Tuesday, April 22, 2014

What Happened To The Movie Reviews and the Next Part of the Guns n Roses Countdown

You two or three readers might be wondering what happened to the movie reviews I was doing.  Well, I AM still watching all of my movies in alphabetical order.  That much hasn't changed.  But due to the fact that I wasn't really blogging at the time, I got behind in actually writing the reviews of all the movies.  So now, by my calculations, I am 43 movie reviews behind.  It's just become too big of a hole to dig out of.  I am going to continue watching them, but I think catching up on the reviews is out of the question!  Sorry!

I AM continuing with my Guns n Roses countdown though!  If you remember from last post, I am counting down my ten favorite songs they have released.  We continue on with #9:

"Better," is the only song on the list from the infamous Chinese Democracy album and truthfully, I love it.  Although most people seem to hate the album, I really enjoy it.  Sure, it is more like the broad range of the Use Your Illusion albums than the hard rock of the Appetite album, but I really enjoy it.  Then again, I always slightly preferred the Use Your Illusion albums to Appetite.  There wasn't enough on the album to crack my top ten other than "Better," but that doesn't mean it lacked appeal for me.  "Better," is the song that seems the most like it belongs on the Illusion albums.  Axl's voice is pretty similar to how he sounded on them and the tempo and tone are also quite the same.  The only thing really missing is the sound of Slash.  As I said in the last post, Slash has such a distinct sound and it is really missed in the Chinese Democracy album.  But that is not to say that the songs lacked guitar prowess.  The awesome Buckethead played on some of the songs on the album and this particular song included some great solos by him.  Check one out around the 2:40 mark.  Hell, watch the whole video.  It has the feel of the Paradise City video and makes me so sad that I still have yet to see this band in concert in any incarnation.  Maybe one day. 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

The Guns n Roses Countdown (and a quick catch up)

I haven't blogged since September.  What was once an outlet for my thoughts has become just another forgotten page on the internet; a diary that you find in the back of your closet while cleaning it out.  It will probably never be what it once was (thanks to Facebook keeping everyone up to date with my life in a much simpler fashion), but I'll never get rid of it.  Hell, in December the blog will turn TEN years old.  That thought just boggles my mind.

And it isn't like I have had nothing to blog about.  Since my last post, we took a memorable trip to Europe, a fellow blogger that I became friends with because of this page passed away, I had work stresses, and Jess became pregnant.  This blog has tons of stories in the archives about our pregnancy struggles.  Like I said, this was essentially my diary for many years. 

But I was inspired to return to blogging a few days ago while listening to nothing but Guns n Roses, my all time favorite band, on a two hour car ride.  I thought to myself, "How difficult would it be to come up with my top ten favorite songs by this band?"  I tried to come up with a short list on that ride home and have spent the last couple of hours looking at track lists to try to narrow it down to 10.  I finally did... kind of.  We'll start this series by doing #10 on this blog post.  Enjoy because I know I did.

#10 - Mr. Brownstone

Off the first album, Appetite for Destruction, I think this song fully symbolizes early Guns n Roses: raw, vulgar, and drug related.  The opening guitar is the unmistakable sound of Slash, my favorite guitarist.  His sound is so recognizable, and that is something I love about him.  When I heard the first single from Velvet Revolver and heard that guitar sound I hadn't heard for years, I was hooked.  But it is this early sound that got me started.  Sure, I couldn't relate to this song because I clearly wasn't a heroin addict, but I still love this song because it reminds me of those early Guns n Roses days.  We don't have rock n roll bands quite like this anymore.

I'll be back in a few days with #9.