"The General" is officially delayed... but "The General" AND "Monsters" is (unofficially) out of the bag

[Barlog]

Just imagine when The General drops and it's brickwalled to death 😂

[rumandraisin]

16 hours ago, Lies They Tell said:

You mean The General? Dude, people have been waiting for that song way longer. 2006 wasn't the first time we heard about The General. I don't remember the exact date when we heard about The General for the first time, but it's one of the earliest songs that we knew about. It was a highly anticipated song long before Sebastian Bach had made any comments about it and long before the intro was played in the concerts. The General, Prostitute and This I Love were probably the most hyped songs before anything from Chinese Democracy had been leaked and way before 2006. 

I don't even know why some people wanted to hear The General so much before we knew anything about it. Maybe the name just sounded so cool. I was always in the Prostitute camp back then. That's the song that I was hyped about because somebody had said that the song sounds like fire and ice. A song with that kind of a contrast sounded awesome to me. In the end Prostitute sounded nothing like I expected, but it's still a great song.

I wasn't aware we knew about the General before Bach's comments? It's deffinately not one of the earliest we knew about. That would be the title track, IRS, Oklahoma, TWAT, TII and a few others all prior to the first gig in 2001. 

Edited September 25, 2023 by rumandraisin

[Blackstar]

It's almost safe to assume that The General was mastered by Bob Ludwig as well. So it most likely had the same treatment as Perhaps regarding compression level, which is significantly less than Hard Skool (someone posted screenshots from Audacity a while back).

5 minutes ago, rumandraisin said:

I wasn't aware we knew about the General before Bach's comments? 

It was mentioned by Marco Beltrami in 2003 (along Seven, Thyme and Leave Me Alone) with no further details.

[rumandraisin]

6 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

It's almost safe to assume that The General was mastered by Bob Ludwig as well. So it most likely had the same treatment as Perhaps regarding compression level, which is significantly less than Hard Skool (someone posted screenshots from Audacity a while back).

It was mentioned by Marco Beltrami in 2003 (along Seven, Thyme and Leave Me Alone) with no further details.

AHH of course. So about halfway between what I said and who I quoted haha. 

[Lies They Tell]

1 hour ago, rumandraisin said:

It's deffinately not one of the earliest we knew about. That would be the title track, IRS, Oklahoma, TWAT, TII and a few others all prior to the first gig in 2001. 

Now you're just splitting hair. With one of the earliest I obviously meant all the songs that we knew before anything had leaked.

In hindsight I gotta say say though, it feels funny that we learned about The General only three years before Sebastian Bach made those comments. That time period when we waited for Chinese Democracy felt like an eternity back then. Of course I was much younger then, so that explains it. But it feels like we had talked about these songs forever before anything leaked. But at the end of the day we had known about The General, Seven and Leave Me Alone (Soulmonster) for only three years before things started to happen. Although we still haven't heard those three songs. At least not properly. 😅

Edited September 25, 2023 by Lies They Tell

[Sweersa]

1 hour ago, Barlog said:

Just imagine when The General drops and it's brickwalled to death 😂

Many of us are expecting that. I hope the lead guitar we hear in the party recording isn’t re-recorded, and if so, I hope they keep those notes. 

[Sweersa]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

It's almost safe to assume that The General was mastered by Bob Ludwig as well. So it most likely had the same treatment as Perhaps regarding compression level, which is significantly less than Hard Skool (someone posted screenshots from Audacity a while back).

It was mentioned by Marco Beltrami in 2003 (along Seven, Thyme and Leave Me Alone) with no further details.

I’m a little confused by this. Why would Bob Ludwig master The General and not Hard Skool and Absurd? I’d imagine them only wanting songs scheduled for release to be mastered. I bought the songs they played at the 2010 after party were mastered, probably just mixed. (Like all of the leaks we have gotten, I don’t believe any of them were mastered, at least fully) 

Axl and his buddy Caram mixed the first two singles in 2021, not sure who mastered them but they were done poorly and my understanding is they actually had a pro mix and master Perhaps, this the difference in quality between the two releases.

[Coma16]

18 minutes ago, Sweersa said:

Many of us are expecting that. I hope the lead guitar we hear in the party recording isn’t re-recorded, and if so, I hope they keep those notes. 

It would be cool if they keep just the first note before Slash lazily plays a new solo that doesn't go anywhere

 

[Blackstar]

15 minutes ago, Sweersa said:

I’m a little confused by this. Why would Bob Ludwig master The General and not Hard Skool and Absurd? I’d imagine them only wanting songs scheduled for release to be mastered. I bought the songs they played at the 2010 after party were mastered, probably just mixed. (Like all of the leaks we have gotten, I don’t believe any of them were mastered, at least fully) 

Axl and his buddy Caram mixed the first two singles in 2021, not sure who mastered them but they were done poorly and my understanding is they actually had a pro mix and master Perhaps, this the difference in quality between the two releases.

Absurd and Hard Skool were mastered at Sterling Studios (I don't remember the name of the engineer), probably with only the streaming platforms in mind. I suppose they took the criticism about the compression and loudness into consideration, so they went to Bob Ludwig for Perhaps (and most likely The General, as well).

Edited September 25, 2023 by Blackstar

[Rovim]

Just now, Coma16 said:

It would be cool if they keep just the first note before Slash lazily plays a new solo that doesn't go anywhere

 

if it ain't broke... heh nah, I really enjoy Slash's Perhaps solo, though I prefer the original Robin one.

[Blackstar]

I just saw that Sterling Studios list Perhaps among their mastering works (Ted Jensen is the engineer, who also did the UYI remaster and the mastering of Absurd, but not Hard Skool):

https://sterling-sound.com/discography/perhaps/

However, Bob Ludwig is credited in the official credits:

Interesting... Maybe the band didn't like the original mastering by Jensen and went to Ludwig?

Edited September 25, 2023 by Blackstar

[jacdaniel]

1 hour ago, Coma16 said:

It would be cool if they keep just the first note before Slash lazily plays a new solo that doesn't go anywhere

 

Did you hear Slash's solo on the General? 

How many Guns N Roses songs has he recorded where the solo went nowhere? 

[Coma16]

7 minutes ago, jacdaniel said:

Did you hear Slash's solo on the General? 

How many Guns N Roses songs has he recorded where the solo went nowhere? 

How would I have heard it? 

[jacdaniel]

16 minutes ago, Coma16 said:

How would I have heard it? 

I'm just wondering where you get the impression that he'll lazily play a solo that goes nowhere... 

 

[Coma16]

21 minutes ago, jacdaniel said:

I'm just wondering where you get the impression that he'll lazily play a solo that goes nowhere... 

 

Perhaps I was wrong 

[Nick85]

Man I hope Friday really is the day. Any rumblings anywhere else??

[Arnuld]

Is the song this week? Are people calling the Juke Box companies, Radio stations, train stations, bus stations, the airlines, studios, speaker manufacturers, record stores, (there have to be at least 5 left), Geffen Records, interscope records, and the personal line of Jimmy Iovine?! Cmon we must know when the General is going to drop! 
 

The problem is the band has released so little in the past 30 years it has whittled the psycho fan base down to almost nothing. I went to a Pearl Jam concert last week. Now that band has a psycho fan base. They had an entire arena singing along to deep cuts. 

[Coma16]

43 minutes ago, Arnuld said:

Is the song this week? Are people calling the Juke Box companies, Radio stations, train stations, bus stations, the airlines, studios, speaker manufacturers, record stores, (there have to be at least 5 left), Geffen Records, interscope records, and the personal line of Jimmy Iovine?! Cmon we must know when the General is going to drop! 
 

The problem is the band has released so little in the past 30 years it has whittled the psycho fan base down to almost nothing. I went to a Pearl Jam concert last week. Now that band has a psycho fan base. They had an entire arena singing along to deep cuts. 

Most attendees are die hards, which is opposite for GNR. PJ has maybe 3-4 recognizable songs to the average person who wasn't around in the 90s.

[colonizedmind]

Any updates of whether The General has assembled his troups yet? 

[Axls_Moustache_Rules]

On 9/21/2023 at 7:35 PM, Nick85 said:

Jock on 95.5 here in Chicago just said a new GNR track could be popping up “sometime next week”! 😮

Are you the only person who heard this or something?

[Arnuld]

31 minutes ago, Coma16 said:

Most attendees are die hards, which is opposite for GNR. PJ has maybe 3-4 recognizable songs to the average person who wasn't around in the 90s.

All I could think is that I wish I could go to a GNR show that was like this. I think if they gathered all the die hards from around the world and put all of us in an arena and let us pick the set list we could pull it off

Edited September 25, 2023 by Arnuld

[Wabby]

im thinking since no one else has heard any rumblings it wont be out this week, im going to stick to what i guessed earlier and say Oct 07

[DoMw94]

I'm expecting it to quietly slip out on October 27 and be added to streaming services and YouTube on that date with little fanfare.

It's confirmed as a B-side to a single. There's very little to suggest that they'll release it as a single or make a big song and dance about it aside from the usual forum hysteria...

[Wabby]

7 minutes ago, DoMw94 said:

I'm expecting it to quietly slip out on October 27 and be added to streaming services and YouTube on that date with little fanfare.

It's confirmed as a B-side to a single. There's very little to suggest that they'll release it as a single or make a big song and dance about it aside from the usual forum hysteria...

Well if Richard didnt say that they were going to play it live id believe that but i dont think they want to wait til they have a couple shows left

[DoMw94]

2 minutes ago, Wabby said:

Well if Richard didnt say that they were going to play it live id believe that but i dont think they want to wait til they have a couple shows left

They already plenty of songs that aren't singles though 🤷‍♂️ That's not enough of a factor for me