. Yes, the albums' sequencing is flawed. Yes, the drum sound is awful. Yes Izzy's guitar is barely audible on the majority of tracks. Yes the ridiculous synth sounds and weird vocal mannerisms sometimes stick out like sore thumbs. Yet, I still love these albums because of their imperfections. It is an interesting look at a band that had more or less shattered and was being held together by glue. A true testament to the time, and I'm glad we got it before the band completely imploded. There are some defining moments on there.

Edited by themadcaplaughs
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  • 2 weeks later...

Some of my favorite songs are the ballads and actually Elton John is one of my favorite musicians, so I don't have a problem at all with Axl incorporating that influence into the GN'R sound. My only problem with the UYI is that they ruined some good songs with too much production added onto them. The best example is Knocking On Heaven's Door. My favorite version of the song is still from the 1988 Ritz concert. Stripped down version with great energy. The album version on UYI is overproduced to hell and just doesn't sound as good as it should. The other problem with these albums is that there are some songs that should've been cut. Shotgun Blues and Get In The Ring are good musically, but Axl ruined them with terrible lyrics. Then there is My World, the worst GN'R song ever (even worse than some of the crap on Chinese Democracy).

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