My first Guns N’ Roses experience came via a cassette tape of the band’s irresistibly decadent 1987 major label debut album Appetite for Destruction. I had just entered the third grade. I hid the tape from my parents. It was a prized possession of mine. The CD on my shelf still gets dusted off and played on a semi-regular basis.
Fast forward to 1991: I’m in junior high and rushing home from school everyday to see the latest Use Your Illusion video on MTV. The first time I caught “November Rain” it blew my mind. My man Slash soloing in the that field. Rad! If memory serves, I bought those discs on CD and still play the same ones from 17 years ago.
Fast forward to today. The most anticpated album of all time, Chinese Democracy, which I blogged about here, is streaming for free on MySpace. The whole album. On Sun., Nov. 23 you can purchase a physical copy at Best Buy. Usually discs drop on Tuesday. But for a release this big rules must change I guess. Sadly, I’m several tracks into the album and have yet to be moved. Wait, this song “Better” is worming its way under my skin. And this power ballad “Street of Dreams,” which finds Axl sounding like Count Dracula, is pretty cool, too. The final verdict? We’ll see. Be back with a proper review once I’ve had a chance to properly take in this rather historic rock ‘n’ roll event.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2008.
