G&R songs explained, visions and taiste.

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

PERFECT CRIME

This one was written by Izzy, Slash and Axl.  I?m no 100% sure about the true meaning of this song but I?m getting the impression it?s about outlaws who strive to commit a perfect crime and it blows up in their face. ?I got the time and I got the muscle???.I ain?t afraid of your smoke screen-hustle?
These types of criminals here are the high-stake ones who like the George Thorogood song ?Bad to the bone? is about. They are bad in the sense of if you get in their way you are risking your life. They will fight and perhaps kill if you get in the way of their plan. The risk of a perfect crime is of course the payoff without getting caught. The ones that do get caught usually get a life time sentence or even last rites. Of course in the real world there is no such thing as a perfect crime. If there was a perfect crime and you achieved it you wouldn?t have to do anymore crimes afterwards. But it?s not so. After that perfect crime most criminals will have the urge to go out and commit another crime or two and get caught. Thus not walking away and retiring from it all but spending their days and nights behind bars. I think here Izzy, Slash and Axl are being sarcastic in the sense that there is no such thing as a perfect crime. And I?m sure in the rock & roll business they?ve had their share of crimes that they?ve witnessed as far as their careers go. I?m sure when Axl sings about lawyers in another song he is referring to some illegal actions against G&R and camp.

[LeftToDecay]

PERFECT CRIME

To me, perfect crime is about their record label. Or maybe about some past or (then-)present producer, or studio staff in general.
People who hover around the band and get paid from it, or get their share of royalties while (from band's POV) doing jack shit to earn their wage.
Thus,legally  stealing from the band and  committing a perfect crime.

Most vivid image going on when  reading through the lyrics would have to be that of some old nagging producer.
He hasn't lived in hell house, or seen what L.A looks when it's 4.30 on Sunday morning, he  hasn't fucked all these trashy women or shot all that heroin and so on.
Yet, there he is nagging how something in  lyrics just doesn't sound quite real or personal enough. Come Saturday night, band exits the studio and fucks those trashy women, and shoots the heroin, and so on. Sunday, producer is calling everybody, being all "stop shooting that fucking heroin guys, come on. we are trying to make a record here. Oh, but do come in here and open your diary and make a song  out of it. What is it like, to shoot all  that heroin?"
I think

Keep the demons down
And drag the skeletons out...


is all about the hypocrisy and contradiction going on there

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Very good Left-to-Decay.........I like....I like......

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

You Ain?t the First

I like the waltz feel of this song. It?s a kind of song that reminds me of many Heartbreak Hotel songs of the past. Mans quest for a lover who he can find all the things he wants from a woman but finds out that she is not the one. Love tangled blues is what you get from the love street of dating. Some will get lucky and find what they are looking for and others will suffer the rocky road of a relationship gone haywire. Izzy writes obviously from some shattered experiences that are piled in the corner of his life that it?s becoming a bad routine. Something you thought that might have been the diamond you where looking for turns into a pillar of salt. That thing we call love is certainly an illusion we set our selves up for. And if the counter-partner doesn?t fit into the missing space in the puzzle we?ve built, you see love?s illusion come tumbling down like a cartoon anvil we?ve seen on those old Bugs Bunny cartoons.

[Axl8302]

Very good Left-to-Decay.........I like....I like......

You two should get a room

[LeftToDecay]

You two should get a room

I wouldn't mind.
You wanna join?

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

You guys are twisted-freaking-sisters man........

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

BAD OBSESSION

Yes. That evil recurring emotion that pushes you to do something you may or may not like.
(And you know what I?m talking about). Izzy uses some examples in this song to describe that Bad Obsession weather its drugs, girls or anything that?s twisting you up to the point you start fucking up your own life or another persons life. Yeah you hear about it in the news every day. Hell we?re fucking waiting for a release from G&R and are obsessed with that notion. And from what I?m reading we?re on a bad obsession right now as I write this. Even I am obsessed with the idea to the point that I?m ready to place a collect call to Axl himself and ask him what?s your fking problem boy?? Or better yet go to his record company and tell them you guys have turned into a bunch of corporate terminators that have become a slave to the very system you?ve created. Now looks who?s obsessed??? We?re talking about a cd of music here.
Meanwhile we?ve got some real bad obsession with our glorious Wall Street kitties that have their own Bad obsession over who is screwing who, inside trading and anything else that can cause the public to lose many nights of sleep. Remember the notorious Enron obsession??? Right up their now with two obsessed political candidates that are convinced they should be elected to fix America.
It?s a Bad Obsession??it?s always messin? my mind???.Too bad?.you?re fucked up!!!
(Maybe you?ll do better next time?.PUNK!!!)   lolo

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Back off Bitch

There are good women in this world. Perhaps the count is below 50% now since evil is preceding good in the world. Axl sure likes to not beat around the bush when he has something to get off his chest. In his experiences and what he sees in what the modern world has developed in the female species certainly is an eye opener. Those want on woman who are gold-diggers and bitches from families who have no moral ground grow up in an environment that turns them into human-killing- sex machines determined to rip a man?s soul out and leave him for dead is not just a horror movie conjured up in some writers head. It is very real. Some may turn into a witch if provoked enough. But the real core of it is there are woman who don?t need to be provoked. I like to think of them as Lucifer?s sisters and daughters that take human form and live on Earth. Their appetite for destruction is to seek a wealthy man. Entice him and romance him to bed, than at the proper moment at rip a man?s heart out and discard his soul until there is nothing left.
If that don?t work than the marriage proposal is the second best thing. After some time when she is ready she will divorce that man and take half if not all of that man?s earnings and leave him for dead and not look back or have any remorse. Back off Bitch is one male warning to his other male friends that while we do still have a very high regard for woman and we do want to find one that fits our illusion or dream, we also must be armed with weeding out those bad woman who we really don?t have the time of day to even consider giving them any chance in knocking down our protective wall. There are many evil men in this world who do the same to all the good women in this world. This song is to remind us that Venus can also have it?s demented power trips.

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

DOUBLE TALKING JIVE


It?s kind of funny that I?m writing about this little gem that Izzy wrote considering what?s going on in the economy. Double Talking Jive indeed!!!
For all the hardships in life that one can bare one thing that still stands the test of time is working for a living and expecting compensation. This holds true across the board. The first time I heard this song I really liked the arrangement of drums kicking in than slash/izzy coming in with that guitar lick. It?s an intense song that offers the edge of saying to the whole world ?F-you, give me what I worked for in hard cold cash!!!! I?ve got no more patience with your lame ass excuses!!! Axl sings this song as if he wrote it!!! And I agree with him in every expression he makes. I love his live performance as well on the USE ILL DVD.
The middle-eastern/Spanish (however who want to look at it) of the music towards the end adds a touch you wouldn?t expect from a hard rock band. Slash really plays some real superior guitar licks echoing the sentiment of the song. Towards the end I love the fade out into the acoustic-guitars. Again I feel like I?m somewhere in Spain listening to those traditional acoustic guitars ringing away. Or a take off on those old-Clint Eastwood movies. You know the ones like : The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!!!  : )

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

November Rain

Well most of us here know already all the side-bar writing about what the song was about. This highly praised MTV-Video was somehow the Stairway to Heaven of the early nineties. Above all this the song was written by Axl Rose. For a man who was better off just singing songs written by Izzy or other members of G&R, Axl hits home and than some with this number.
The first time I heard it I thought it wasn?t even G&R. I thought Axl put out a solo cd at the same time as Use your Illusion. The mood of the song really struck a cord in me. It showed me yet another side of Axl that he wasn?t just a hard rock singer who sang and wrote only straight ahead rock & roll. It showed me that he can work on a song for many years that was going to be an iconic hit and probably will be covered by pop-singers who need a hit to break them into the music business in the future.
On the Use your Illusion DVD I didn?t even know that Axl can ?fool around? on a piano and actually can play it. (Even if he didn?t know how to play the piano, Axl showed me that he has the discipline to prove that he can.)
The song has some fantastic arrangements set with orchestral back rounds and voices. Mr. Slash offers some leads throughout the song filled with melodic phrases. No need for shredding here. Slash is a smart guitarist who knows what to lay down to make the song shine. That?s a plus!!!
The climax of the song is the first ending where we have a nice long rest for all listeners to catch their breath and minds from just experiencing Axl?s personal vision of November Rain. You think that?s the end of the song until the piano comes in like some western frontier flick of a man on a horse taking off down the dusty road. With that comes the mantra repeating over and over ?Don?t you think you need somebody, everybody needs somebody, and you?re not the only one?. The song is clearly a fantastic sad song about love and broken relationships. The rain heard after the song is finished is the sound many of us have experienced in our own minds that go through such a thing. Both woman and men have one time or another went through it. It?s not a pleasant feeling. It?s just one of those aspects of love that you may encounter or already went through which is part of the formula of love between two people. It can be a bright sunny day. And it can be a very cold November rain.

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

The Garden

This song is something of a mystery. I get the feeling it?s a song describing the later days of rock & roll when LSD came into the picture. Under these magical experiences ?the flowers seem to tease you at the Garden?. The bass riff that Duff McKagan is trippy. I like the way Alice Cooper comes in with his villain like voice: ?Turned into my worst phobia, a crazy mans utopia?.  It?s a fair warning to those who want to mess around in the Garden. You can find yourself in a maze and never come out thinking the same. It?s also a place to get away from it all. When realty is getting you down and life is filling your head with bullshit, perhaps it?s time to visit the Garden for some serious flushing of bad spells hovering over your mind by people who want to control you with their power.
Slash lays down some very cool leads in this song. The power behind the drums also offer some giant bangs from Matt. I like Alice singing ?Lost my virginity there to a gypsy with blond hair? ?Wandering round for daze with a smile upon my face I never want to leave this place?
Yeah man??..I can groove with that!!!!

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Garden of Eden

This rocker apparently has nothing to do with the biblical Garden of Eden. It?s about the paradise we?re desperately trying to achieve on Earth, but some how it?s gone hay-wire.
According to Axl ,all institutions weather it?s the government or religious places of worship have moved so far away from the real truth of what should be done and how to deal with it in a civilized intellectual way. On top of all this are the social issues that confront us everyday with the writing on the wall. The in-your face reality of it can drive any sane person to the brinks of insanity.
But there is a bright side to all of this that Axl and all of us already know. Its rock & roll. That?s the one thing in our lives that levels the playing field even if it?s not on a large scale to change the current bullshit that is served on our breakfast table every morning. If we get knocked down and get the blues or are frustrated to the point of losing our cool we turn up our favorite rock & roll song and in less than a half and hour (at least for me) all the negative irritating thoughts are blown out the window with one good swift kick from the magic formula of heavy drums, bass, electric guitars and a singer who chants and screams at these sick parasites out of our system.
In short: ?Thank you God for giving us Rock & Roll? !!!!!

 

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Don?t Damn Me

The first thing I love about this song is the guitar riff Slash wrote. I?ve heard great riffs before but this one has got to be the longest riff as far as measure wise I?ve ever heard. You can even whistle this one and it gets you in an up beat mood.
The lyrics by Rose/Lark are following the riff. (Probably difficult to come up with a different melody line on top of the riff Slash layed down.) It works well. I can identify with the lyrics here because I?ve felt the same way in my own life from time to time. I feel what I write that?s coming from the bottom of my heart and experiences that I?ve been through rather than writing about dreams all the time. I like the line: I never wanted this to happen didn?t want to be a man. So I hid inside my world. I took what I could find. I cried when I was lonely. I fell down when I was blind. (Becoming a man is one thing. But becoming a man that I didn?t approve of when I was a child is going to make me a hypocrite. This is not my scene.) So it goes to say Don?t Damn Me for speaking out the truth that no one wants to hear is a double-sided sword that most of us don?t want to face because it becomes a moral issue that you have to analyze yourself and you may not like what you find.
I like the break in the middle just right after ?If I damned your point of view could you turn the other cheek?? Slash comes in with a higher register copy of the main riff and goes off in shred mode to rip the cheek in half. Don?t damn me is a great song for all the songwriters who?ve been accused in one form or another for influencing the public in a bad way. But truth be it known it was really some folks who couldn?t stand to look at themselves in the mirror for what they have become. Instead of trying to change their way of thinking that may be corrupting our youth the wrong way, they go and condemn the artists for what he or she might of said as a reaction to things in life that are wrong and need to be addressed.


 

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

STOP THE PRESSES: I'm listening to C.D. (bought it last night) Right now as I'm writing this I'm listening to Better into Street of Dreams. It's so freaking good to hear Axl!!!! This cd is a modern bitch-slap rockin album. Some of the reviews of critics who put this cd down are a bunch of wankers and nerds. (Get a fuckin' life). This is a killer cd and I'm only up to the 4th song.
The music is wonderful. Even though the old crew are not here on the cd the guitar players, bass and drummers did their job as far as painting the best they could for each song.
Love the synth-noises. Love the Spanish-intro of If the World.
As I predicted the long wait was worth it. This cd has more substance and artistic rock creditably than any of the current groups that are on the Billboard charts. Modern rockers take notes. You can learn allot from this album!!!!! A++++++++++++ and than some!!!!!!
(And yet there is a backlog of songs.....expect some more G&R in the future!!!!!!

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Bad Apples

One of those songs that was written by the four original members of G&R.  I like this song in respect to the artist that wants to make it in the music business and live like a rock & roll king. Yes hitting the big time and receiving the fruits of your labor. Now you?re on top and can buy anything you dream of. Have many girlfriends. Throw the best rock & roll parties one can think of with a drop of a hat and not worry too much about how much money you?re spending because the money is rolling in. Buy the best guitars and recording equipment. ?Is that a Lamborghini in your drive way?? Why of course it is!!!
Of course with the sugar you also have to taste the bitter fruits as well. ?Why is there one bad apple in the whole bunch?? I?m quite sure one time or another the members of this band could agree on that statement and stand on common ground. Slash, Doug, Izzy and Rose must agree on that sentiment. Perhaps they might have felt that way about Steven Adler. Too much gravy on the plate can drown you unless you are wise enough to know when to step back and take a break from it all. When you become so successful like a band like Guns & Roses in a short time you may find yourself caught in a hurricane of madness. I like the line in this song that best describes this kind of situation: ?Hollywood is like a dryer and we?re down on sunset strip an you?ll be suckin? down the Clorox ?til your life?s all nice and crisp!

[LeftToDecay]

keep them coming! its nice reading through this stuff. its shame everyone is all boring and non contributing, shame on  you all!!

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Before I go on with the last two tracks of Use your Illusion I like to comment on the DVD I bought recently of the MTV videos of G&R. When Use your illusion I & II came out I didn't have access to MTV or VH1 back than. So I missed those videos that were made for those two cds. (I had seen the early videos for Appetite when nobody even knew who G&R were. The first being Welcome to the Jungle. After seeing that video I already knew G&R were going to be a huge group.)
Paradise City video was exactly what I had seen when they opened up for Deep Purple and Aerosmith. This was the original line up. Yup. Izzy and Steven were there. Axl had his white outfit on. And there was some chaos in the audience. I was sitting in the first tier at Giant Stadium. Fans were holding on to the rails and letting themselves drop onto the field and running towards the floor audience to get to the stage. While hundreds of fans were trying to do this many security guards were trying to catch the fans before they disappeared into the ever growing floor audience. That short clip of the security guard in front of the stage in the Paradise City Video reminds me of this. : )
Now the Don't cry video really impressed me. Didn't realise that the song had some hidden Axl secrets going on there. I like the part were Slashes girlfriend is screaming at him in the car. And Slash just smiles and drives the car off the cliff. The November Rain video really carved out a better idea of what that song was about. My favorite part that I found very funny was when it started raining and everyone was running for cover, Duff decided to hang out under one of the tables. : )  The Garden video was exactly what I had thought of and was right on the nose. My review explains it to the tee. The Garden of Eden video made me laugh. It was funny to see those guys playing in a fish-bowl kind of view. My favorite was when Duff and Slash would come up close to do the backing vocals with Axl. Just hysterical to see it in that scope. Axl smiling and trying to keep up with the words that are coming out of his mouth and watching the bouncing ball hitting every word on the bottom of the screen was equally funny as hell.
The Dead Horse video was great to see. Axl playing guitar in the beginning and singing "Sick of this life. Not that you care. I'm not the only one with whom these feelings I share." Reminds me of the sentiments that me and my friends were thinking and talking about on a Friday night of partying until sunrise!!!
Now Estranged video. Well let's just say that I'm going to save that song and videos review when I get to it for the reviews on the 2nd Use Your Illusion cd. It's one of my favorite G&R songs of all time and is up there with one of my favorite songs from all the artists that I admire.
Stay tuned...............

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

Dead Horse

Sometimes I feel like I?m beating a dead horse. This expression has been around for centuries. It?s a sarcastic line that has the same sentiment as ?you sound like a broken record?. Since this song is written by Axl Rose I?m assuming at the time he wrote it he was engaged with several repeating situations and dialogue that had no conclusion and those two occurrences was better left alone because there was no life left to squeeze an answer from them. Some topics are best left alone and we?ve had are fair share of exploring them to the point of pulling out a gun and shooting one?s self in the head. Or in this case a horse that has broken its leg and the best thing one can do is to shoot the horse dead and put it out in its own misery. I know there are many topics that I?ve learned to not to engage in with certain people because they either won?t listen or they just don?t have the mental capacity of understanding another point of view. What is really illuminating is if we press play now and forward in time from the point when Axl wrote this song and the release of the song Chinese Democracy, we find Axl writing a self-discipline antidote: ?It don?t really matter. Gonna find out for yourself. No it don?t really matter. Gonna leave this thing to somebody else!?

[Bitch Slap Rappin]

COMA

This song has got to be one of the better guitar arrangements that came from Slash in regards to exploring his personal guitar work in a longer piece. It is every lead guitarists dream to record one or two showcases of what he can do with his guitar in a song-format arrangement rather than just music-guitar arrangement like the great Jeff Beck had done.
Axl wrote some serious lyrics here. I don?t know if Slash gave some ideas as far as what the song is about but who really cares. Coma here is what a person does to himself when he or she no longer can stand what?s going on in life. It doesn?t have to be personal. It could be the view of where the world stands and is conducting itself. If one starts not approving and turns away they may find themselves in a level of a Coma. In other words, turning off the mind from the world and clicking the mind into a sleep mode. I like to think of this as level three Coma.
Level two Coma would be introducing any type of drugs that takes you somewhere else other than the current reality of life. Temporary relief from a world created by other minds that are so full of shit it?s a miracle how most of us live from day to day and put up with it.
Finally a level one Coma is what most people call a ?Death Wish?. It?s to the point of a person wanting to exit stage left for what ever reasons that the person chose to commit to a self-suicide.
He or she had reached the breaking point in their lives and weather they have many riches in their lives or close to nothing it has nothing to do with it. It?s more to do with the current script the world is following because they haven?t a clue how to replace it with another script.
Of course on the brink of a coma-state of suicide it is mandatory for those who run the world to save that person from his or hers death. If they succeed in saving you than you will undergo a process that perhaps will change you to deal with the sick world we live in. Or you just may find yourself doing yourself in again after they are convinced you are cured and can now leave the hospital for mental disabled people. See a suicide is real and most of the times that person wanted out of this world anyway. So unless the psychologists have a magic wand that can take away what truth that person may see of the world, chances are they are not going to reach that person anyway. It all depends on what level of ?Coma? you fall under.

Use Your Illusion II is next on this thread. Stay tuned for the first track from UYI-II : )