Posted on 03/14/2009 6:04:51 AM PDT by terabyte
Nirvana didn't kill hair metal - Guns n' Roses did. With their explosive 1987 debut album, Appetite for Destruction, Guns n' Roses burst out of the Los Angeles glam rock scene and permanently carved a spot in rock history.
This music review places Appetite for Destruction as arguably the best album of the 1980s. From the opening delayed guitar riff of "Welcome to the Jungle" to the incendiary "Paradise City" the the almost 50s flavored ending of "Rocket Queen," the album captures the reality of life on the streets better than any before or since.
Lyrically, the band completely avoided all the traditional trappings of heavy metal. The eccentric but brilliant Axl Rose ensured that there are no Zeppelin-esque Lord of the Rings references, no pseudo-Satanist posturing, not even any of the party-all-the-time silliness of their contemporaries. Instead, there is nothing but a raw dose of five young men living a virtually homeless, penniless existence on the mean streets of LA in the mid-to-late 1980s.
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
I don’t know, I love Iron Maiden, but that Number of the Beast song seemed to be ‘selling out’ to the “superbad Satanists” trend of the time.
I was 15. My best friend played Welcome to the Jungle for me in the hallway after school and I remember thinking, "Everything just changed."
Sang better than Axl too
I am a class of 90 too.
Although Appetite for Destruction really is a seminal album because it was just such a gut punch to the pretty-boy hair metal genre. The first time I heard “Welcome to the Jungle” left me a little stunned...I’d never heard anything that hard on the radio before. Then I got the album on cassette and proceeded to wear it out blasting it in my car.
You bring up a great point about Operation: Mindcrime though. It’s really underrated IMO.
}:-)4
Hey, I was turned into a conservative by the end of my freshman year at college. My hippie school teachers made liberalism out as if it were all about freedom, and I get to a state university and find no free thought allowed, all speech must be approved by the PC police, the separation of church and state crowd was supporting theocracies like Syria and Iran, and the “my body, my choice” crowd was hating pregnant women for causing overpopulation.
And within a month, the Soviet Union fell, and they were all crying about the terrible tragedy of it all. And the next day, the newspapers changed their tune from “Vote Republican and you’ll all die in a nuclear war,” to “Vote Republican and you’ll all be killed by the ozone hole and global warming.” And I said, “You know, that Morton Downey, Jr. guy had some interesting ideas on his show.”
Isn’t that terrible? All the cool neo-cons (as in, born liberal, became conservative... not at all what the liberal press makes that word out to mean) thank William F. Buckley, Rush Limbaugh, etc. for setting them on the path to conservatism. The horrible, deep dark truth is that before I read the National Review or found EIB, it was Morton Downey, Jr. who amused me.
Why? For all his theatrics, he actually heard what his guests had to say.
Barry McGuire sang it like a rangy Bob Dylan.
Cheers!
2)Don't really like the song, although the colonists, especially the Spanish conquistadors/Pequot War of the English settlers, were brutal towards the native population.
3) The song was from the Number of the Beast
4)Again, least favorite song by them reaching the annoying level everey time I hear it.
I didn't think it was Dylan, but that's what the web site I copied said; I should have checked. Thanks for the correction.
GNR? Perhaps you need a musical 'taste' check up...
Yeah, I feel ya! Two songs I actually could not stand to listen too are Staind's: Outside and, Everessence: Bring Me To Life. My singer just rocks the living daylights out of both of those, people go nuts she does them so well and they've turn into two of my favorites to play! It's amazing the new found respect you have for some music once you HAVE to learn to play it!
Metallica, Master of Puppets, 1986. Don’t get no better than that.
Absolutely agree. Joshua Tree is the best album of the 80s. it has aged very well.
Yancy
Morton Downey Jr was my hook too!!! I used to watch for sheer entertainment (this was prefreakshow Springer and I liked the hoohah of the show) but Downey actually said things that made sense! And I kind of went through a not caring phase, but not straight up liberal and a day in 2001 set my conversatism in stone. About 10am on a Tuesday...
Change my VOTE!!!
Master of Puppets. Best album the 80’s.
How do you define “sellout”?
Yeah, I know it wasn’t actually about worshiping Satan, but unfortunately it was lumped into that catagory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.