Guns n Roses: Critical Rehab

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17721376

saying he felt neither "wanted or respected".

So is this Brit grammar, bad BBC grammar, or misquoting Axl's bad grammar? Because if Axl doesn't know it's neither/nor, not neither/or, I'll be very sad.

Bad BBC grammar. Pretty sure that, for all his faults, Axl can speak English proper.

I was just listening to "One in a Million." In my mind, the controversy about the lyrics were totally overblown, but shit, these are still shocking.

yeah, it's pretty hideous. too bad the tune and vocal are so great.

Yeah, it's an acoustic juggernaut, if only the lyrics were different. I read a grip of gnr biographies andeverybody's take onit is different. Duff and slash both purported to accept axl's explanation of a fictional narrator for the song, while being embarassed in their private lives and relationships. I think Adler says he believed that axl's http://kkkorner.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/nbomb5.jpg?w=350&h=259 was onlyon referenceto certain kinds of black people.

Huh. Niceautoreplace.

Also, please note that my opinion of adlers opinion is that he should walk off a fucking cliff.

Backstage at a Rolling Stones show in 1989 that GNR and Living Colour were both opening, Rose supposedly approached a visibly pissed Vernon Reid and said, "Hey, I didn't mean that YOU guys were n*ggers!"

Parts of the song that are unassailable:

1,2,1,2,3,4
(Whistling and modulating rhythm guitar)
Guess I needed sometime to get away
I needed some piece of mind
Some piece of mind that'll stay
So I thumbed it down to Sixth and L.A.
Maybe a Greyhound could be my way

and then it gets completely and totally assailable.

and then it launches into

ou're one in a million
Yeah, that's what you are
You're one in a million, babe
You're a shooting star
Maybe someday we'll see you
Before you make us cry
You know we tried to reach you
But you were much too high

which is just basically fucking awesome.

then the telegraph piano and vamping in the last minute or so of the song.

God, that fucking hillbilly chickenshit.

Oh yeah, here from 4:37 - 4:57

http://youtu.be/r_2jSPQYlLY

beachville otm, the rest of the song is so fucking good that i get so mad he had to add that happy horseshit to ruin it

Was this the last E-grade Christgau gave?

G N' R Lies [Geffen, 1988]
Axl's voice is a power tool with attachments, Slash's guitar a hype, the groove potent "hard rock," and the songwriting not without its virtues. So figure musical quality at around C plus and take the grade as a call to boycott, a reminder to clean livers who yearn for the wild side that the necessary link between sex-and-drugs and rock-and-roll is a Hollywood fantasy. Anyway, this band isn't even sex and drugs--it's dicking her ass before you smack up with her hatpin. (No wonder they want to do an AIDS benefit.) "One in a Million"--"Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me/They come to our country/And think they'll do as they please/Like start some mini-Iran/Or spread some fucking disease/They talk so many goddamn ways/It's all Greek to me"--is disgusting because it's heartfelt and disgusting again because it's a grandstand play. It gives away the "joke" (to quote the chickenshit "apologies" on the cover) about the offed girlfriend the way "Turn around bitch I've got a use for you" gives away "Sweet Child o' Mine." Back when they hit the racks, these posers talked a lot of guff about suicide. I'm still betting they don't have it in them to jump. E

"Anyway, this band isn't even sex and drugs--it's dicking her ass before you smack up with her hatpin."

wtf

I'm not ever sure what that means, but somehow he seems right... even though Appetite is all about sex and drugs

The compilation Ultimate Worship Music got an E in 2004, and Wow Hits 2003 got an E+ in 2002.

Smacking up with a hatpin? WAT

he means shooting up, not assaulting

ass my dick up, smack my pin up

is disgusting because it's heartfelt and disgusting again because it's a grandstand play.

this has always struck me as one of the most nonsensical things I've ever read in any piece of music criticism.

Fuck all of these bands. Kraftwerk isn't in .

then the telegraph piano and vamping in the last minute or so of the song

Holy shit, seriously, I've had piano-fade stuck in my head a lot over the past five or so years, and I could never remember where it was from, just that it was at the end of something exhausting (in a good way). Love the whole second side of Lies, "I Used to Love Her" not as much as the others though. Love the electric guitar on "One in a Million."

E+ !

Gentleman's E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YstFFBzNzPo

who's singing?

Myles Kennedy, the guy who replaced the Creed singer and almost replaced Robert Plant in the aborted Led Zep reunion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI709ie_fZw

Can't watch the clip now and I don't know any Alter Bridge songs by memory, so I dunno if this guy is an amazing singer or just the chillest bro in the business.

They couldn't have gotten, like, Sheryl Crow?

Wait, was Izzy there? Fuck Axl. No Izzy, no cred.

Izzy seems too chill for this kind of thing.

someone shoulda worn a "WHERE'S IZZY" shirt like in the "Don't Cry" video

Josh OTM. Izzy not even mentioned in that NYTimes piece = you don't get it.

weird every time i see axl it seems like he's gone up or down like 30-40 lbs in weight

he's not singing too bad in that clip actually compared to other stuff i've seen

really brings home how awesome slash is, those guitar solos are so composed you kinda have to do them exactly as the album

izzy did release a statement via duff at least: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2012/04/izzy_stradlin_rock_hall_of_fa.php

I want a t-shirt that read "Izzy don't Tweet, etc."

Izzy was the soul of that band.

Are there any bands where the "soul" isn't the quiet one?

Happy Mondays?

yeah, the ones where they're not called that because they're also the "face" or the "voice" etc. of the band (xpost)

Black Flag (Chuck Dukowski)

Keith is the soul of the Stones, no? I mean, you could claim Charlie, but I don't think he's the soul of the band. Just, simply by being the quietest, the most tolerable.

he means shooting up, not assaulting

Yeah, but...shooting up with a hatpin?

Christgau is old. That's probably how they talked about it in the '20s.

had to google "hatpin". figured he meant "rolling pin" or something.

that line is as nasty as any GnR misogynistic lyrics, kudos Dean of Rock Criticism

that review pretty much sums up why i've always disliked christgau's writing -- glib jokes posing as insights, un-parseable borderline gibberish that wouldn't pass muster on an early manic street preachers single, and that creepy seen-it-all attitude he affects sometimes ('dicking her ass before you smack up with her hatpin' being an especially repulsive example).

that line is as nasty as any GnR misogynistic lyrics

it's not even as nasty as the one xgau himself cites in the same paragraph imo

no kidding

well, "dicking her ass" is in reference to the line from "it's so easy" he later quotes: "turn around bitch, i've got a use for you". xgau's language is rather gross, but no more so than what he's paraphrasing. and "smack up with her hatpin" may sound risibly archaic in the here and now, but it probably made more sense a quarter century ago.