Guns n Roses: Critical Rehab

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.

I don't read Xgau regularly because life is too short for that, so I don't really know if there is a pattern of callous hatred in his writing that that line falls into, but as a standalone example it looks like it's taking all the repulsive hatred of the band's lyrics and reflecting it back at them.

He did suggest that Paxil was why Norah Jones didn't come...

xgau needs to go into critical rehab

He did suggest that Paxil was why Norah Jones didn't come...

I looked that up and that line is drowning in backpedalling and pre-emptive context setting before he even wrote it

as a standalone example it looks like it's taking all the repulsive hatred of the band's lyrics and reflecting it back at them.

that seems pretty plainly the idea, you don't just stumble onto a line like that without thinking "how can I make this sound really gross and horrible, like the record I'm writing about"

ok ok you guys win that point but he still sux

Except that GNR is gross in the name of art. What's Xgau's excuse?

you're joking right

Any critic who writes something other than the one-sheet is special in my book, so I like him. He want to embody what he reviews as much as he wants to write about it.

I'm joking right, left, all over this place. It's so easy.

did/could xgau know at the time that axl did in fact (try to?) anally rape stephanie seymour? and probably do drugs with her? idk it's what it reminded me of

wait what