Guns N Roses

In the days leading up to this show, everyone, and I mean everyone I talked to had the same reaction. "Nah, you have fun with that, it's not the real Guns N Roses, I think I'll skip it." Being the concert optimist that I am, I thought, well, maybe Slash isn't there, or even a guy with a bucket on his head, but surely Axl will bring a show worth seeing. You might ask, "Why would you have so much faith in a guy who is infamous for being the biggest ass hole in rock history?" Now I am asking myself the same thing.

In what would become the theme of the evening, I spent the first hour in that arena waiting for Black Label Society to start. I figured, the ticket said 7:30, so showing up at around 8:15 would be a safe bet. Not so much. Finally, the B.L.S. started and after the first few seconds, I found myself, again, waiting for this load of crap to be over. When the opening band sucks, you figure its only 45 minutes to sit through. These guys didn't get the memo. Contrary to what they believed, no one was there to see over an hour of their cliche show. They pulled out every worn out hard rock stereotype, from the ten finger tap, to the drum stick twirl, to headbanging in front of their wall of Marshall stacks. With their 15 minute guitar noise solo session, I had enough time to catch most of the second half of the Lions Saints game out on the concourse, along with a couple hundred other people.

When they finally ended, it was on again with the waiting. Another solid hour went by before the newest version of Guns came on, and they started with some Chinese Democracy new crap. I thought "alright, cool, they got that crap out of the way and now it's on to "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Mr. Brownstone"." I thought the show was starting to change directions into the walk down rock memory lane that I had hoped for. Unfortunately, it turned into more waiting. I waited the next 45 minutes for those tatted up nobodies (not to mention the dork on congas and piano) to run through a half a dozen more new songs before hitting "Live and Let Die". When the next two songs were again, new crap, I spit on the floor and walked out. I don't care how nostalgic a live version of "Sweet Child O' Mine" could be, it's not worth sitting through this load of bull. Axl, Slash, Duff, Peter Pan, and freakin' Batman could play "November Rain" and it wouldn't be worth sitting through this. I'm sure they eventually got around to playing that and some other old ones, and I'd also bet that the damned sun was coming up when they did.

Guns N' Roses 2011 are a joke, and they are officially dead to me. Axl can go to hell, and Chinese Democracy can spend eternity in the crap dollar bin at Wal-Mart. Now I know why Slash and the rest of the original crew could not be less interested in rejoining Crap-sel Rose. I wouldn't listen to that dip shit bang cans on the sidewalk. Now I begin the next long wait, the one I'm actually looking forward to, the one where another 15 or 20 years go by before that ass hole is in my town again.