Hitchiker: Music

Prog Rock

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 05:37:14 GMT

Renegade is a Really Cool song...

yeah I like these Stadium Rockers...

Styx has been a discovery...

Nice Spacey guitar riffs and arbit lyrics make my day

Quite similar to Queen though with a much more obvious hard Rock influence than the oftentimes operatic styles the royal band included into their repertoire...

Harmonious Discontent

Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:42:50 GMT

Opeth the band from Sweden put out such a musically complex and diverse sound that most of their fanbase seems to come not from the, dark frustrated moanings of a fast becoming redundant, Death metal scene than from Blues and Jazz...

Maybe their kind of sound will come as a caution to the DreamTheater camp of Metal which puts extreme lyrical verbosity along with (generally) fou different instrumental solo's happening AT THE SAME TIME...

However the Opeth album I've heard (Morningrise incidentally) are the stuff of repeat playable value QUITE unlike most of the other crap Kreator, Cryptopsy, et al put out...

As an aside the latter acoustic part of Silent Water reminded me of IOcean probably the obvious droning quality of the strings or something...

Later

Something that makes me feel happy

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 11:54:16 GMT

Downloaded and heard a LOT of rare / Live GnR stuff

Man they don't make music like that anymore now do they...

and so got to thinking about what this biga$$ band meant to me (and of course other people)... so a little web search later here it is

Ten Reasons Why the Gunners STILL Rock

1 THEY LIVED THE GREATEST ROCK’N’ROLL SOAP OPERA EVER
When William Axl Bailey – later to become Axl Rose – followed his former school friend Jeff Isbell, aka Izzy Stradlin, from Indiana to LA in 1982, Hollywood’s post-punk glam metal scene was barely a blip on the rock map. Hooking up with guitarist Saul ‘Slash’ Hudson, drummer Steven Adler and bassist Duff McKagan, Guns N’ Roses were formed in 1985. By the end of the ‘80s they were American Rock’s officially sanctioned Public Enemy Number One, as loved and loathed as Eminem and Limp Bizkit combined.

They were drug-fucked, model-shagging, parent-scaring, liberal-baiting, riot-causing, tantrum-throwing, lowlife scumlords of pigshit-thick punk genius. Half Spinal Tap and half Sex Pistols, put simply, they rocked.

2 THEY WERE THE ULTIMATE SCUM-SUCKING LA STREET PUNKS
“It’s not like we’re the most intelligent bunch,” admitted Axl, “but as fas as street sense – hanging out, doing drugs, partying, girls and shit like that – we know and understand a lot.”

Exploding like a dirty bomb of lowlife sleaze, for a good two or three years, GN’R gave heavy rock back the outlaw-punk attitood it had lacked for over a decade.

3 THEY BECAME BAD TASTE ICONS OF WHITE TRASH FASHION
Rose’s eccentric sartorial sense – bandanna, big hair, motorcycle leathers, white denim, mirror shades, dinky cycling shorts – brought glam rock style back. The Gunners dressed like whores and, from Michigan to Melbourne, so did their millions of followers. Axl’s name is an anagram of ‘oral sex’. Go figure.

4 THEY OFFENDED EVERYBODY
The Gunners were politically incorrect jerk-offs on a scale that Eminem and Liam Gallagher could never equal. Rose’s most notorious song, ‘One In A Million’, took a swipe at lowlife criminal “niggers” as well as disease-ridden “immigrants and faggots”. He claimed to have suffered bad experiences with gay and black people, but denied being racist or homophobic. Given that the head of their record label was gay, and that Axl later played AIDS benefits and duetted with Elton John, his sentiments were confused at best.

Their treatment of women was equally disgusting. During the 1990s, Axl, Slash and Steven Adler all faced charges of violence against wives and girlfriends. Not cool, not funny, but at least it proved the Gunners were knucklehead scum and proud of it.

5 THEY MADE SOME CLASSIC RECORDS THAT YOU SHOULD OWN
Well, one at least. GN’R’s 1987 debut album ‘Appetite For Destruction’ sold a staggering 20 million copies and contains all their best songs – the urban battle cry ‘Welcome To The Jungle,’ the shimmering dirty-love serenade ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ and the supercharged anthem ‘Paradise City’.

6 THEIR PUBLIC FEUDS WERE HIGHLY ENTERTAINING
At LA’s MTV Music Video Awards in 1989, Axl threatened to kill Motley Crue singer Vince Neil after he “sucker punched” Guns N’ Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin for hitting on his wife, then attacking her, at a Hollywood rock club. Axl promised a bare-knuckle showdown with the “plastic faced, pussy assed” Crue frontman though no fight occurred.

In 1992, backstage at another MTV Video Awards, Axl exploded at Courtney Love and told Kurt Cobain: “Shut your bitch up or I’m taking you to the pavement!” Which he didn’t, of course.

7 THEY WERE SO BIG AND MEAN THAT ONLY KURT COULD KILL THEM
Symbolically, at least, the feud with Kurt Cobain called time on Guns N’ Roses. Kurt had declined two invitations for Nirvana to tour with the Gunners. “I can’t even waste my time on that band, because they’re so obviously pathetic and untalented,” Kurt told US gay magazine The Advocate. “They’re really talentless people, and they write crap music, and they’re the most popular rock band on the earth right now.” But not for long. When ‘Nevermind’ eclipsed GN’Rs bloated ‘Use Your Illusion,’ the new grunge elite wiped out glam-metal almost overnlight.

8 THEY REMAIN ONE OF ROCK’S GREAT UNFINISHED MYSTERIES
Since Axl fell out with Slash a decade ago, he’s barely been seen in public. Retreating to his Malibu mansion, he kept the band name alive with interminable recording sessions for a long-delayed new album, ‘Chinese Democracy,’ whose studio costs have reportedly topped $10 million already. Yet when the new-look Gunners mounted a surprise world tour in 2002 and 2003, they still managed to sell out arenas, incite riots and rock like muthas. Axl for all his Howard Hughes weirdness, still has that something.

9 THEIR EVER-CHANGING LINE-UP IS BEYOND A JOKE
Since Axl legally seized control of the Guns N’ Roses name in the mid-‘90s, he’s operated a revolving door policy towards new members. All the original Gunners left citing his “power crazy asshole” antics. Since then half a dozen have come and gone. Current guitarist ‘Buckethead’ performs with a KFC container on his head. Hence the name.

10 THEIR INFLUENCE IS ALL AROUND US
The Gunners may be dormant and their musical era discredited, but somehow the spirit of Axl endures. For retro-glam guitar action, we have The Darkness. For bad-ass white-trash machismo, Limp Bizkit. For offensive lyrics and outlaw cool, Eminem. For no-show appearances and public fisticuffs, Liam Gallagher. And for endless druggy drama, Courtney Love – ironically enough. The enduring allure of GN’R simply proves that, no matter how tasteful and intelligent rock gets, people will always crave the taste of scum.

--(Some rights reserved)

Music and what it means to me

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:19:17 GMT

Well not that I am one of the philosophical types (absolutely NOT)

However music is one thing which sets me thinking and sort of calms the mind...<br> People who can't STAND rock will wonder whether this is a possibility with all those morally corrupting lyrics and the devils own drumbeat raging between the ears...

However people who listen to (and hopefully appreciate) Heavy Rock music know that it more than any engineered Muzak is what becomes the backround to your life...

Bands like the Queen, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, U2 even The Guns N' Roses and Metallica for that matter are a part of my sonic landscape now not a most eclectic of tastes as I will be the first to admit but it's the breadth of sounds I can relate to as moods change...

Nothing much now more later though

The New Radicals

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 11:37:51 GMT

Can't believe they never made it...

Just goes to show what perseverence and a good A&R man can do for a band..

A terrible loss

The Point

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 13:29:09 GMT

See I like Maiden and Judas Priest as much as the next guy but the point of an exercise like this (which takes very few Grey cells BTW) is to enumerate acoustically Positive influences on oneself...
Ear shattering vocals can only be an irritant I.M.H.O.
And me being as I am obviously some deserving vocalists have been left out Like Sting and like Jimmy Page... In favour of Nu metal trash like Chester,etc. but as I said
Intensly personal and intentionally one time...

List of Rock Vocalists I R.e.s.p.e.c.t.

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 13:22:05 GMT

Al right this just came out of the last post... Man DD thats one SWEET MP3 disc you made man too bad I'm gonna keep it :P So in no particular order and followed by the band they did their best work in:

William (AXL) Rose - GnR

Mike Patton - Faith No More

Ronnie James Dio - Rainbow & Dio

Trent Reznor - Nine Inch Nails

Chester Bennington - Linkin Park

Ozzy Osborne - Black Sabbath

Paul (BONO) Hewson - U2

Faroukh (FREDDIE MERCURY) Bulsara - Queen

Palash Sen - Euphoria

The Guy from Junoon

The Guy from Parikrama

The Guy from Alms for Shanti & Rock Machine and Indus Creed (DAMN I CAN"T REMEMBER)

Not the Least - James Earl Morrison - The Dorrs