Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "hella"
¤ Usage: "Hella m'ungry, Punchin!"
¤ Origin: Old Valley-Girl speak, or something like that. It was big in the 80s, vanished, and has been reborn largely thanks to Cartman.
¤ Etymology: It's short for "hell of" I suppose, even though no one has ever used that two-word phrase for the purpose that "hella" exists. It's basically a synonym for "very" or "extremely" and is best used to great excess, or for intentionally-annoying sarcastic effect, in much the same way adults can effectively use L33t sP34k.
¤ Notes: An annoying and stupid word, but one you'll soon find yourself almost powerless to cease overusing, if you dare take a verbal step down that mixed metaphor of a road.  Cartman says "hella" about twenty times in an old episode of South Park, driving everyone else crazy, and while it's amazingly annoying to hear him say it... neither Malaya or I can keep from throwing it into conversation when we get a chance.  Mostly to each other, as a sort of "that sounds so stupid it's funny" joke, but we slip up and use it when talking to other people from time to time as well. Much to their horror, I'm sure. -- May 3, 2004

unday's blog promised more discussion to come about the all-Filipino gathering I attended with Malaya on Friday night. However as I think about it now, there's really nothing more to say. It was a gathering of her mom's friends from a society they belonged to many years ago, back in the Phillipines. They were almost all 55+, Malaya and I were practically the youngest people there, and we were pretty bored. Other than that, there's not much to say.

We had a nice Mother's Day lunch with Malaya's mom on Sunday, and then did some shopping. Malaya and I got out Saturday evening and did a run/walk around the reservoir. The weather was great, my legs felt completely recovered from being so wiped out after my long run last Thursday, and Malaya was able to run almost two miles without stopping. True, our pace wasn't exactly breakneck, but she was very happy and I was impressed at her progress.  I guess those gym muscles are good for something in the real world afterall, eh?

We ate lunch out Monday, gorging at Claim Jumper, and afterwards I went for a run myself. I didn't feel up to the full 6+ mile hilly dirt track circuit, so I took a couple of shortcuts that cut the total distance by more than a mile. It all went well for about three miles, though my legs were tired and I had to stop and walk a couple of times. I jogged quickly when I was able to jog, though. The problems came in about 2/3 of the way through it though, when the steady aching I was getting in my shins and calves increased to the point of strong pain. My legs felt strong, and I was never out of breath, but the impact of running strides on the hard packed dirt hurt. Hurt to the point that I had to stop running. It was okay to walk on, but I just couldn't run, and that really annoyed me, since the whole reason I was out there was to get sweaty in the evening sun and burn off some weight.

I didn't do any exercise during the 3 weeks it took my knee to heal up after I sprained it in early April, and I definitely put on a few pounds over that time. Either that or someone sneaked into my closet and took about two inches out of the waistband of every pair of pants I own.  The little roll around my belly is making me unhappy, to the point that I'm trying to get back into doing lots of sit ups a day, and wanting to do get out and run for an hour at least twice a week. I'd like to go every day, but there's no way my legs would hold up to that, at least not at this point.

The first time out for a long run after my knee time off was odd, since I felt okay during it, but had such sore thighs the next day that I could hardly walk. Monday was the second long run since the knee time, and during it I had shooting pains in my lower legs, in places that have never hurt before. I had to walk most of the last two miles, only managing a fast shuffling run up several hills, since that didn't hurt my shins very much. It was the full strides on hardpack, or going downhill that hurt so badly.

It remains to be seen if I'll be so sore that I can't walk the next day, but since I'm writing this at 6am, and my legs feel fine since I took a bath, an Advil, and got Malaya to massage my legs some, it seems like my recovery will be faster. My thighs don't feel sore at all, despite the fact that they made descending a flight of stairs a very painful ordeal just two days ago, after my last run.  Funny how the same body, doing the same run, over the same terrain, can be sore or tired or hurting in someplace different every time out.

No news today, I didn't surf much and wrote even less about what I read. I continue to have a ton of blog content to get to, including half a dozen quick reviews, an equal amount of good reader mail, a long discussion of bad video game design, and more. I just keep writing other blog stuff on the spur of the moment, and I don't want to blow my entire blog wad all at once, and return to the two weeks ago joys of boring, 15k blogs.

I often wish that everyone knew the plot of my ongoing fantasy novel as well as I do, and that you all wanted to hear about it, and wouldn't claw your eyes out to avoid the massive spoilers, since I keep having great ideas for the story, and would love to discuss them with someone.

While washing dishes and thinking about it tonight, I had a brilliant and oh-so-horrible (for one of the characters) brainstorm about the plot. It was a new interpretation of something that's planned to take place very near the end of the novel, and I realized that if I moved it up a bit, and changed the order of a couple of other things, it would explain several major plot points that I've been wrestling with, including the biggest character motivation issue I've had plaguing me for months and months.

The new idea will greatly improve a scene, makes the whole story much stronger, and adds so much to the backstory between two of the major characters. It's just a pity that by the time you guys get to read the novel you'll have long since forgotten about this blog, and even if you haven't I almost certainly will have. In two or three years, even if you came up to me at a book signing and asked me about it, with a print out of this blog to jog my memory, I'd have to fake it, or just order the bodyguards to drag you out into the side alley and break several dozen of your bones.

Yes, I pretty much suck.

One thing I did give some thought to Friday Night, was the dancing. Not so much the particular dancing, though I found the Achy Breaky Heart line dancing utterly perplexing. Malaya was astonished that I'd never heard the song before, and had no idea that it had its own silly little dance, but as I pointed out, I do all I can to avoid learning that sort of thing.

In general terms, I don't understand dancing. I don't enjoy it, I don't see why anyone else does either, and I can't understand why people spend time doing it when they don't absolutely have to.

I'm not the typical, "I'd like to dance but I'm terrified of people seeing me and thinking I'm cool at it." guy.  I don't really worry about what other people think, especially not about something as trivial as how I dance, and anyway, I have rhythm. I don't dance much, but sometimes at home I'm listening to some music that really moves me, and when it does, I dance around spontaneously. I don't often do it in front of other people, since it seems so contrived and show off-y, but I'm not so much self conscious about it as I am indifferent. I don't want to watch other people dance, so I assume they don't want to see me, so I don't inflict myself upon their eyes.

I can appreciate good dancers, guys doing back flips and breakdancing and such, or people who are skilled at formalized dances like the tango or ballroom dancing. But I don't have any desire to do any of that myself, and I don't see why anyone else does either. To paraphrase Hannibal, what is its purpose? What needs does it serve?

Why do people enjoy dancing? I can see it if they enjoy the music, but dance music is just so pointless and vapid. Beeps and boops and cheesy vocals and endless repetition of the same few notes. No one really enjoys that music for itself; it only exists since "it's got a beat and you can dance to it." as they say. But why? What is the point in dancing any, at all, ever? The whole thing just sort of perplexes me.

Oddly enough, the really stupid group dances, like the YMCA or Macarena or country line dancing, where everyone does the same undemanding body movements over and over again, make more sense to me than pop music dancing. I don't ever want to do any of them, and I invariably hate the mindless music that fuels them, but I can see why people do it. It's a sort of group thing, people like to be part of a group, people who can't dance (white people, basically, which explains the popularity of line dancing and country music) can learn to follow along with the regimented arm and leg movements, etc. I can't believe that anyone really enjoys it, and I think that it's mostly for people who just don't want to be teased for not dancing, but I guess it's possible that some people actually enjoy joining in the crowd and turning left when everyone else turns left, then turning right, and so on.

So after the dinner Friday night, and some interminable speeches that most everyone tried to ignore while concentrating on their dessert, the dancing began. I watched, bemused. Would anyone in the old Filipino gathering go dance to modern dance music? Or would the DJ just spin whatever the island equivalent of Lawrence Welk is? I was expecting old, slow dirges, so I was surprised when he played modern dance music, and especially surprised when the dance floor was packed for most of the night.

Which got me to thinking, "Why do people dance?"  As I said a few paragraphs ago, I've never understood it. I can do it, and I've done it a few times in the past, but it seems so pointless and silly. I've been dragged to nightclubs by other people, I've danced with girls and sort of enjoyed it at the time, mostly when they do the whole butt humping and thigh grinding stuff, but I'd never do it on purpose, or for any reason other than to please my companions.

Part of it, I think, is that I almost invariably hate dance music. There's a lot of music that makes me want to dance, but I've never heard it at dance clubs. And I'm not talking about some Slayer headbanging mosh pit thing, that doesn't much interest me either. Headbanging leads to terrible neck aches, for one thing. I have no idea how people do it, short of massive narcotic abuse. I can't list titles of popular dance music tracks, since I never listen to that sort of music, since I dislike it. But it's always the same, and always too light and wimpy for my taste. If they put on something dancy, but hard enough to keep the hair on my chest from falling out, say The Prodigy or some NIN remixes, I'd get out there and do some damage. But it's always something pathetically wimpy, Ricky Martin or Cher or whatever, that makes me want to sit in a corner, insert my fingers into my ears, and hum loudly until it stops. Not that it ever does.

This sort of thing is one of the major reasons I made no effort to date for so long, over the years before Malaya came into my life. I hate going out to clubs where the only attractions are drinking, which I don't do, and dancing, which I don't want to do to the music they play in clubs.  Fortunately, Malaya doesn't drink much either, and she's happy to only hear dance music at the gym, or through headphones when we're working side by side. And since she's got good taste in restaurants, hates chick flicks, and would much rather spend time browsing a bookstore than waiting in line to get in to a club filled with loud drunks, we have no problem spending enjoyable date time out of the house at least once or twice a week.

The other thing that kills me about parties or clubs is the noise. My hearing sucks, I have concluded. I can't hear shit at a low level, so I miss every other word from Malaya's soft-spoken mom if there's any background noise at all, but at the same time I can't take really loud noise. I get a rocking headache in my temples after just a few minutes of being subjected to blasting volume, and that, combined with my hatred of drunken crowds, junkies, and smoking, is enough to guarantee that I'll probably never attend another rock concert in my life. I don't understand those either, but that's a blog for another day. Why do people put up with the crowds and drunks and expense to go sit in the upper deck and listen to a band play songs with awful sound quality when they've already heard every song 50 times, and can listen to them with great sound quality on CD for free in the comfort of their own home? I worked at about two dozen concerts back in my vending days, and left every one of them the minute I was able to do so, always with a splitting headache and a renewed wonder that people actually paid money for that sort of experience. And yes, there were some concerts by bands I actually liked: I worked at the GnR/Metallica summer monster tour in San Diego back in the mid-90s, and actually sat in my car in the parking lot and listened to a few songs before I left that one. My car, a quarter mile away, with the windows closed, being the closest to the stadium I could be without the music being so loud that my head throbbed, despite the ear plugs I was wearing.

The music wasn't as deafening as it usually is at the event Friday night, but it was still way, way too loud. I could talk to Malaya by speaking loudly into her ear, rather than screaming as I'd have had to do in a real nightclub, but I don't really think of that as a good thing. It's more of the "you'll pass out from the smoke long before you actually feel your skin melting away" school of mixed blessings.

And we were in the back, as far from the two huge speakers as possible. I had no idea how loud it really was until we walked out to get some cool air, and passed beside one of the speakers. It was pointing directly at a table full of people, less than five feet away, and walking behind it I squinted at the volume, even with my fingers plugging my ears. Wincing once we were outside, on the other side of closed doors, where the music was only loud, rather than deafening, I asked Malaya how the people at that table could stand it. I would have left immediately, if I'd been sitting within 20 feet of the speaker. She shrugged, and said it didn't really bother her.

And you know what really pisses me off about that? She can hear quiet things far, far better than I can. I'll walk into the living room where she's watching TV and sit down and start talking to her, assuming she's got the TV on mute or turned down so low since she's not paying any attention to it. And she'll shush me until a commercial, since she's watching it and listening to the dialogue. Words I can only sort of guess at, based on watching the actor's lips move.

How can she (and most other people, apparently) tolerate music that gives me a splitting headache, while also hearing quiet sounds better than I do?  It's enough to make me wonder if I was damaged by some really loud noises as a kid, and I just don't remember them.

Anyway, back to the subject of dancing, which I do not understand. I can easily imagine that people dance if they have nothing better to do, or no one to talk to, or they're using it as a social lubricant; a way to meet girls or guys. And I can almost imagine enjoying the high quality dancing, tango or rumba or some other fast, coordinated, partner-required art form. I can't imagine enjoying that, other than as something to do with someone you enjoy spending time with, but I guess it's possible. But what does anyone get out of gyrating on a dance floor? What's enjoyable about it?

I expected that they'd do it for 30 or 45 minutes at the event on Friday, and then clear the speakers and annoying disco lights away (the other problem, we were in the center back, facing directly at the flashing lights, and any time there wasn't a solid wall of dancing people between us and them, we had to shield our eyes or look to the sides to avoid a constant blue burn across our vision) and finish up the raffle and move on with the evening.  When Malaya told me they'd be dancing for at least 2 or 3 hours, I was shocked. Literally shocked. My brain started turning, and I thought, "People actually enjoy this?"

It was as if she'd told me there would be a guy coming around later with a hammer, and that I could have him break several of my fingertips, if I wanted. And when I laughed at her comment, I saw a guy walking around with a hammer, and people rushing to line up with their hands on the tables, fingers extended and big grins on their faces.

These weren't horny, drunken singles, looking for anything to expose them to potential mates. These weren't stoned fans at a concert, rocking to their favorite band. These were regular adults, most of them 25 or 30 years older than me, who were eager to stand next to deafening speakers, and dance to music they'd almost certainly never heard before.

When Malaya pointed out that dancing is usually considered a big selling point of parties and dinners, and that people will stay and do it for hours... I just sort of trailed off. Why? What do they get out of it? Why does anyone find dancing to crappy music fun? Do they feel free and loose? Uninhibited? Funky? Why do they want to feel that way?  Do they feel like they can show off doing it? Why do they want to?

I have no idea. 

I will admit that "fun" is entirely subjective, and impossible to defend or explain. I wouldn't doubt that 95% of the people at that party would find sitting and spending several hours typing away at a computer, writing about music and dancing to an online audience of people I'll never meet, with no more company than a girlfriend sleeping in the next room, and two cats sleeping on chairs a few feet to my right, incredibly boring. And yet I do this out of some sense of duty, but mostly because I like it. I could have spent this time surfing, or wanking, or playing with the cats, or reading a novel, or taking a bath, or playing computer games, or watching a DVD, or eating, or sleeping, or whatever. I elected to spend it writing this, and some fiction, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. More than any of my other options.

I also enjoy playing computer games, even ones that are poorly-designed and frequently tedious (I'd link to my blog about the problems with much of the level design in DroD, but since I wrote it last week but haven't yet had occasion to post it, so no link here.) but I couldn't explain why. If someone who hated computer games came along and asked how I could waste so many hours (Well, I used to spend hours, anyway. Sigh.) sitting there manipulating a little sprite to do something that didn't matter for even an instant in the real world, what would I say? I could compare it to other basically useless activities, like watching TV or reading bad fiction, but that's not an explanation. Saying that someone I'm doing isn't any more useless than things other people do is just an admission that my thing is merely crap of a different flavor.

Fun is subjective, and while I see dancing as a hassle and a chore and places with dancing as places to avoid, that doesn't mean everyone agrees with me. And in fact, judging by the evidence I have available, most people would disagree with me.

usic discussion today. Beatallica, what's left of Guns 'n Roses, and the fleeting popularity of most everything.

A couple of weeks ago, thanks to some random link following, I ended up on a site with links to some mp3's called "Beatallica." I DLed a few of them and forgot about it before I ever got around to listening, but I was assuming they were mashups of Metallica and Beatles songs. I'm not exactly a big Beatles fan, but I do enjoy Metallica, though like most of their fans I prefer their first four albums to anything they've done since 1990. I was curious enough to hear what the combination of their sounds would be like, but since mashups are so hit or miss, I didn't have real high expectations.

The songs I had included Garage Dayz Night, The Thing That Should Not Let It Be, and Choke Your Band. I don't know many Beatles songs, but I've heard Hard Days' Night, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Let It Be often enough (thanks to movies using them and bands covering them) to know them, and figured that they were the Beatle's halves of those three mashups. But which Metallica songs would be combined into them? Something from Garage Days obviously, and The Thing That Should Not Be was part of the Beatallica song with the most clever title, but I had no idea what I Want to Choke Your Band was going to combine.

The vast majority of mashups I've seen combine 2 songs I don't know, or butcher a song I do know to the point that my ears start to bleed, so just listening to mashups that included Metallica was going to be unusual, and possibly painful. Plus the Beatles and Metallica aren't exactly similar musical styles; though that sort of thing is exactly what makes most mashups interesting.

So I started listening, and found The Thing That Should Not Let It Be pretty interesting, but confusing. Check it out yourself, if you're curious. It sounded like Metallica style music, and Metallica vocals, but it was exactly to the tune of Let It Be. If Let It Be it was a metal song. I couldn't figure out how they'd mixed it. Had they somehow chopped up enough bits of Metallica songs to put them back together into a coherent song that sounded like a Beatle's cover? Was this an actual Metallica cover of a Beatles song? It was just like the Beatles song, but it had somewhat modified lyrics, using phrases from The Thing That Should Not Be, the Metallica song, and sounded like classic Metallica music.

I puzzled over that one, as well as Hey Dude, and the other two I mentioned earlier. How was it done? They weren't great songs, and I couldn't see myself listening to them much after the novelty wore off, but the technique was interesting. After going out for a late lunch with Malaya, during which I found The Thing That Should Not Let It Be running through my head, I looked on the internet for more info. My first stop was google, where I searched on "Beatallica" and expected that I might find some music-type blogs talking about it.  I was surprised to see www.beatallica.com as the first result. My first click was to the FAQ, and there I got my answer. 

Who are the guys in the band?

Two musicians with day jobs pulled the whole thing off. One (Krk) did all the music, the other (Jaymz) lent his Hetfield impersonation. All the tracks on the first EP were recorded in one day. The second EP took even longer...

Both guys have their own separate bands, and they write and perform original material. They've been friends for years.

So wait... there's no real Metallica sampled here anywhere? I could tell there was no Beatles, but I thought these were Metallica samples, or edits, or something. Nope.

It's two guys who can do a mean Metallica cover band impersonation, playing Beatles songs as if Metallica were covering them, with somewhat Metallica-ized lyrics. The music is pretty uninspired, the drums and lead guitar especially, but you have to admit the guy's got a hell of a James Hetfield impersonation going on the vocals. Good enough to have me fooled on these tracks, at least.

So knowing exactly what's going on now, I'm somewhat disappointed. I was enjoying the mystery of how someone used their computer to mix Metallica songs up to so perfectly cover Beatles songs, and would have enjoyed trying to figure out which Metallica songs they'd chopped bits out of to create the Beatallica stuff. Of course that would have been pretty frustrating, because aside from a few opening instrumental parts, there's nothing that is identical to Metallica songs. But hey, it would have been fun to gradually realize that on my own. Instead I now know what's going on, and while I can admire the creativity of the guys who thought of this and wrote it and performed it, none of the songs are so great that I want to listen to them on their own, other than for the novelty of things.

The only ones that work for me are the 4 or 5 songs that I know the Beatles version well enough to admire the changes and style of it. The others are just like really bad Metallica songs.  However, if you're more familiar with the Beatles songs than I am (a pretty safe bet) you may enjoy these more than I do. And what the hell, you're curious and it's free. Well, it's free unless you're on some sort of hellish ISP where you pay by the byte. And if so, you should really switch. Besides, it's only a matter of time until some record company weasels get wind of this and show their utter ignorance of positive publicity and fan interest by siccing their lawyers on the site.

Speaking of music that's a strange version of what it once was, the whole Guns 'n Roses/ex-members of Guns 'n Roses thing continues. I'm not going to get into the issues of the band that's still called Guns 'n Roses. It's Axl Rose's solo/vanity project, with an album title, Chinese Democracy, that's been promised for something like five years, has yet to appear, and that pretty much everyone with some lingering GnR love has long since given up.

Hope springs eternal though, hope that there might once again be a great rock band. Not another one of those interchangable faux-garage/punk bands, not another post Nirvana-sounding formerly alternative rock band, but a real rock band. One with guitars, drums, and some blues influences. Sure, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Van Halen, and others are still alive (more or less) and trying, but the only difference between them and Guns 'n Roses is that GnR broke up a decade ago, when they were still good. And the others have kept on going for at least a decade past their "nothing new here ever again" dates.

Despite the dreadlocked, beer-bellied embarrassment that Axl and his music turned into, hope springs eternal for long-time, long-suffering GnR fans, and for the past year or two we've been teased by occasional news bits about the ex-members of GnR getting back together and writing songs again. Will they stick together, will they find a decent lead singer, and even if they do, will their music be any good? Answers are at hand! And they are: yes, sort of, and maybe.

I'm not right on top of the times with this one, and in fact the only reason I even looked into it is that I was briefly channel-surfing late Monday night, during a commercial break in Iron Chef, which Malaya was watching.  I clicked to Mtv, and was amazed to see that 1) they were playing music, 2) it didn't involve a black guy talking into a mic while bikini women gyrated, and 3) a guy who looked like Slash was playing guitar.

Curious, I stuck with it for a minute and determined that yes, it was Slash, and they even had a shirtless, muscle-guy playing bass who looked something like Duff. Was this the long-awaited ex-GnR band, and did they have an actual video out?  I didn't get to see the end of it and the credits, since we had to click back and see minor-Japanese celebrities eat ornately-prepared Szechan pork and tofu, but some hours later I got online and searched for info.  I couldn't remember the name of the new ex-GnR guys band, but it wasn't hard to find a news item with their name mentioned, Velvet Revolver.  At that point I remembered blogging about them some months ago, and mentioning their name then. (I told you I never remember what I write in these things afterwards.)

A search on that name got me their semi-official page, which is obviously enough, located at www.velvetrevolver.com. The site doesn't have too much to it (check out Slash's page for much more info), but there is an audio/video page, and it's got a link to a streaming version of their new song/video, Slither. I guess Slash is handling the song titles again, eh? Anyway, it's the song that I saw part of on Mtv. My immediate impressions were shared by Malaya, who was a GnR fan back in the day as well. We thought they had sort of a sound but that it was a bit watered-down GnR, and that the video, which seemed to be about 75% shots of the topless, heroin-skinny singer, had at least 99% too many shots of the skinny, tight silver pants wearing lead singer. Neither of us had any idea who he was, but after reading up on it tonight, I was reminded that it's Scott Weiland, ex of Stone Temple Pilots.  He's trying for some sort of Axl Rose/Mick Jagger/Iggy Pop thing in the Slither video, and not only doesn't it work, it's actively unpleasant.

As for the important thing, the music... it's okay. I've listened to the song half a dozen times from the website now, and I don't dislike it, but the best thing about it is the semi-catchy chorus. There's nothing else memorable about it, and much as Axl was a douche bag, his trademark screechy vocals would improve it. He wouldn't make it a hit, since it's not catchy enough or original in any way, but there's no point in even thinking about it since I imagine everyone in Velvet Revolver would rather enjoy sulfuric acid enemas before they joined a rock band with Axl in it again.

I can't imagine V.R. will have any real success, other than at playing their old GnR hits in concert, so my best hope is that they put out a couple of albums, from which there might be as many as two or three songs worth downloading.  And that while those songs won't approach the best GnR stuff, they might at least be as good as some of STP's work.

It's funny how fleeting and delicate rock 'n roll success is. Name some musicians who have been major contributors to more than one popular band? I don't mean they played bass on a record, or joined as a drummer, I mean they were front men, and/or wrote much of the material. There are a few people, but very, very few. True, popularity is hardly an accurate gauge of quality, and it's no measure of talent at all, but it's so very hard to have a "sound" that works at all, much less over time, much much less through the public's changing musical tastes.  It's not like a good guitarist or drummer or vocalist forgets how to play their instruments or sing, but how many can do it in a style that anyone wants to pay to listen to?

The guys in Velvet Revolver aren't any worse at their craft than they were back in the late 80s when GnR briefly took over the world, and they can still probably play their old songs just as well as ever. Hell, they can probably play them better, given how fucked up they all were back then.

Hell, it's even rare for bands to come up with a new sound that people like, and be able to maintain it. Most of the time they do one hit album with 3 or 4 great songs, a second album with more that sound the same but only 1 or 2 that are really catchy, and then die completely by their third effort.  It's funny, fans get angry at bands for evolving their sound and progressing, since original fans seldom like the new stuff as much. But even bands that just keep trying with the same sound forever tend to lose their fans as well, since they did their best work on their first album, and it's diminishing returns after that.

Nü Metal, for instance. I can think of 4 or 5 Nü Metal bands who had a huge hit with a great, catchy song or two or three off of their first album. And not one of them has had a hit in several years, even though they're all trying to play more of the exact same stuff that got them big in the first place. It must be damn hard to write a hit song. There are so many bands and genres that I've liked over time, and bought numerous albums from, only to find that out of their 50 songs, only 2 or 3 were ever any good. And no amount of wishful thinking would change that fact.

Why can't the guys in Velvet Revolver write hits like Paradise City or It's So Easy or Civil War now? They wrote them back then, along with a couple of dozen other great rock songs. What's changed, besides the vocalist? How did they have such a distinctive style and sound back then. Was it the drugs? Their young angry personalities? How did they emerge from the hair metal LA scene with real rock, become practically a genre unto themselves, and then lose it, never to get it back? Was their sound so different? Why weren't there ever any other successful bands who sounded like GnR?

There are new hit bands all the time, with new sounds, but they always, almost immediately, spawn a dozen other bands who sound just the same. Or they emerge from a region where lots of bands have evolved a similar sound at the same time, and once one of them hits a bunch of others get signed as well. Glam rock, grunge, gangsta rap, boy bands, Nü Metal, faux-garage bands, Industrial, punk alternative, etc, etc. Every popular genre of recent years appeared with one or two bands, people started to like it, and before you knew it you had a dozen of them. Grunge started off with Seattle bands Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, and then as the sound got more and more popular it drew imitators, and within a couple of years there were second tier grunge acts like STP and Bush issuing bigger hits than the originals, as they faded or burned out.

Guns 'n Roses were somewhat glam when they started off, but they had the blues influence to give their music more soul and substance, and they quickly grew past the makeup and hairspray look, and became original. They didn't last long, thanks to Axl's insanity, but it's weird that there weren't ten other popular bands doing their version of Welcome to the Jungle by then. I'm sure it wasn't for lack of trying.

It's actually sort of a shame, since people who liked GnR had nothing to console themselves with once the band was no more. Trent Reznor put out a new Nine Inch Nails album about every 4 years during the 90s, which was a long, painful wait for fans of the genre. But at least we could amuse ourselves with NIN-light stuff like Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, Filter, etc. Fans of GnR have had nothing but GnR to listen to for the past 10 years. Which is probably a major reason that there's still so much interest in the ex-members and hope that they might reunite, or at least put out some solo stuff that can hold a candle to the old days.

It's been a long wait, and sadly enough, after listening to the three songs Velvet Revolver has to offer... the wait will continue for a lot longer.

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