AXL BROUGHT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

What if someone gave you a coveted, hard-to-get, front-row, VIP ticket to watch the space shuttle launch –- but with a catch: there’s a 50-50 chance the shuttle will explode on takeoff. Do you go?

If the shuttle goes off as planned, it will be one of the most spectacular sights that you have ever witnessed. But if it blows up, you could become extremely disturbed, suffer a terminal case of nightmares, and perhaps even lose the will to live.

That’s the dilemna I felt when, at the last minute, two tickets came through to see Guns N’ Roses at the BankAtlantic Center Tuesday night.

On one hand…. It’s Guns N’ Roses! Soundtrack to my life. (Picture a little eighth-grader in black clothes riding the school bus, clutching to her chest a copy of Appetitie to Destruction – on vinyl.) On the other hand… Axl’s been promising to release Chinese Democracy for ten years. Slash, Duff, Steven, and Izzy are gone; Axl’s the only original member left in the band. Most foreboding was his unfortunate choice of hairdo: Axl, cornrows are for K-Fed!

Would this be like going to see KISS – only to have them play Animalize? Would it be like watching Ozzy drool on himself? Or seeing Faster Pussycat at a craft fair? Maybe we should just stay home. The question was, “Can Axl still bring it?”

We weren’t sure that we wanted to know the answer.

But in the end, curiosity got my cat, and the vibe all the way to the BankAtlantic Center was of cautious optimism. Oh, there were doubts. The show started at on time 7:30 – not very rock n’ roll of them! Who decided to put Sebastian Bach on before Papa Roach? That is a dumb-ass person. When we got there at 8:30, Sebastian had already finished. Why wasn’t anyone wearing any slutty outfits? I overheard some woman talking about when she “used to get high.” The guys at the merch booth wanted $150 for a denim jacket that looked like it came from Wal-Mart. Are you kidding me? Had everyone lost their mojo?

Papa Roach, seemed more like a family of doodlebugs – catchy and cute, but clichéd. After them, there was an intermission. An 80 minute-long (yes, we timed it) intermission. While some people started to boo and chant “What the fuck?” I was psyched – it meant Axl would be as badass as ever. I mean, if he showed. Shit – what if he was so late because he was backstage reading about Social Security and taking Metamucil.

But everyone stopped being mad and started being awed just soon as the lights went out, and a sound like a rhinocerous fart bellowed out of the speakers, then morphed into the opening swoosh of “Welcome to the Jungle.” Axl strutted onstage in tight jeans and a black shirt, looking like the most confident man I have ever seen. He could totally kick Tommy Hilfiger’s ass! In eighth grade I hadn’t really been into that part about “feeling his serpentine,” but now I wanted to.

Axl went on to put on a totally rad – and dare I say “professional” – show. I had forgotten how many good songs they had – “Live and Let Die,” “My Michelle” (which Sebastian came out to sing on) and “Nightrain” (with the best and most underrated rock lyrics of all time: “Wake up late, honey/Put on your clothes/ and take your credit card to the liquor store”). Axl played a piano solo, and Robin Finck did a guitar wank-fest that quoted Led Zeppelin, a Bach fugue, and a noodle factory, and lasted so long that this blog was almost forced to produce a baby blog just to cover it.

But most satisfying was when Axl said, “Tommy [Stinson, formerly of the Replacemnts, now tourning with GNR] and I agree – we’re both hurting right now…. I’d really like to know what happened last night. Something about a mechanical bull.” And nothing about Metamucil.

(BTW, Props to my peeps: Thanks to Amanda Ances and Fantasma Productions for hooking me up with tickets!)