Guns N' Roses February 15, 2012 Webster Hall New York, NY, United States Up Close and Personal Tour
01 Dexter Intro 02 Chinese Democracy 03 Welcome to the Jungle 04 It's So Easy 05 Mr. Brownstone 06 Sorry 07 Shackler's Revenge 08 Estranged 09 Rocket Queen 10 Richard Fortus Guitar Solo (James Bond) 11 Live and Let Die 12 You're Crazy 13 This I Love 14 Motivation (Tommy Stinson on vocals) 15 Dizzy Reed Piano Solo (Baba O’Riley) 16 Street of Dreams 17 You Could Be Mine 18 DJ Ashba Guitar Solo 20 Riff Raff 21 Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2 22 Gran Torino / Axl Rose Piano Solo (Elton John) 23 November Rain 24 Bumblefoot Guitar Solo (Pink Panther) 25 Don't Cry 26 Knockin' On Heaven's Door 27 Civil War 28 Used to Love Her 29 Nightrain 30 Madagascar 31 Better 32 My Michelle 33 Patience 34 Paradise City
This is an audience recording that aims to document the experience of being in the crowd at the show, and features occasionally loud but appropriate crowd noise.
Would you rather see the original Guns N’ Roses? With Slash and Izzy and Duff? Of course you would. It’s musically correct to want that. Did you just call that the REAL Guns N’ Roses? Right. Well, I thought that, too, on Wednesday afternoon, but now it's Thursday morning and I’m not so sure anymore. Reason is, I just been to the best hard rock show I ever seen in my whole life.
I learned a few things. Most important: whatever band Axl has assembled around himself, that’s Guns N’ Roses. That's the REAL Guns N’ Roses. There was Dizzy on keyboards for the history minded, and then there was a guitar god gumbo surely fit to get with the most discriminating guitar gourmands. I love Slash and Izzy, but I regard the current three as a completely satisfactory solution to the GNR Guitar Problem. I was especially impressed with Fortus, the one I knew the least about. He's got that low key, sly, Ronnie Wood mischief and a disarming joyful smile that provides a temperamental counterpoint to Axl's rock star gravitas. Bumblefoot played nimble, muscular leads mostly on a really cool looking double neck fretless Vigier Excalibur, while Ashba brought rock star flash up and down the amp stacks. It was much, much better than just a bunch of hired guns, and it felt to me like a real band with unusually good technical skills. I'm gonna say it straight up: I didn't miss Slash and Izzy.
GNR didn't come out till 11:50 PM, and they played for the next 3 hours and 20 minutes. Not Springsteen-long maybe, but you get your money's worth. At this point GNR is so well known for starting late and causing riots that if one or the other doesn't happen people sort of feel let down. As far as the start time goes, if there isn't a hard curfew (and there wasn't), then there's no such thing as being late, really. Yes, it was exhausting for people on a normal schedule, but almost the whole crowd hung to the very end. Axl and the crowd were both well behaved: nothing thrown, no rants, and by the time Paradise City was cruising into the final chorus and the confetti canons fired a dense blizzard of red corpuscles turning the room into the aorta of the behemoth, I think we were all glad we came, and all glad we'd stayed.
Axl and I are practically the same age and our birthdays are only one day apart. That’s a silly source of pleasure for me. Not that I'm ashamed of being a 50 year old white man, far from it, but, let's face it, it is not always a great source of pride. Esquire reported that 50-something African Americans are the happiest group of guys there are. I get that, but I’m a white dude. Who we got? Lloyd Blankfein? Sure, and he's cool. But also Axl Rose.
3 CDs Audience Stealth Core-Sound High End Binaurals (DPA-4060 capsules) > Sony PCM-M10 (24/48) > WavePad Sound Editor > FLAC Stealth recorded and minimally produced by mrsaureus, standing center floor thirty feet back from the stage. Core-Sound High End Binaurals (DPA-4060 capsules) to Sony PCM-M10 (48 kHZ, 24 bit), WavePad Sound Editor to chop and FLAC only FLAC 200:26 min. A
