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To feed Shag’s nostalgia for Appetite for Destruction, and honor him being the 300th comment, here are some demo’s (probably were actually rehearsals) for the first album. I downloaded these a couple months ago and have been waiting for an opportunity to post them. A homey’s nostalgia is a good reason.

The quality is pretty decent but not perfect, not gonna complain. Here are different versions of: Welcome To The Jungle, Anything Goes, & Rocket Queen.

I think I came into the GNR frenzy a little late. I had read about the band quite a bit in various music magazines (Hit Parader mostly, some Rolling Stone, maybe the same one you referenced) but when Appetite came out July 21, 1987 (looked it up) they hadn’t really caught my ear. In fact, my priority was August 3, 1987 (from memory) when Hysteria, Def Leppard’s first album in 4 years was released. Four years between albums was a long time back then remember. Albums or bands that took precedence that summer were: Hysteria, Aerosmith’s ‘Permanent Vacation’, Girls Girls Girls, Ozzy’s tribute to Randy Rhoads, Heart – Bad Animals, and whatever 1 hit wonders were popular in Summer 1987 (Shakedown by Bob Seger).

My next thought about them was when a near riot broke out early 1988 at The Arena when they were set to open for Aerosmith. I don’t remember if they didn’t play long enough, started too late, or just rocked that intensely but the next day KSHE was all abuzz about GNR and not the resurgence of an iconic 70′s band enjoying their first successful album in a decade.

I got the cassette of Appetite For Destruction (or ‘restruction’ as Porter might say) for Easter and didn’t like it that much at first. I’d heard Welcome To the Jungle on the radio/MTV obviously, Out Ta Get Me got my attention, Paradise City was ok, but for the most part I was more into the Dokken’s ‘Under Lock & Key’ which I got at the same time. I listened to at bed time every night from Easter to the end of school. The last song on each side sucked and I had to get out of bed to fast forward and flip the tape. I digress.

That summer I met [you] Shag and I think that’s when I started to listen to it more. Mike was really into at the time also. Even now if 2 of my friends like a record I listen to it more closely.

After that the rest is history.

Appetite For Destruction and Lies were one of maybe five 80′s rock cd’s that didn’t get booted into the milk crate for liquidation. Both of the Use Your Illusion discs did…so did all 5 of my Dokken cd’s.

Another gig anniversary of sorts from this week in times gone is the first U2 gig I saw. It was at Busch Stadium (I suppose I should say, “The old Busch Stadium) and is one of those concerts where I felt something. Not just rocked out, but felt something. It was nothing short of amazing.

I’m not going to go on about this one just yet though. As I was thinking back about the gig and what I wanted to write I had a brief realization that this might have as much to do with the gig as it does about my changing musical tastes at the time and, peripherally, Jake’s influence on them.

So, while I hammer that out further, here’s the set list and a couple of tunes from the era.

Until The End Of The World
New Year’s Day
Wild Rover
Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World
Angel Of Harlem
When Love Comes To Town
Satellite Of Love
All I Want Is You
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet The Blue Sky
Running To Stand Still
Where The Streets Have No Name
Pride (In The Name Of Love)

encore(s):

Desire
With Or Without You
Love Is Blindness
Can’t Help Falling In Love

Take a listen at The Fly and Even Better Than The Real Thing, both recorded at an anti-nuke rally called Stop Stubblefield. The quality is a little bootleggy but it’s good stuff there Maynard.

Enjoy.

Rather than tag these to the bottom of yesterday’s post about the gig I figured it might be easier this way.

First a couple of bootleg GNR tracks.  The venerated Sweet Child O Mine and November Rain were recorded December 5, 1992 in Argentina.

A couple Metallica b-sides, not exactly rarities but they freaking smoke.  This version of Fade To Black is the one by which all others are measured, and this uber medley of Last Caress (the Misfits)/Am I Evil (Blietzkrieg)/Battery (Metallica) is simply transcendent.  Both were recorded Septer 28, 1991 at the Tushino Airfield near Moscow.  If the band released the whole show I’d purchase it tomorrow.  Also, both came from different import singles for ‘Wherever I May Roam’.

Shag, you’re in luck.  Here’s the Shortest Straw, recorded at Giants Stadium July 18, 1992.  The whole show is at www.livemetallica.com and while the sound on this is decent for what I’m sure was used to record it, the dreaded noisy tapers diminish the show as a whole. 

Just as a bonus, here’s a cover of Sweet Child O Mine done by the jam band Umphrey’s McGhee with a gal named Jennifer Hartswick singing. She belts the heck out of it.  Hartswick is a songwriter on her own but I know her from Trey Anastasio’s band where she sings and plays trumpet.

Last but not least, I’ve got an in studio bootleg of Breadfan done by Budgie.

Since Junior High at least my memory has operated as a complex weave of cross references.

Today, some guitar licks on a Clapton bootleg I was listening to sounded a bit like the sound Kirk Hammett (from Metallica) gets on his Strat.  That made me think I should’ve brought some Metallica with me today (note to self; bring Metallica).  Then I remembered it was mid September – my brain saying:  “Hey, mid-September, 1992 (a month after many of my homeys went to college) was when I saw that GNR/Metallica/Body Count show.  Looked it up on my gig list and sure enough, it was today!

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I typically keep my politics quiet here but this excerpt of a recent Rolling Stone article about the corruption and the free reign private contractors have had in Iraq at taxpayer expense made me laugh before thinking about it.   I never thought to compare the Communist Manifesto and The Wealth Of Nations.
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What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure — American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

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If you’re adventurous read Adam Smith here and Karl Marx here.