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ICONS

Posted in General Tickets There Blog, Music, Ranting with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2009 by Tickets There

icons

What happened folks? In the mid 50’s, Mr. Elvis A. Presley walked into Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and became the very first, the best, the symbol, legend, embodiment and icon of rock n roll. Like Sid Vicious to Punk, Frank Sinatra to big band, Johnny Cash to country and western or even Dana to lunatics, Elvis was the total hero, founder and creator of rock n roll. Don’t listen to music nerds, geeks and critics (ahem), Elvis started everything. Forget who influenced him, forget who wrote for him and forget who marketed him, Elvis was it.

Ever since the Kings death, music has flourished through the efforts, talents and hard work, creativity of various people and constant changes in popular culture. From Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis in the fifties, rock expanded and produced the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and many others throughout the early sixties. Before long Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and many more appeared. The Doors came out of the west coast. The Who went rock, Led Zeppelin were formed and Jefferson Airplane stayed touring after Woodstock. Just before things could get civilized, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple came out. Queen, Clapton, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Stooges, Alice Cooper, T-Rex, KISS,…the list is endless people. Then came the 80’s, when pop reached a true peak before the ever looming wave of commercialism took it’s firm grip and strangled the genre, until it’s credibility was lower than Gary Glitters. On the other hand you had Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Guns N Roses, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, U2, Judas Priest, OZZY, Slayer, Sepultura, before the end of the decade when Nirvana, The Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Blur, Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Smiths, The Pixies, Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, New Order (yes the 24 lot), Faith No More, Nine Inch Nails and then (phew this is a long one) onto Marilyn Manson, The Foo Fighters, Weezer, Korn and so on before the late nineties and boom…nothing happened……funnily enough, fuck all has happened since. How in the hell did almost five decades of amazing, astonishing and diverse creation suddenly grind to an almost complete stop?

Things seemed to fall completely off course. Metal bands suddenly merged rapidly with dance music and rap. Korn had dabbled but so did Aersomith and nothing happened to them. Instead of Angus Young and the D belting out solid, hard hitting blues rock anthems you had fat ugly guys in costumes roaring at you about being bullied and still being virgins living in their mothers houses. Metro sexual, stylish geeks whining on about falling and crying about some girl next door that Lemmy would probably kidnap and turn into a hooker on sun-set before the night’s out. These guys in fitted suits, wearing ties with spiky hair, tattoos and dog collars were mixing Kraftwork with the eighties glam rockers like Twisted Sister, Poison and the likes while wearing their hair like girls. And I don’t mean the old style of hairy bikers drooling over a bar counter girly style, I mean a female hairdresser on a night out style. Like they were trying to keep disobeying the nagging disapproval from generations past and pushing things to some ridiculous limit that nearly goes full circle.

As for Pop music, that fell into the hands of TV companies, dance got old and turned into some demented, hindered state of destruction while indie music became overwhelmed by a horde of Eco-Friendly, Voices of poverty, injustice, animal cruelty and environmentally conscious millennium hippies. Voices that turned away from Indies recreational drug use, love and loss, party image and transformed it into a voice for all the issues in the world rock stars shouldn’t give two shits about, at least not on stage. The likes of Tom Yorke, Chris Martin, Bono, Snow Patrol, Kings of Leon, Kasabian and all that other horse shit. Their songs were so impotent, corpses of tax attorneys could laugh at them. Complaining, moaning and whining about the poverty and cruelty in the world they wouldn’t think of donating their profits to. Bands that appeal to societies total dregs. Bored children, housewife’s, grandparents, indie fans, jocks and just about every member of the heard the western world boasts. Droning brought to extremes of the human soul to a point it becomes so bogged down in ego, insincerity and boredom it would fail to shock a timid kitten.

Metal fell even more of the pits as the old genres piled up with hopeless hack impersonators before bursting at the seems into millions of decaying breakaways. Nu-Metal even buckled (not a bad thing, pile of shite aswell) as Emo broke through their last stand along with nu-punk and metal became even more appealing to the ugly, fat rejects of social society and the fashionable, jock culture more than ever before. After Radiohead’s Creep on the jukebox American Idiot and the Killers would follow and all the trendy’s and Goths alike would bop along. Metal was again infiltrated by main stream culture and unlike before the last ‘icons’ weren’t strong enough to tear it right back for the people of society who used the music as it should be used. Not for pusses crying and ugly nerds to find shelter. Metal is the music for the angry soul (sounds gay I know but hey, I am smoking in case you hadn’t noticed), the serious partiers, the ‘dangerous’ people of society.

Rock N roll lost it’s fight much earlier. After the Guns N Roses era came to a close, few rock bands ever managed to reach those heights again. Don’t even bother with the Killers and The Kings of Leon…or The Strokes bitch. I’m talking about real fucking n roll. The kind of rock n roll that made all the bad things bands these days demonize like drinking, sex, destruction, rebellion and a good hearty message of Fuck You to anyone who bothered them, fun!. Elvis shock things up, the Stones defined it, Aerosmith brought it miles higher while AC/DC put the fucking boots on before Guns N Roses perfected it in every single sense of the word.

The world is losing it’s icons. Right now I can’t think of any that have come out since the early nineties. I mean a true icon of rebellion. Pete Doherty, and Amy Winehouse make a mockery of drug addicted musicians which, throughout the history of music, have written some of the most amazing music ever created. The Beatles, Jim Morrison, The Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Keith Richards, Janis Joplin, Kobain etc. Bono, Yorke and Martin take the places of people like Neil Young with his stories, Springsteen and his zest for life and Bowies ever changing persona, image and style only to replace it with gilt tripping, giver of life wannabe humanitarian ideologist façade while they doge taxes and pontificate to fans what they should do, wear, believe in, live and breath. Forget ‘think for yourself’, the message was spelled out in bold impact lettering and strangely enough, a  discontented mass fell for it, hook line and sinker.

That’s pretty much where we are in my eyes. I’ve forgotten many of the previous generation’s true greats but there’s only so much you can write in an hour and keep semi-coherent. I’ve also neglected some of the better talents to emerge on the international scene and some of the worse ones. Arcade Fire and MGMT to name a couple. But that’s how I see things, pretty much that black and white. Most of the old styles got confused, disjointed, lost in translation and overwhelmed in image, style and forced restrictions and beliefs and turned them into uninspired shells of their former selves. I’m not saying charity is bad, I’m not saying there’s no credibility in any of the new bands these days and I’m not saying looking after the environment is wrong, animals should be mistreated, people shouldn’t be nice to each other and drugs are good. I believe the exact opposite of each one and a conscious attitude is essential to the basic fabrication of mankind’s cohabitation together and civilized society. What I’m saying is people should learn this from other sources like parents and a proper education rather than one of mankind’s forms of entertainment. Aren’t we allowed to relax, switch totally off and dream sometimes with the horrors of some societies and the worlds problems being shoved in our face at every fucking turn?

Maybe there was one message spelt out by one of the golden age icons that we should listen to is the words of Jim Morrison.

“When the music’s over, turn out the lights, turn out the lights,”


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Tickets There Likes: Guns N Roses – Use Your Illusion I

Posted in Album Review, Music, Ranting, Tickets There Likes: with tags , , , , on August 8, 2009 by Tickets There

GnR--UseYourIllusion1

There is one band in the world that has always come close to beating Def Leppard to the top spot in my all time favorites.  A band that I consider to be the greatest hard rock band of all time. I first discovered Guns N Roses in 1992, just a couple of months after Def Leppard when an older brother of one of my friends leant me the Use Your Illusion 1I& II albums in boarding school. Knowing that I was a Leppard and Meatloaf fan, I think he wanted someone else to share the mighty Guns with since everyone else had never heard of any rock bands. I remember trying Use Your Illusion I first because I preferred the cover and was instantly blown away by the sher force of the Axl’s voice and the guitars. I’d never heard anything like this and all of a sudden Leppard didn’t hold the holier than though pedestal I’d placed them on. Shortly after I managed to get copies of the alums from a traveller outside Mullingar at a wee market at some roadside restaurant like the covert and Guns were firmly brought into my life.

Aside from Adrenalize, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an album so much in my life. Use Your Illusion I oozes sleazy Rock N Roll and as I got older, I understood more and more of the ands lyrics an hidden connotations. It was like an album that grew more and more mature with age and that’s the prime reason it never got left on the shelf when new bands came into my life. Despite being as big of a fan as I was, I’d never even heard about Appetite for Destruction or Lies and wouldn’t discover them for another  eight or nine years. Even when Appetite did come along, it’s never managed to replace Illusion 1 as my favorites; even now I can listen to that album and enjoy it as much as I ever did.

Before getting into the songs (and honestly, I don’t write these to try and review the greatest songs in my life. If you don’t know them there isn’t much point in you reading these), I should say that to appreciate the Guns, you really need to look at their career rather than just their music. Think of them like The Sex Pistols and you will understand Rock N Roll like the Pistols make you understand the true meaning of punk. Rock n Roll is meant to be an attitude more than the music. It’s that attitude that defines real rock n roll rebellion. It’s not anarchy, it’s lazy. It’s about doing what ever you like and not letting anyone tell you otherwise. Yeah it sounds cliché but that’s what it’s all about and if there is one man in rock who lives up to every single word of that, it’s W. Axl Rose.

Axl has never and will never do what record companies, fans, and mates, family or the press expect, pressure or beg him to do. Yes I’m sure there are all these underground guys who do the same but I’m sorry, Axl is the one with the millions under his belt and he still does what he likes and makes it work at his level. He didn’t give up after the Illusion and release one watered down alum after another for the following twenty years. He also didn’t go out of his way to keep the classic line-up happy and he continued Guns N Roses in his own way with the whole world laughing at him. Even the rock press and diehard fans failed to see the brilliance behind his methods and still today the fans that claimed to stand behind him still bitch log and beg for tours, special edition albums and music videos all the while their forgetting that none of these things will make the bands latest album Chinese Democracy any better. Axl is a musician who’s quite happy to let the music speak for its’ self. If anyone else did it and said that’s what they were doing, the world would cherish them and praise their musical integrity but unfortunately for Axl, they lampoon him.

Well I hope you will read this and look on Axl more favorably. He is not a front man interested in keeping old fans happy by travelling the world selling a decaying shell of a once great line-up, who’s former members have gone on to destroy their legacy’s and tarnished their images as the rocks leading hell raisers (except Izzy). He’s doing what he wants, how he wants to do it and any fan of rock n roll out there who criticizes, laughs or attacks him for this hasn’t got  fucking clue what rock n roll is all about. You’d be better of buying your Motorhead t-shirts in Top Shop and singing along with Summer of 69 when it’s one and leave it at that because Rock has enough posers already.

Anyways, Use Your Illusion I eh, great album. What else can I say?

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GUNS N’ ROSES – CHINESE DEMOCRACY REVIEW

Posted in Album Review, Music with tags , , , , , on January 18, 2009 by Tickets There

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20 years ago, Guns N’ Roses were one of the most exciting bands in the world. Although they originated in the midst of the hair/glam rock scene in L.A., the band seemed to possess a quality that bands like Poison, Motley Crue and RATT..etc just didn’t have. Within three years, Guns had become the biggest band in the world. The massive selling Use Your Illusion albums saw the band grow from clubs and support shows to full blown arena jaunts. For almost three years, they toured the globe, bringing their massive stage show to every corner of the earth. Band members Axl Rose, Slash and Duff became icons, figure heads if every thing rock in roll about the nineties.

Within months, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the grunge scene had erupted and destroyed the status of Rock stars like Axl and Guns. It suddenly became un-cool to live the infamous hell raising lifestyle set down by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Zeppelin, the Stones and all the classic ‘TV out a hotel window’ groups. For the remainder of the decade, hard rock bands from the 80’s struggled to keep up with the times. Some of the groups like Metallica, Bon Jovi and AC/DC managed to retain their respect to a certain extent, while others like Def Leppard, Whitesnake and … became the butts of jokes to a new generation, who could no longer connect with the ideals these bands represented. Guns N’ Roses however, managed to fall of the face of the earth, as personal conflicts and legal issues tore the band to pieces. In the mid nineties, five years after the illusions, Slash and Duff Mckagan left the group causing fans to scream out in protest against Axl Rose’s increasing control of the band. For the remainder of the decade, there was little or no communication from the group, even when rumors of an album, entitled Chinese Democracy, that was already four years in the making, started surfacing. It wasn’t until 1999 that Axl finally broke his silence and Guns N’ Roses released their first original song in almost a decade. The track, Oh My God, appeared on the sound track to End of Days. It appeared the album was finally ready.

Despite the commotion in the late 90’s with Oh My God’s release and a handful of comeback shows in early 2001, the band failed to make the comeback fans had been dreaming off and instead, retreated back too the studio to continue working on Axl’s masterpiece. The new millennium saw occasional attempts by the band to comeback, all of which ended disastrously with cancelled tour dates, riots, broken promises and repeated disappointments. Although the band was relatively quiet for most of the decade, they were still a major focus point for the media and fans alike. Rumors about the original band, Axl and Chinese Democracy itself, circulated non-stop with everyone looking to contribute their two cents to the great Guns N’ Roses mystery that the majority of people had started to lampoon and dismiss as an album lost forever in Axl’s madness.

Fast forward to 2008 and Chinese Democracy has finally seen the light of day. After a reported fourteen years in the making, an estimated cost of $15,000,000 (in 2006), a never ending cast of musicians, studio’s and engineer’s used, Axl Rose has done the impossible and released the most highly anticipated album of all time.

The album itself has entered the world in much the same fashion that’s always surrounded it. It’s reported that as soon as Axl handed the album into label bosses at Geffen records, he fell of the radar completely, refusing to answer calls about promoting the album, arranging a tour or any other PR tasks normally undertaken by other bands for the release of the album. As a result, the album failed to achieve the coveted US Billboard 100, Number one spot that so many had seen for it. Although there are talks of promotion in the coming weeks, Chinese Democracy stands to Axl’s credit that Guns N’ Roses stand by everything they did when they formed, despite the lack of any other founding members.

Personally, I find describing the music on Chinese Democracy a challenge. There is enough material, both lyrically and instrumental, to fill an encyclopaedia. Fans that have been waiting since the Use Your Illusions’ for this record will no doubt approach the album looking for answers to fourteen years worth of constant speculation and questions or simply reassurance that, without the original line-up, Guns N’ Roses can still make the music they love. Unfortunately for those unwilling to change with the times, they could be faced with disappointment as many of those familiar traits have vanished, only to be replaced by a more mature, layered sound. Instead of Slash’s trademark blues lead guitar and Duff’s crunching bass, Chinese Democracy offers orchestral arrangements, walled in by polished guitars, all held together by a monumental production job that leaves no stone unturned. It’s very obvious that every second of the album has been planned out to the point of exhaustion and any questions about where all the time has gone, have been answered.

The grandeur and scope of the album are a credit to Axl’s perseverance and determination. Instead of releasing an album of Appetite carbon copies, Axl has completely rejuvenated the Guns style, building new levels of sound onto the original ideals. Epic ballads, such as Street of Dreams, Prostitute, Madagascar, This I Love, Sorry and There Was a Time show the Gun’s at their finest. While heavier tracks like Scraped, Riad and the Bedouins, Shackler’s Revenge, Better and Chinese Democracy are delivered in thundering bursts throughout the record, showing Axl can still deliver inexcusably heavy rock anthems without the aid of his former band mates.

Lyrically, Chinese Democracy is every bit a Guns N’ Roses record. Axl’s trademark defiance and passion is present in every verse, chorus and blood curdling scream. Fans are given an insight into one of the most talked about minds in music history, as your taken on a journey through themes that deal with love, control, anger, resentment and full frontal rock n roll. In contrast to previous work on Appetite, the Illusions and Lies, vocals play a more prominent roll as lead guitar intros are replaced by blunt starts and harmonies. It’s obvious from several of the lyrics on the album that Axl hasn’t been oblivious to the desperation of fans for this record’s release or the media’s increasing speculation about his personal habits. ‘I bet you think I’m doing this all for my health’, (I.R.S.), ‘You don’t know why I won’t give in, To hell with the pressure I’m not caving in’ (Sorry) and ‘I won’t be told anymore, That I’ve been brought back in this storm, And left so far out from the shore, That I can’t find my way back, my way anymore’ (Madagascar) being just a few.

There’s even more surprises in store as If The World, Catcher in the Rye and I.R.S. make a distinct jump from any of the bands previous work. Spanish guitars, RN’B/drum and bass and aggressive pop rock are all incorporated to make these songs a sound of their own. Despite several of the tracks being leaked over the last few years, all of them sound rejuvenated and fresh when heard in their true environment.

It was Axl’s dream for this album to be his masterpiece and despite the initial sales figures, fans continued cries for the original members return and media criticism, he has delivered. Although the albums release may end hopes for other rock stars receiving the same blind faith from their record companies, Axl has given the world a truly epic album that will stand forever as iconic symbol of persistence, hard work, vision and Rock ‘N’ Roll.

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