Honestly I prefer Matt to Frank but lets not get silly...dude is able to play the drums....sure his style may not be our preference...but it's not like he had to get adler to teach him how to play jungle so he's not going to need brain to learn some other Chinese demo.

Unless there's something going on with him we don't understand like he secretly has a degenerative illness and is soldiering on or something I don't think he's being taught his instrument.

Brain has long been friends with the band, maybe he is there for some other purpose or side project they are working on on the side, maybe they're doing recording between shows and wanna use him for consistency or something? Maybe he was just in town and hanging out cos he's a muso too. Hard to know really.

In my dream world it's not on UYI and TSI doesn't come out in 1993 and snakepit1 doesn't happen either.

Instead in 1995 we get a new GNR album that is a double set.

One disk is basically TSI, the second disk is originals with the best songs/riffs from 5'Oclock somewhere except sung by Axl and with Axl arrangements, and a couple of new Axl songs that were possibly around at the time - This I love etc.

Something that would have been a true follow up to UYI. The Axl stuff would satisfy the casual softer fans who liked GNR for the ballads, and the more guitar driven 5'oclock stuff put through an Axl filter would be kind of a return to AFD grit for those feeling GNR had gone too pop. TSI would be as it is now, great covers and a fun tribute to the bands rock and punk influences.

I love a lot of those other acts you mention.

But old GNR had an energy about them. Axl had a kind of charisma. Slash had it too. Almost an enigma. Sort of frightening and captivating at the same time. Chaos followed them. You don't know if they will play for 10 mins or 4 hours. They might play anything or walk off. There could be a city wide riot. But it was a major event them coming into town. Importantly...musically they also cashed all the cheques that they wrote..there's people who can play faster than slash..but there's not many who bring what he brought to the music...there's other guys who can front a band...but Axl was out there in a real honest crazy way or something...it's hard to define.

They really are the one in million as the song says. It's lightening in a bottle. Cliches but it was true. People could see this...like the band had insane cross over appeal...people were aware of them who don't follow music even...it was just the thing of the time I guess...bit like how I don't follow sport but I remember michael jordan....

Anyway...by 1994 it becomes a joke because the world moved on and got embarrassed by itself. People started putting away their hypercolor t-shirts, and complaining that greed isn't good and slamming stuff they used to like. They were looking for a scape goat and even though GNR is a lot less "cliche 80s" than other (never the less good) bands like Poison and Motley they got roped in as the ringleaders just because they were the biggest and made themselves a target with stuff like the videos and Axl having shoes and so on. Bands like Nirvana traded a lot on how they saw themselves as different to GNR...and the it just became a fad to be more punk and less technical...

You see it a lot in a lot of the criticism leveled at GNR musically is inaccurate...like people say slash only plays pentatonic (wrong) that GNR was factory made fake music (wrong)...it's just bullshit that got around in the grunge era for some reason....

Anyways...I think after a 6 or 7 years of that the movement was wearing out...and people started to look for some type of resurgence again of what they used to like..and well..I guess they remembered Axl and Slash are freak level rockers deep in the blood.

I think the other bands know it too. Like people give Axl shit sometimes but they know. Look at how Baz who in his prime has a totally amazing voice on world scale...look how he looks up to Axl...he knows there's something there. Look at how other guitarists like Slash too...or like when Brian went down...why would you ask Axl with his notorious reputation....well...it's because if anyone can pull some shit out of the hat it's fucking Axl Rose.

I swapped to Spotify a couple of years back. I mean to be honest by nature i'm a high-def guy and also a bit of a collector/completist in life.....so I'd way rather own than rent stuff and I'd like to own it in 24bit or whatever is highest. But I've come to accept the tide. Like same with movies...I own thousands of movies on disk and tape that I collected over the years...but it's obvious the future is streaming...so i thought fighting it is pointless..it gets hard to even get a quality cd player now.....so i swapped to streaming...still keep a 4k player for favourite franchises...but I am resigned to streaming for day to day stuff.

Anyways Spotify has a function to play your local files on your PC as well as it's streaming stuff. Who know how it works? Like for all i know it reads the titles of files I play as well as what it streams. So maybe it noticed enough people play files called "State of Grace" then stream "Locomotive" or whatever. Fuck knows what anything does these days, it all tracks us to an absurd level. Then again maybe it doesn't pay attention to stuff like that at all. I really don't know. I would believe they track search requests though. Why wouldn't they? It would help determine what they license and at what rate etc. Really we should test it buy as a fanbase making up a title like "Goat Fucker Face Mash" and as a team all search for it, then play some AFD, and see if in a few months it starts to make the association by itself. lol.