Guns N' Roses Concert Review!!!

Guns N’ Roses was by far my favourite band growing up.  I bought Appetite for Destruction in grade 7, right when it came out (and well before Sweet Child o’ Mine became a hit).  When I played in bands, we covered a ton of G n’ R songs and I collected every weird b-side and demo I could get my hands on.  My nickname was even Axl for awhile in grade 10, because I had long hair that was fine and straight like Axl’s (though not red, obviously).  So I’ve been a long time fan and I actually like Chinese Democracy (though it could use to be scaled down severely).

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the Guns N’ Roses show the other night.  From the footage I’d seen on YouTube, I didn’t think that Axl’s voice was going to be great (It sounds good on Chinese Democracy, but how many takes and overdub punch-ins can you do in 17 years, right?).  I was blown away by the power he still had in those pipes.  He sounded strong and tight.

The stage set up was decent and there was even some pyro popping off.  Though I only decided to buy tickets on a whim, I was glad I went.  And I’m still hungover two days later (though it was funny that you could only order one beer at a time and they cut off when Axl hit the stage…lucky I got into a bottle of scotch at home first…).

I saw G n’ R in ’93 when they came here with the (mostly) original line up and that was a damn good show.  Seeing them again the other night, with only Axl (well, and Dizzy Reed, if you want to count him) was a bit less of a charge.  It’s no fault of the band --- they were amazingly tight.  But perhaps they should have stuck to newer material instead of mining Appetite for Destruction so much.  Normally, I’d be saying the opposite of this.  But seeing this new band strike poses and play Slash’s solos was kind of like watching the greatest G n’ R cover band ever.  I also don’t need to watch a bunch of nobody musicians do 10 minute guitar solos, though I realize that this is probably when Axl sneaks off stage to change into a new cheesy Ed Hardy shirt and get some oxygen.

All in all a dope show.  Axl may not understand that sometimes less is more, as evidence by his bloated masterpiece Chinese Democracy (how’s that for an insult and a compliment at the same time?) --- but the stage show was lean and tight, for the most part.

As a side note, a friend of mine stalked the Sheraton all day on Tuesday and got to meet the man himself.  He almost got grabbed by security, but Axl let him through, signed his copy of the album and posed for a picture.  Now that’s class.

What did you think of the show?  Did you like Chinese Democracy the album?