08/15/23 - East Rutherford, NJ - Metlife Stadium

[AtlasShrugged]

2 minutes ago, Nightrain7 said:

Agree. When watching them in Sydney 2022 in the freezing cold pouring rain, its a long show with odd pacing. Testing for a casual fan. 
as a diehard i loved it, but thats easy when you know every song.

Going from SCOM, NV, KOHD, to fucking Wichita and Sorry (Sydney) is such a buzz kill for a casual.

The encore- should be big hits.  Patience, Dont Cry, Paradise is enough. 
 

Its surprising that at a GNR concert not many songs are known by the majority. ID say more than 50% in attendance only know WTTJ, SCOM, LALD, NV, KOHD, Patience + PC. With a few more knowing some AFD songs like Nightrain, RQ, Civil War, YCBM. But thats it. 
 

For a band with a small catalog, not much is know by the masses other than the major hits.

Yeah it really did strike me how few big hits they actually have. I had zero complaints like I say but the opening salvo is def on the 'rarer' side of their discography. Even Coma in the encore is a bit odd. Again, perfect for me but probably meant very little to the majority.

 

[Blackstar]

If they were to play only for the casual fans they should be doing a 15 song set - about half the length they're doing now.

[Nightrain7]

6 minutes ago, AtlasShrugged said:

Yeah it really did strike me how few big hits they actually have. I had zero complaints like I say but the opening salvo is def on the 'rarer' side of their discography. Even Coma in the encore is a bit odd. Again, perfect for me but probably meant very little to the majority.

 

Its the debate of - well would you be happy paying $300 + (not sure what other Country’s are paying for tickets) for a shorter more fast past show, or pay the same and hear 3 hours of songs. 
Whats bang for the buck? Fast past, intense, hit driven, shorter gig ? Or a gig where everything is covered…

Even by the end of our gig I was getting a bit tired and cold (it poured the entire show) or the 30 beers were taking its toll hah.

[PatrickS77]

33 minutes ago, Coma16 said:

I only know one of these songs. Fuck this band.

Huh? More like fuck you if you don't know the songs.

[Nightrain7]

45 minutes ago, Coma16 said:

I only know one of these songs. Fuck this band.

That you Craig ?

[HollyWoodRose84]

43 minutes ago, IzzysMissy said:

I can list tickets at $1mm if I wanted to. Also. Pit Tickets. There are 1000 pit tickets. There are 45K other tickets ya gotta sell too. Just playin devils advocate here - many decades of music biz life has taught me many things, concert production and ticket sales cycles being two of them.

I was actually agreeing with your post. I was just pointing out that people were gouging pit prices right up until the end. The entire industry today is a joke. The promoters/ artists keep trying to justify these prices based upon lost revenue from Covid. The amount of greed that is going on right now is over the top. 

[meadsoap]

2 hours ago, IzzysMissy said:

Fair. The promoter provided thousands upon thousands of free tickets agencies, radio stations and orgs because sales were stupid low and the stadium would have been empty. People, when receiving free tix, only redeem them maybe 20/25% of the time. GNR fans can delude themselves however they want but in the US at least, gnr is playing to empty stadiums. 

The other three stadium shows they did this year were packed, with no mention of free tickets at all. MetLife is a huge venue too. If they sold half of MetLife, than that's 25,000 which is still a very respectable number considering how many times they've been back in the US. 

Edited August 16, 2023 by meadsoap

[W. Axl Kev]

12 hours ago, HollyWoodRose84 said:

His voice is off tonight 

This is completely at odds with what I watched in person last night. He sounded fantastic.

[bmus1]

Taking my mom to Fenway next week; she's excited for Appetite and the singles, I'm equally excited for that as well as CD-era songs and any new ones we'll get. I'm curious how she's going to like it based on the pacing from this show. But Fenway is also probably going to be shorter and more in the 22-25 song range (sadly).

[IzzysMissy]

9 minutes ago, HollyWoodRose84 said:

I was actually agreeing with your post. I was just pointing out that people were gouging pit prices right up until the end. The entire industry today is a joke. The promoters/ artists keep trying to justify these prices based upon lost revenue from Covid. The amount of greed that is going on right now is over the top. 

All good I was just pointing out some things I’ve learned! On Reddit right now, people are of the “best show ever, Axl sounded like 80s/90s Axl but THE MIX WAS BAD” and are downvoting anyone not BLAMING THE CREW. It’s infuriating honestly.. to blame THE CREW for Axl sounds.. he sounds the way he sounds, and people REALLY need to be more realistic about their expectations.

Would love to continue the discussion but alas, some tour work is calling me 🫠 have a fab day folks! At least we are all gnr fans right?

[Blackstar]

Based on what I have watched from this tour - Glastonbury, full Athens show (because it was a show I would normally have attended) and videos from other shows - I think it's both Axl and the mix.

There are moments when Axl can be barely heard, and that seems to happen only when he sings high without screaming or putting extra power, which suggests that his high notes have weakened to the point that his voice can't be projected with power when he tries to hit them "normally" (I'm not talking about the "rasp").

But strange things happen with the mix, too. Maybe Fortus likes the new person, but I've noticed many screw-ups. For example, it seems that the backing vocals are deliberately high in the mix in some cases, however at times it sounded like they were suddenly turned up so loud that you could only hear Duff or Melissa (I mentioned Civil War from Athens as an example, and there was a video of PTU from another show, don't remember which one, where suddenly it was like only Melissa was singing on the chorus. Also at times the guitars were very low. Or course I'm relying only on videos, but I've heard the same from people who attended in Athens.

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by Blackstar

[W. Axl Kev]

3 hours ago, IzzysMissy said:

Fair. The promoter provided thousands upon thousands of free tickets agencies, radio stations and orgs because sales were stupid low and the stadium would have been empty. People, when receiving free tix, only redeem them maybe 20/25% of the time. GNR fans can delude themselves however they want but in the US at least, gnr is playing to empty stadiums. 

Where does this information come from exactly? If you have a verifiable source of information, fair enough but people seem to just type whatever they want on this forum and we're supposed to accept it as true because it's written in a way that sounds semi-credible.

Were you there last night? I was and the place was packed. I actually have photos and footage to show that.

[HollyWoodRose84]

1 hour ago, W. Axl Kev said:

This is completely at odds with what I watched in person last night. He sounded fantastic.

You must be joking. 
 

The pretenders were better than guns last night  

[HollyWoodRose84]

I’m going to comment on this whole mixing situation. A lot of the times when you couldn’t hear Axl sing was because he wasn’t singing. You could hear duff and Melissa clear as day. Melissa’s main job is to fill in for Axl. It’s painfully obvious and I think it’s also hindering the overall band performance because the energy(Axl’s voice)  just isn’t there anymore.

I was in the pit, in a suite and on the side of the stage from a sound perspective, there was no change. Axl can’t get to those notes anymore. And regarding Slash, my industry friend made an awesome comment last night. The way Slash has been playing lately is like giving a kid a crayon and a piece of paper and watching him just doodle nonsense. 
 

not here to bash anyone just pointing out certain things that are painfully obvious to anyone who’s watching. 

[Subtle Signs]

2 hours ago, IzzysMissy said:

I can list tickets at $1mm if I wanted to. Also. Pit Tickets. There are 1000 pit tickets. There are 45K other tickets ya gotta sell too. Just playin devils advocate here - many decades of music biz life has taught me many things, concert production and ticket sales cycles being two of them.

People here laughed at me when I said the way to increase ticket sales is to play an AFD tour with Izzy and Adler. So,if that's true and it won't sell more tickets,what should they do? I doubt a new album will bring 20,000 more fans per show either. So, what's left,IMO are co headliner stadium tours with bands like Motley. Live Nation probably did great numbers with Motley/Lep/Poison last year. Axl,Slash and Duff have to be rich beyond belief but maybe as an ego thing ,they don't wanna play half empty stadiums. I can't imagine Live Nation will give them however many millions per show next tour in the US if sales are that poor. 

[bmus1]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

But strange things happen with the mix, too. Maybe Fortus likes the new person, but I've noticed many screw-ups. For example, it seems that the backing vocals are deliberately high in the mix in some cases, however at times it sounded like they were suddenly turned up so loud that you could only hear Duff or Melissa (I mentioned Civil War from Athens as an example, and there was a video of PTU from another show, don't remember which one, where suddenly it was like only Melissa was singing on the chorus. Also at times the guitars were very low. Or course I'm relying only on videos, but I've heard the same from people who attended in Athens.

 

I spent some time thinking about this, but I can't come up with another group other than GNR where the singer goes from dramatically loud to dramatically soft singing at a moment's notice with a live band on stage. The amount of compression to compensate for the switches between the Axl voice and the Mickey voice doesn't exist in a live setting with the drums sometimes 10 feet away from Axl's mic. Pop acts typically have compression dialed way up on their mics, but their stage layout either has their bands isolated far away, or even off stage/to a backing track.

Dave Matthews has a giant "button" on the ground in front of his microphone that will mute the mic when he's not standing in front of it to prevent bleed. When he stands on it to talk to the audience, or during a quiet section of the song, you can noticeably hear the crowd noise coming through the PA, and his voice is way more consistent volume-wise than Axl's is. I'm sure the sound person has their work cut out for them and has to ride the fader a LOT to get Axl's voice to sit nicely song-to-song without distorting the mic feed with crowd and band noise. There's no amount of vocal chain magic on a live stadium stage that can fully accommodate switching to and from quiet, weak Mickey voice without assistance from someone on the board too. And because of how random Axl will switch his voice, that has to affect the mix a ton.

tl;dr Mickey quiet, Axl scream loud. In a controlled environment that's fine, but on stage... I feel for their sound mixer.

[PatrickS77]

10 minutes ago, HollyWoodRose84 said:

And regarding Slash, my industry friend made an awesome comment last night. The way Slash has been playing lately is like giving a kid a crayon and a piece of paper and watching him just doodle nonsense. 

 

not here to bash anyone just pointing out certain things that are painfully obvious to anyone who’s watching. 

Just because your "industry friend" says something, doesn't mean it has any merit. I call bullshit and LOL at "painfully obvious". Fans around the world seem to disagree.

[meadsoap]

20 minutes ago, Subtle Signs said:

People here laughed at me when I said the way to increase ticket sales is to play an AFD tour with Izzy and Adler. So,if that's true and it won't sell more tickets,what should they do? I doubt a new album will bring 20,000 more fans per show either. So, what's left,IMO are co headliner stadium tours with bands like Motley. Live Nation probably did great numbers with Motley/Lep/Poison last year. Axl,Slash and Duff have to be rich beyond belief but maybe as an ego thing ,they don't wanna play half empty stadiums. I can't imagine Live Nation will give them however many millions per show next tour in the US if sales are that poor. 

They just played multiple sold out shows in Europe/Middle East, and the first 3 shows they did in NA were very full too. Even (some) people who were at MetLife say they were packed. Their clearly still a stadium level band. The attempts to downplay it here are very weird tbh.

Edited August 16, 2023 by meadsoap

[Blackstar]

11 minutes ago, bmus1 said:

I spent some time thinking about this, but I can't come up with another group other than GNR where the singer goes from dramatically loud to dramatically soft singing at a moment's notice with a live band on stage. The amount of compression to compensate for the switches between the Axl voice and the Mickey voice doesn't exist in a live setting with the drums sometimes 10 feet away from Axl's mic. Pop acts typically have compression dialed way up on their mics, but their stage layout either has their bands isolated far away, or even off stage/to a backing track.

Dave Matthews has a giant "button" on the ground in front of his microphone that will mute the mic when he's not standing in front of it to prevent bleed. When he stands on it to talk to the audience, or during a quiet section of the song, you can noticeably hear the crowd noise coming through the PA, and his voice is way more consistent volume-wise than Axl's is. I'm sure the sound person has their work cut out for them and has to ride the fader a LOT to get Axl's voice to sit nicely song-to-song without distorting the mic feed with crowd and band noise. There's no amount of vocal chain magic on a live stadium stage that can fully accommodate switching to and from quiet, weak Mickey voice without assistance from someone on the board too. And because of how random Axl will switch his voice, that has to affect the mix a ton.

tl;dr Mickey quiet, Axl scream loud. In a controlled environment that's fine, but on stage... I feel for their sound mixer.

There seems to be some difference in volume even between Axl screaming high notes (e.g. Reckless Life) and singing with his lower voice (e.g. Bad Obsession). His voice in the latter cases comes out louder and fuller.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Blackstar

[HollyWoodRose84]

8 minutes ago, PatrickS77 said:

Just because your "industry friend" says something, doesn't mean it has any merit. I call bullshit and LOL at "painfully obvious". Fans around the world seem to disagree.

Not necessarily because my “industry friend” is actually a renowned guitar player.  

 

on a side note and completely unrelated, I saw Guns security handing out orange guitar picks to some people and I forgot to inquire as to what that was all about. 

[IzzysMissy]

47 minutes ago, W. Axl Kev said:

Where does this information come from exactly? If you have a verifiable source of information, fair enough but people seem to just type whatever they want on this forum and we're supposed to accept it as true because it's written in a way that sounds semi-credible.

Were you there last night? I was and the place was packed. I actually have photos and footage to show that.

So I was just going to leave this be but that ain’t the real me so… for the record I (like another poster on this forum in radio) will not be doxing myself to prove a point on the internet.. but I, along with a few people here, are in fact music industry people. You can tell by how the information is disseminated, the verbiage used, etc. 

Now a music biz lesson for those who care:

When you say “the place was packed” it was LITERALLY an illusion my man. MetLife was built with concerts specifically in mind outside of the nfl season and the modern stadium/arena build model is losely based on the checkerboard pattern using several shades of the greyscale. 
 

What is checkerboard pattern? Imagine two rows of seats, back to back. Every 2nd or 3rd seat is a different shade of grey/black/white. When there are empty seats, your eyes don’t SEE the “empty seat” because of the intentionally created optical illusion. 
 

Hence you “saw” that the place was “packed”. It was very much not. When you zoom in on the stadium shots, you can literally see the different color seats with no one in them.

Source? Did a huge music industry walkthrough at MetLife right before it opened where the architect discussed this as the “way forward for stadiums and arenas”

Since my approval on here I’ve tried dropping some Easter Egg hints about how to save money, ticket buying strategy and etc. I have never claimed to be an insider or whatever, even though I technically am music biz wise. I did post here BEFORE DOORS asking if anyone remembered if Andrew Dice Clay was on the bill before, because I was sent Set Times early and he was on it. I must have been clairvoyant or something to bring that name out of the bag right 🤣
 

There are some posters on here who simply refuse to hear what is painfully obvious to the remaining realists of this fan base: GNR just doesn’t sound good anymore. Good for ANYONE willing to spend money on this and enjoy it, but I refuse to pretend it is anything but nostalgic and mediocre.

Happy to answer any other general biz questions if anyone has any though! An educated consumer is the BEST consumer.
 

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by IzzysMissy
Small typo

[HollyWoodRose84]

7 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

There seems to be some difference in volume even between Axl screaming high notes (e.g. Reckless Life) and singing with his lower voice (e.g. Bad Obsession). His voice in the latter cases comes out louder and fuller.

Not a volume difference. He’s just not singing the high notes. The actual live mix itself is pretty clear.  

[HollyWoodRose84]

3 hours ago, Amir said:

People asking for up to $10,000 for resale tickets for the Florida gig, would like some of what they're smoking

It’s Florida so probably meth. 

[chester]

Who gives a shit about the casual fan that only knows 4 songs? Yeah, maybe the band should but as a fan of the band beyond the hits, fuck’em. I want to hear as many songs live as possible. Craig was a funny drunk cunt though I admit. 

[Stay.Of.Execution]

11 minutes ago, IzzysMissy said:

 

There are some posters on here who simply refuse to hear what is painfully obvious to the remaining realists of this fan base: GNR just doesn’t sound good anymore. Good for ANYONE willing to spend money on this and enjoy it, but I refuse to pretend it is anything but nostalgic and mediocre.

I love it when people claim something subjective to be an undeniable fact.