From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

Pete, My therapist tells me I'm too prone to seeing things in black-and-white terms, to reaching out too quickly for blanket statements. So I'll shy away from answering your question, "always proud," with an unqualified yes. Instead, I'll say this: For the most part, hell yeah.

I'll be the first to admit the members of GNR (who, for the sake of argument, we'll limit to Axl plus the classic-era lineup; I don't think the names DJ Ashba and Chris Pitman spring to many minds when the name GNR surfaces) have worn awful outfits—those hot pants Axl wore in the early 1990s, or the cowboy hat, rather than top hat, Slash wears in the "Yesterdays" video weren't good. And what is anyone supposed to make of Axl's chaps-and-jock-strap get up from the early LA club days? (But the kilt, well, I always dug the kilt. Awesome.)

Musically, there's plenty to test the patience (anyone? Patience?) of the most loyal fans. Why, for instance, does the album version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" include that obnoxious dialog bit? And why, for chrissake, does Axl add a grimacing "cool and stressing" to "Pretty Tied Up," which he pronounces, as the liner notes point out, as "Cool ranch dressing?" Why? WHY? So yeah, not so proud of that. And if you listen to some of Axl's on-stage rants, well, good luck.

BUT. But. Holy cats, the songs are good. Appetite for Destruction has one misfire, and it's an innocuous one at that: "Think About You." One toss-off on a debut album is pretty impressive. GNR Lies smokes from start to finish, even if the band only wrote three new songs for its followp. The Use Your Illusion albums—sure they're excessive, but who cares? On these records, the glitz doesn't obscure the grit. Those records are still mean and full of swagger. Slash and Izzy made a better pair of guitarists than any other tandem in any other big band at that time. Said it. Meant it. Kirk Hammet and James Hetfield from Metallica? We know now that James and Lars told Kirk every note he was allowed to play. Wow. That's really cool. Way to go. I'm so impressed. You could argue that Mike McCready and Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam had a claim, but McCready's playing owes as much to Slash as it does to Hendrix. And in that case the student did not outsine the master.

I could get lost in the weeds yapping about Slash and Izzy's playing. Fact is, as a band, no one was as angry, as lewd, as menacing, as tempting and wrote better songs than GNR. A good hard rock band should scare you, fire you up, make you think geeks like you can be tough, too, and blow your mind. On stage, especially in the pre-headlining days, they were ferocious. Look at this clip and tell me you wouldn't have lost your shit had you been in the audience.

The classic-era nadir, the moment GNR fans are supposed to feel ashamed about, comes in the Lies song "One in a Milion." Those awful, hateful lyrics about homosexuals, blacks and immigrants. Awful. Or is it? The way I hear that tune, Axl is articulating the twisted norms he grew up with in Indiana. I think he knows it's awful to see people that way, which is why he put it in song. Take the chorus: "You're one in a million, you're a shooting star." It's dripping with sarcasm and directed at the song's narrator. That's Axl. "I'm a small-town white boy," he sings. Like millions of others who say and think dumb shit because that's how they were raised. I don't want to give the guy too much credit, but that song, I think, isn't really an attack on minorities and the marginalized. It's an admission of guilt. Yes, Axl's crazy, but do you think he's crazy (and stupid) enough to genuinely insult millions of record-buying citizens? Especially when the guy in the top hat to his left is half-black? Not likely.

About that crazy issue. Isn't it exciting to follow a band led by a guy who's so loopy? Who thought a rock band could cause a riot these days, as GNR did in St. Louis in 1990/91 because Axl jumped into the crowd, punched a dude in the face, got back on stage and then split? Fact: When Axl was getting divorced from Stephanie Seymour, he argued against sealing the court records because, in his future lives, he wanted to be able to research and learn about his past lives. Amazing, huh?

Look. I love this band. I didn't buy Chinese Democracy because I don't really think it's GNR. Maybe I will someday. Still, isn't it kind of great, in an era when everyone bows to corporate commands, Axl took more than a decade and some $13 million of record-label money to turn out his latest album? Hats off, buddy.

And lest you judge GNR's legacy by the chunky, goateed, fedora-sporting Axl of today, watch these clips. Here's Axl knocking Mick Jagger's socks off. Here's Axl doing same with Tom Petty. Looks like he's having a ball, right? That's another thing about GNR: they were fun. Nirvana? Not so much. Of all those Seattle bands that (supposedly, but not really) blossomed as a F-You to the excesses of the era, only one lasted: Pearl Jam. And guess what, they had a bit of fun. There was, and is, joy in their music. GNR had that, too.

So, am I proud of everything they've done? I think it's kind of awesome that Izzy got banned from flying commercial flights because he whizzed in the aisle of a plane, but I'm not necessarily proud of that. And I think the fact that there's a video ("Estranged") out there in which Slash emerges from the water while playing guitar is awesome, too, though I'm not proud of that either. I'm a little proud that Duff, the bass player, is now in Jane's Addiction. That's cool. And I'm totallly amazed they're all alive. And for the record, wearing a bandana Axl-style, even on a hike, is the most bad-ass way to wear it.

From the desk of Peter Crowley:

This is a direct, open question to my $10 cohort here: Was there ever a time you were embarrassed to admit you liked Guns 'n' Roses?

I ask this in light of this British blog in The Guardian, which not only features a photo of Axl Rose that anyone would be mortified by but also asks the important question, "When did Guns become so fashionable? It used to be that you'd never admit to liking Axl Rose's gang."

Ned, I know you are among the great G 'n' R believers of our generation and that you have maintained that faith since I first met you in 2000, back before the band had any sort of sort of cult or kitch revival - which I think followed the Rock in Rio revelation that Axl was still alive. You've acknowledged the band publicly, for the most part. Although I never remember you wearing one of their T-shirts or hats (or better yet, a custom jean jacket, the richest token of allegiance to this particular band), I do remember you sporting an Axl-esque do-rag on hiking trips. Your living room had Slash's autobiography in full view. You played a handful of choice G 'n' R cuts on our radio show. Points for all that.

But it can't have always been easy. Can you tell us about that?

I eagerly await your answer.

From the desk of Peter Crowley:

As I said in a recent post on this site, the new double-disc Black Crowes album, “Croweology,” has a stupid name but is a good album. Let me be more specific: That doesn’t mean it’s a great album, but it’s plenty listenable in a fair variety of moods, and at times it’s especially pleasant.

 The concept is that they play old favorites, plus a new one (“Cold Boy Smile”) and one cover (Gram Parsons and Chris Ethridge’s sublime “She”), re-recorded mostly acoustic with a few electric guitars, keyboards and backup soul singers, plus smidgens of pedal steel, fiddle, mandolin and banjo. Some songs benefit more than others from this treatment: “Share the Ride,” “Remedy,” “Welcome to the Good Times” and “Girl from a Pawnshop” are super, and ballads like “Non-Fiction” (an 8-minute version heard on the podcast attached to this post) and “Ballad in Urgency” don’t sound so much different as especially sweet – like beautifully felt live versions.

There’s certainly nothing here that sounds bad, if you even remotely like this kind of thing, but the new treatment doesn’t do much for many of these tunes. I was thrilled to see “Hotel Illness” and “Morning Song” in the lineup, but these versions don’t take me anywhere. That’s a little too true of too many of these 20 songs, despite some sweet new solos and cool pockets of jamming.

Basically, this album is twice as long as it needs to be. But on the other hand, it costs the same as a single disc – I paid $15 at the store - which forgives some of that lack of editing.

Plus, these guys definitely have the chops, and it’s a lot of fun to witness a super-tight, road-trained band cruise, twist, turn and never miss even half a beat – especially when they’re mixing up the instrumentation and arrangements. It’s a cliché to say there’s “a live feel” to this album, but knowing these guys, they probably did cut the thing fairly live in the studio.

Really, this is more like a concert than an album.

So don’t compare it to last year’s superb pair of live-in-the-studio albums of new songs, “Before the Frost …” and “… Until the Freeze.” Those will hold up for the ages, and the latter exposed an acoustic spirit it’s tempting to wish the Crowes had followed more for this project. But this is a different kind of deal. It feels like their take on an obligatory greatest hits package, which is weird because they own their own label. Perhaps the real deal is that they want an album to tour behind, but they can’t get it together for another dozen or so new songs only a year after last year’s aces. You see, they’re going on another indefinite hiatus after this tour, as Chris Robinson has said in interviews like this one.

But first, they’re on tour – right now. Check them out if you can. My wife and I have tickets for them at the Palace Theatre in Albany. Should be good.

Finally, a few random points:

-The inside packaging on “Croweology” is even goofier than the name.

-They mention two guest musicians in the credits, but not the soul singers. That’s crap. What is it with this band and the way they treat their backup ladies? I noticed it onstage last September when I saw them in Utica, too. Show some respect.

-Drummer Steve Gorman’s advice blog, What’s Wrong … with Steve, is still brilliant. Enjoy.

From the desk of Peter Crowley:

What’s your first reaction to this picture? Laugh, or take in your breath?

Does it motivate you to clean out your own cassette collection, or does it bother you that someone would throw out their old tapes, which meant so much to them, which reminded them of the friends they dubbed them from – and yes, I even tossed the mix tapes, crafted with love by friends, siblings and, best of all, sweethearts.

So, yeah, my wife and I went through our hundreds of cassettes last week. We desperately need to reduce the amount of stuff that’s taking over our home, and we also recognize that tapes are done. Today’s tapes are last decade’s 8-tracks – not quite as obsolete as a Commodore 64, but getting there.

We kept several dozen: bootlegs, home recordings and others we know we can’t replicate, plus some we really want to listen to until we get them in some other form. But for the most part, we let them go, hopefully to meet again in some other form some other time, years or even decades from now.

“Hey, there’s Living Colour!” we might exclaim, or the Spin Doctors, “An Evening with the Allman Brothers,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” or the Exploding White Mice – old friends, but we don't have world enough and time in this world to keep up with everyone. We’ll hear them on the flip side, in the sweet by and by.

We put the store-bought tapes in a box for the next yard sale – 5 cents each, we figure – but the dubbed ones had to go in the trash, as seen here. You could call it “sad but true” (a Metallica song I used to have on tape, long ago), but I’m happy about it, as I always am when I finally things out of my life. We’re addicted to stuff in our culture, and God, we need to get over it.

As a wise, weird man I knew once said, “How are we going to stop wars if we can’t say no to a third helping of ice cream?” And tapes taste a lot worse than ice cream.

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

Not long ago I was driving west from the end of Long Island with a pretty girl in the passenger seat and an old friend in the back. The sun was setting in our eyes, the wind was tangling our hair and Fats Domino was singing "Kansas City" on the car stereo. It couldn't have been much better. Listening to that tune, I noticed something: In the second verse, Fats sings "Standing on the corner, 12th street and Vine." That intersection rang a bell. Bob Dylan, I thought. Recent Dylan, I thought a second later. "High Water (For Charlie Patton)" I thought a few seconds after that. So when I got home, I looked it up. There it was:

High water risin’—risin’ night and day
All the gold and silver are bein' stolen away
Big Joe Turner lookin’ east and west
From the dark room of his mind
He made it to Kansas City
Twelfth Street and Vine
Nothin' standing there
High water everywhere

So then I thought, What's the deal with 12th street and Vine in KC? According to this site, 12th street was filled with jazz clubs, brothels and all sorts of pricey trouble. It even earned the city the name, "Paris of the Plains." So that's the score.

From the desk of Peter Crowley:

I've been playing "Cocaine Blues" ever since I lifted it from an umpteenth-generation cassette bootleg of Keith Richards playing solo acoustic while shooting the breeze. You can hear a cleaner, nicer version of him doing it here.

Not long after I heard Keith's version, I saw Dylan play it the first time I saw him, at the Landmark Theater in Syracuse. Then I heard Townes Van Zandt do it on the "Live at the Old Quarter" album. You can hear an even better version of Townes doing it here - probably the best version of this song I've heard - knockout stuff.

Playing this song almost got me and Ned fired from playing four-hour gigs on Friday nights at the Hotel Saranac bar. When the hotel manager told me they were dropping us, for playing drug songs as well as country songs, I went into his office with my guitar, played him some country songs real loud and promised not to play any more drug songs. It worked; we got the gig back.

Ramblin' Jack Elliott used to play this tune. When Ned and I met him (at the Hotel Saranac bar, God rest its soul), we brought our guitars, and at one point I started playing this song. Jack got concerned and asked if I had ever tried cocaine. I said no, and he said, "Good. Don't." Amen.

From the desk of Peter Crowley: 

This started out as a weary day. Yesterday’s double shift had gone long, and I had gone out kind of late afterward. I slept till 11 and had only just had a bowl of cereal, but not yet coffee, when my wife whisked me out to go to our kids’ play. Now the day was half over, with no sign of either accomplishment or outdoor recreation in sight. 

Coffee and an errand my wife gave me helped take my mind off my grouchiness. On my way to the dump, I listened to the new acoustic double-CD by the Black Crowes, “Croweology” – dumb name, but a good album. I’ll try to write more about it in a later post.

I was enjoying the way the Crowes remade old favorites, deep cuts and one cover – Gram Parsons’ sublime “She” – but when the album ended, I was ready for something else. I checked the CDs my wife had left in the car (yes, we still listen to CDs in the car; we don’t have one of them fancy iPods): Duke Ellington – not now … the Waterboys – maybe … the Band – ooh, I could go for that … “The River” – yes, absolutely.

The picture of Bruce on the cover sealed it. With that look on his face, unshaven, the collar of his plaid flannel shirt, he looked just like I felt: weary, but not miserable; a pretty good life, but kinda drained.

It had probably been at least 10 years since I listened to “The River.” I used to have it on a tape, copied off a friend’s CD, but that tape got lost somewhere ages ago. So I was pretty psyched when my wife got it on both record and CD at a yard sale recently (along with a ton of other really great stuff, like the Jayhawks’ “Blue Earth,” live Lucinda and Rickie Lee Jones and the Waterboys’ “Fisherman’s Blues”).

Anyway, I had liked “The River” back in the day but thought it was uneven. I would have said it was probably my fifth favorite Bruce album, after (but close to) “Born to Run” and above “Born in the USA.”

I didn’t find it uneven anymore. Don’t ask me why, but the flow worked just fine for me this time around. Maybe I’m just getting old. I’m older than Bruce was when he made this album.

I had also remembered “The River” as having a lot of organ – not that fancy David Sanctious stuff from the first two albums but the folksier Danny Federici stuff, which sounds more like a ‘70s wedding band. I hadn’t loved that aspect at the time, but I figured I might like it better now.

I did. The band wasn’t trying to knock your socks off with their playing like on “The Wild, the Innocent ...” And they were kind of like a middle-aged wedding band – a really good one, which made me feel a connection, like these guys are just like me, like I could do this, too, if I committed myself to it - and wrote ridiculously good songs like these.

Man, the songs. They’re full of family and marriage and getting off after a hard day of work and girls with broken hearts and crushes and shopping and eating and walking and, most of all, driving. When I pulled into the parking lot to pick up my daughters, I pulled out the CD case and started reading the lyrics. Geez, I never realized. Listening to songs like “Cadillac Ranch,” I could never follow what Bruce was saying, but that tune has some great lines. That one about James Dean in his Mercury and Burt Reynolds in his Trans-Am meeting up at the Cadillac Ranch, or the twist at the end where the big black Cadillac is suddenly a hearse taking his baby away? Damn. I almost laughed out loud and almost got choked up in the same a three-minute song, just reading the lyrics in the car. Much smarter and funnier and weirder than a song that sounds like that – my wife informed me that there’s a country line dance that goes along with it – needs to be.

Today "The River" jumped up a notch to my fourth favorite Bruce album, but then again, it's been a while since I heard "Born to Run" ...

So now, for your amusement and to give you a good gulp of “The River”’s flavor, I’ll close this post with the first lines of all 20 songs on "The River," in order:

“You been hurt, and you’re all cried out, you say.”

“Your mama’s yappin’ in the back seat.”

“Driving home she grabs something to eat.”

“I went out walking the other day, seen a little girl crying along the way.”

“Well, Papa go to bed now; it’s getting late.”

“Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.”

“Put on your best dress, baby, and darlin’, fix your hair up right.”

“My feets were flyin’ down the street just the other night.”

“Yesterday I went shopping, buddy, down to the mall.”

“I see you walking, baby, down the street.”

“I come from down in the valley.”

“Do you still say your prayers, little darlin’?”

“Well, there she sits, buddy, just a-gleaming in the sun.”

“I got a 007 watch, and it’s a one and only.”

“Well now, you say you’ve found another man who does things to you that I can’t.”

“I met a little girl, and I settled down.”

“Hey little dolly with the blue jeans on.”

“You make up your mind; you choose the chance you take.”

“When I lost you, honey, sometimes I think I lost my guts, too.”

“Last night I was out driving.”

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

Back in the 70s, when Mick wore yellow pants and Keith Richards still had some flesh on his bones, Keith decked stage-rusher with is Telecaster, the band not missing a beat of Satisfaction. You can watch it here. And then about 30 years later, Keith talked about that pugilistic moment. You can watch that here. It's great. "A Telecaster's a damn-good club," he says. No doubt.

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

Townes Van Zandt penned more than a few morbid tunes, and this is one of his best: "Waiting Around to Die." It's long been a favorite of my band's, and lately we've started playing it out, with our bassist, Colin, and lead singer, Kim, sharing vocals. Here, for your listening pleasure, is a recording of us playing the tune during a recent rehearsal (you'll probably have to crank your speakers). Enjoy. And enjoy the weekend.