Josh Freese on Hard Skool, CD title track and Absurd. 16:00 minute mark:

I have transcribed the quote:

Freese: The only reason I know about the track Hard Skool at all is [that] my publishing company emailed me about it, maybe a week ago or a week-and-a-half ago, and said, “Do you know anything about the song Hard Skool? Did you have anything to do with the writing of it? Because it’s coming out” or “it just came out and we want to know what the splits are.” Because I guess it was done when I was in the studio with them. But we recorded so much material, and after I left they worked on so much stuff post me being there. And it was 20 years ago – over 20 years ago now – that I was there, that… There’s a few things that I really had a big hand in on the writing, for instance the title track, Chinese Democracy; I wrote the music to it. There was a few other songs that had working titles that never ended up on the Chinese Democracy record, but were laying around, and I know that at least when we recorded them 20 years ago, Axl liked them a lot. And once again, when I was there they didn’t have any lyrics yet, so they just had these working titles.

So when Hard Skool came out and I listened to it, I went “God, maybe that is one that I wrote that they’ve since… you know, later put lyrics to.” Like, when I was there in the studio with them, the song Chinese Democracy wasn’t called “Chinese Democracy” yet. I think the working title was “Smells like Josh Spirit,” because I wrote it and the chords were really simple – it’s just like kind of these three chords, over and over and over – and someone at one point goes, “This sounds kind of cool, like a Nirvana riff or something.” So it was titled “Smells Like Josh Spirit,” like up on the board where we had all the songs we were working on. Axl hadn’t written any lyrics to it yet, and that didn’t happen until after I left.

So, once again, when I went, “Okay, Hard Skool, let me listen to that, because maybe that’s what this song turned into or that song turned into,” I listened to it and I didn’t recognize hardly any of it, you know… That being said, maybe I did write some of it (laughs) - I mean, because, once again, it was 22 years ago. But there was two or three things that I brought in where I really wrote the majority of the music and I would definitely recognize instantly. As a matter of fact, before the track started playing, I’m like, “I wonder if it’s going to be this one, or this one, or this one,” because there were a few that were pretty cool that didn’t end up getting used, but that wasn’t one of them. Did they release more stuff or just that one track last week? [Brando mentions Absurd and that it was called Silkworms] Oh yeah. I didn’t have anything to do with that one.

Yes, they definitely weren't listed as part of the anniversary stuff, but they were among the regular shirts they were selling - at least that's what I remember.

The "Guns N' Roses was here" t-shirts can also be seen in official newsletters from 1989/90:

http://www.troccolitm.com/FnClb.html

Before they played it he said that it was supposed to be played earlier in the set, but there were issues with his IEM. Then he introduced it as "a song about lower education" (I was hoping he would say more about it or at least for a better introduction, but oh well).

After the performance he said, “That was interesting. That was something. What that something was, I’m not exactly sure.”

Thank you, Haters Gonna Hate.

Very interesting. I think this gives credence to the theory that it's from 1996. According to Sorum, the Jackie Chan song was a song Axl had. Maybe he had written the core of it, Slash, Duff and Matt worked on it a bit before the band imploded, and then NuGnR developed it.

Also from Soulmonster at a4d and myngr: