Axl Rose in 1988.

​The current version of Guns N' Roses--Axl Rose, DJ Ashba, Dizzy Reed, Tommy Stinson, Richard Fortus, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, Chris Pitman, and Frank Ferrer--will continue their pretty successful run of gigs when they head out on a brief club tour next month that has three shows scheduled in New York City. The band will play Roseland on February 10, Terminal 5 on February 12, and The Ritz on February 15—and yes, that's The Ritz, not Webster Hall, as the venue's currently known. Back in 1988 Axl and his then-bandmates, fresh off the release of Appetite For Destruction, played a show at the 11th Street hall, and the filmed version of the concert quickly became an MTV staple; next month, in honor of that gig, Webster Hall will give its identity over to that of its former self for one night only. The concert's on YouTube, and if you missed it when it aired back in the day—or if your old VHS tape is just too degraded after being around for 24 years—it's embedded below.

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​This morning the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2012 inductees, and topping the list is the snarling chroniclers of Sunset Strip decadence Guns N' Roses. (Will they get back together for the induction dinner? Is Axl Rose only going to call up Izzy for the big night? How does Tracii Guns feel about this? So many questions!) Also making it in: the psych-folk troubadour Donovan; local Carvel aficionados the Beastie Boys; the late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro; the collected British bands the Small Faces and the Faces; blues guitarist Freddie King; and, sigh, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There are some disappointing things about these choices—Eric B. and Rakim were also on the ballot, and while I certainly enjoy the Beastie Boys' music I'd argue that as far as quote-unquote importance goes I'd give it to the duo over the trio. (Although the Beasties were on the ballot last year, as were the Chili Peppers and Nyro and Donovan.) Of course my saying this will probably incite a bunch of chattering about how It's The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Man, and to that I say that the term "rock and roll" is a red herring, one that effectively trips people up into thinking that only guitar-based bands (hey, remember, the Beastie Boys started out as a hardcore outfit!) are worthy of induction. Certainly the body of artists on the museum's roster represents pop—yes, it's a certain idea of pop, one with a stamp of Importance that's defined by values rooted in privileging rock's ethos over others, but it's pop nonetheless. And yes I can sigh and complain about this because I voted! My ballot's below.

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Guns N' Roses w/Asking Alexandria
Izod Center
Thurdsay, November 18

Better than: Getting to sleep at a decent hour.

"It's nice to be here," Axl Rose said from the Izod Center's stage at approximately midnight last night, an hour into Guns N' Roses set. "I had my doubts, too, if I'd make it." The hours preceding his band's first note had been filled with speculation about 2 a.m. closing times and a disastrously received opening act, the new-wave-of-British-screamo act Asking Alexandria, that took the stage about an hour and 15 minutes after the show's scheduled beginning.

Tension is seen as something of a given with Guns N' Roses, the band Rose has fronted for a good 26 years now; their 1987 debut Appetite For Destruction was a chronicle of life in the seediest part of Los Angeles' underbelly, with lyrical depictions of drugs and sex and nihilism and dirty, minor-key rock and roll that was lacerated with piercing guitar solos and the occasional bit of sweetness. From there the band—and its attendant legend—mushroomed, with ever-more-grandiose videos, departures, arrivals, reality-TV shows, and the long, drawn-out saga of Chinese Democracy, the most recent album to come out under the GN'R imprimatur. The release of the album, so apocryphal for so long, was a bit of an anticlimax, a Best Buy exclusive overshadowed by the store also selling new video games where you could mime other chestnuts in the band's catalog. Although after 17 years of buildup and scuttlebutt, would even a snarling statement on the level of Appetite have quieted the peanut gallery?

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Guns N' Roses ca. 1987: If nothing else, that pouf should be immortalized for eternity.

​The Cure, Eric B. & Rakim, and Guns N' Roses are among the new-to-the-ballot artists on the list for for the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame's class of 2012, announced this morning; they join previous nominees the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Donna Summer. Full list below.

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​Over the weekend, a key album that came out in 1991 celebrated the 20th anniversary of its release date: Guns N' Roses' double-disc, piano-laden Use Your Illusion was released on September 17, 1991, giving late-'80s arena rock what was probably its last gasp of commercial supremacy/artistic overreach and setting up the very long, ultimately unsatisfying wait for Chinese Democracy. It's by no means a perfect album—it's overstuffed with songs that originally appeared on soundtracks and compilations, not to mention a few experiments that just should have stayed in the vault—but it's still extremely satisfying in more than a few spots thanks to the musicianship on board, and you can hear elements of its outsized ambition and reliance on arena-rock tropes even in present-day albums like Born This Way.

Of course, as an editor with multiple digital-music programs that allow for playlisting, my impulse when listening to the albums now is to nip and tuck at will, or at least slim the dual tracklistings to only those crucial songs that can fit onto a 90-minute cassette. There is a single-disc version of Use Your Illusion out there, but it, to put it plainly, is no good at all—two of its 12 tracks are covers (save those for the deluxe reissue of The Spaghetti Incident?!, please), another two are versions of "Don't Cry," and it doesn't even have Axl Rose's blanket indictment of anyone in his way/progenitor to every annoying song about drinking "haterade" that's graced a band's later-career cutout-bin offerings "Get In The Ring." Below, my (sequenced!) attempt to slim down the album to a single disc's worth of music.

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​Last night's South Park was in large part about the fad/scourge of Tween Wave, a new genre that horrified parents and mobilized kids all across the country. Dubbed as such because it would be the Next Big Thing from 2009 through 2012, it made the phrase "this sounds like shit" quite literal; it basically sounded like someone (or, shudder, multiple people) with really bad indigestion letting the world know about their digestive tract's problems over sorta-dubsteppish beats. But what musical subculture was the episode really making fun of? A clip, and some theories, below.

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So our/my favorite guy on the planet, one of the few metal dudes to have evolved admirably into life after his most renowned association (unlike his more famous counterpart), just got a book deal from Simon & Schuster. He's been angling for this a long while now, as he told us when he wrote for us last May, and we're thrilled to see him finally get his due. McKagan announced this today on Reverb, the music blog of our sister paper Seattle Weekly, and in his post, he explains firmly that his book will not be the GN'R version of The Dirt.

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Axl Rose and Sebastian Bach getting it in. Photo by Olivier Zahm via the Purple Diary

​This morning, the New York Post got into the business of tracking the overweight, "chunky man jewelry"-sporting Sasquatch that's been terrorizing the New York nightlife scene for nigh on three weeks now. "His assault on New York night life has made him a one-man stimulus package during the scene's winter doldrums," reports the paper, "and the city's nocturnes are thrilled." Who is this hulking behemoth of afterparties and "cocktails of vodka, cranberry juice and champagne"? Why, who else but Axl Rose?

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If you weren't there, have a Red Stripe and fuck off.

Unfortunately he took to Twitter several hours before our own Zach Baron unleashed his own visceral rant re: GNR's two "secret" shows here last week, but Axl's own thoughts are always worth perusing, if only because rumors/jibes/accusations swirl around him with such frequency and ferocity that he has to devote multiple paragraphs to dispelling various forms of "nonsense." For example:

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So Sebastian Bach saved Axl Rose from being attacked by a maniac with a blade the other night at the Gramercy Hotel's Rose Bar. "Nobody is getting anywhere near my man Axl Rose with a knife," said the one-time Skid Row frontman, and from his position atop a banquet, he summoned security to cast what may in fact have been a very sensible individual out into the cold. It was Valentine's Day at the Purple mag afterparty, and the band of misfits who call themselves Guns N' Roses were blasting the assembled celebrities with a two hour set not unlike the one the band had visited on an unsuspecting crowd inside a John Varvatos store last week. Fashion Week ends tomorrow and with any luck, it will take Axl Rose with it.

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