9/03/10 Accidental Music Expert

Space co-hosts a weekly English language radio program on the Hualien affiliate of Taiwan’s public radio corporation (think CBC), and each week Space and Jacob talk about a different band or musical theme.  This week’s featured band?  Guns n' Roses.  Perfect!  I had been much more than a casual fan, G n' R was the band of my youth.  From the release of Appetite for Destruction and the tail end of elementary school to Use Your Illusions during high school.  I’ll kindly dismiss The Spaghetti Incident and all the bullshit that followed.

Jacob

One thing was for certain, I wouldn’t be able to match musical wits with Space.  He has attained a level of musical nerd-dom that few people can compete with.  G n’ R is Space’s musical Achilles heel though; he’s such a huge fan with so much to say about the band and it was likely that he’d fall victim to rambling.  Like a movie fan who freezes when presented with the opportunity to speak with their favourite actor; all you have to do is play Rocket Queen for Space and he blows his wad…musically speaking…maybe.  When that song ends, he’s exhausted and needs to sleep.

“Rocket Queen is the height of G n' R; their six minutes of perfection; the best song on their best album; their could be no more perfect way to close out Appetite…blah blah blah” and on and on he goes.  No doubt, Rocket Queen is a great song, just a little overdone in my books.  It’s the sex interlude that throws it off for me.  Rumour has it that it’s an actual recording of Axl giving it to some porn star in the recording studio.  Truth or fiction, it doesn’t really matter; it’s just another example of how Axl’s ego tends to ruin a good thing.  For me, it’s Night Train over Rocket Queen.

Talk shifted to the Use Your Illusions albums which were technically a double album.  Space thinks that they were a disappointment; yet another example of Axl going too far.  I might be inclined to agree with Space if the internet hadn’t turned the industry upside down.  I argued that given the nature of music today and the focus on singles and songs purchased piecemeal, it didn’t matter anymore that Illusions I and II split many great songs between them and filled the gaps with crap.  Today, salvation for Illusions is a matter of click, click, click, create a new playlist and be done with it.

Jacob shared an interesting Asia specific take on G n' R; here, the band was popular with the young ladies not because they were into bad boys and metal, but because they thought the band’s name was romantic on account of the “Roses”.  In their Taiwanese heyday, G n' R was played at full volume in all the night markets.  Now that would have been a sight!

Next week… Faith No More.

*****

mp3 of the show to be posted as soon as the CD Space mailed me arrives