Team Brazil probably serves as an intermediary for Axl and Duff/Slash, making sure each side gets what it wants. The workload is easy and the money must be great for everyone — including Axl who exhausted the appeal of the previous band by not releasing any new music and thus opening up new ways to attract another generation of fans.

It is a boring state of affairs and the only way to fix it will be with another album, providing they commit to promoting it with real excitement as they did when UYI came out.

In the meantime Slash has his collaborations with Myles to keep him happy. Duff has his solo work and writing. They are getting rich and making casual fans happy while going through the motions in GNR. I want more for them, and from them, but they probably feel the same so I guess I’m left with as much empathy as disappointment until something changes.

I am reading Bruce Dickinson’s book. He talks about learning to sing properly — which muscles to use, how to shape his tongue, things not necessarily intuitive.

Axl had a vocal coach (who died) but with a new one he could probably slow the decline of his vocal range and muster a few new studio recordings before he retires. And he remains a great harmony/background vocalist, which he seems to actually enjoy (think of the Don Henley collaboration, “Going Down,” etc. Maybe Duff could sing lead on a few cuts while Axl harmonizes).

This is probably an example of the five stages of accepting death that psychologists speak of. The “negotiation phase” I think they call it. The mental gymnastics required to be a GnR fan.

I had not heard the Eddie Trunk story before. Is it posted on YouTube? What was the concern, that Axl needed to be eased into knowing Eddie was there?

Nobody had a clue although after the GNR/Metallica 1992 tour the last few 1993 dates got comparatively little attention.

“The Spaghetti Incident” seemed like another placeholder. Only when Duff and Slash released their solo albums did it start to seem like something was wrong, compounded when Duff seemed more committed to Neurotic Boy Outsiders. I don’t quite recall when a split was formally mentioned but probably in 1996?

“Chloe” sounds like it was inspired by the Kate Bush song “Babushka.”

Just saw “Idiocracy” recently. The concept is, what will happen in the future when so many educated people nowadays delay or avoid having kids for the sake of their careers?

Apparently the studio tried to bury it because it made fun of major companies like Costco (shown to have city-sized stores 500 years from now) and Starbucks (which in the future gives handjobs when you buy a coffee). Really clever and funny film.