Guns N' Roses - Civil War

I recently got into a casual discussion about GNR and which song was their best. Guns N' Roses is probably best known for "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paradise City," or "Sweet Child O' Mine." Remarkably, all three of these hits came from their first album, Appetite for Destruction. In the early 1990s, GNR released two albums at the same time: Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Another song which is sometimes deemed their best, "November Rain" can be found on the first of these two releases. In my opinion, a hidden gem resides on Use Your Illusion II (the far superior of the two albums): "Civil War." While the average GNR fan probably won't remember this song, it is their best. GNR never released an official video of the song. One can find many live performances on YouTube as well as a handful of fan-created videos. Here are some great ones I dug up:

The Killers and the Killer Mustache

In 2004, The Killers showed up on the music scene with their big post-punk single "Somebody Told Me." When I first heard the song, I wasn't really impressed. At the time, there was a current influx of what I like to call "The" bands and I really didn't pay them much attention. To me, The Killers were just another band with a lead singer dressed in makeup. But, as more and more singles were released, you could tell that The Killers was a band to pay attention to.

In 2006, The Killers released the single "When You Were Young" from their second major label release Sam's Town. The video released was excellent. Being a beard guy, the first thing I noticed was the sweet 'stache that Brandon Flowers was sporting. Yet another reason to like this band.

The Killers proceeded to release an album containing a few B-sides and new material in late 2007 called Sawdust. The first single off of the album was "Tranquilize" featuring the great Lou Reed. Upon checking out the video, it was apparent that Brandon kept his awesome mustache.



I know I haven't posted much in the last few weeks, but things are busy at work and the home front. I hope I can make more posts soon.

Judgement Night

There are very few movie soundtracks worth buying. Typically they contain a variety of songs and genres that don't really peak interest in most music fans. Sure, there may be one or two good songs, but that really doesn't warrant buying the entire soundtrack.

I actually have two movie soundtracks in my collection. I'll talk about the other one later, but today, it's all Judgement Night.

The movie itself, wasn't all that good. Throw a bunch of moderately known actors into movie that lacks a plot with any real substance and you get a pretty mediocre movie. On the other hand, the soundtrack was pure genius.

Released in 1993, the soundtrack paired up hip-hop artists with rock artists on every song. The results were outstanding. Now, this wasn't a new tactic in music. In my Anthrax post, I showed a video of Anthrax and Public Enemy which was done two years earlier. Also, the famous pairing up of Aerosmith and Run DMC had been seen over five years earlier. But, an entire album making use of this technique was a rarity. Check out this lineup:

• "Just Another Victim" by Helmet and House of Pain


• "Fallin'" by Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul


• "Me, Myself, & My Microphone" by Living Colour and Run DMC


• "Judgment Night" by Biohazard and Onyx


• "Disorder" by Slayer and Ice-T


• "Another Body Murdered" by Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.


• "I Love You Mary Jane" by Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill


• "Freak Momma" by Mudhoney and Sir Mix-A-Lot


• "Missing Link" by Dinosaur Jr and Del tha Funkee Homosapien


• "Come And Die" by Therapy? and Fatal


• "Real Thing" by Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill

Several videos were produced for the soundtrack:

"Fallin'" by Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul



"Judgment Night" by Biohazard and Onyx



"Another Body Murdered" by Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (I couldn't find a link with properly synched sound)

Snot - What Could Have Been

The music industry often sees tragedy. Some stars die way too young. I recently blogged about Jeff Healey's loss to a life-long battle with cancer. Like Healey, many talented musicians have died before they finished making their impact on music. Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Freddy Mercury, Jimi Hendrix, and several others would have impacted their respective parts of the music industry if they hadn't had their lives cut short by tragedy. In 1998, a lesser known tragedy struck the world of music.

On December 11, 1988, James Lynn Strait was killed along with his dog Dobbs in a car crash in California. Strait was the lead singer of an outstanding up-and-coming band called Snot. Strait's vocal talents were phenomenal. While "nu-metal" was peaking, Snot was forging the next generation of metal. I recall reading quotes from several insiders in the metal industry who claim that if Strait hadn't have died, the face of metal in the early 2000s would be drastically different. Strait and Snot were poised to make an incredible impact on the metal scene. Sadly, we never got to see what could have been. Snot only released one album, Get Some.

As talented as he was, Strait also was a friend to many bands and band members in the metal industry. His death brought pain to numerous people. In 2000, members of Sevendust, Korn, Deftones, Slipknot, Incubus, and many others released a tribute album named Strait Up which included several unreleased Snot songs in which Strait never got to record lyrics for. In honor of Strait, the remaining members of Snot, got friends from other bands to finish recording the album. The video for the single "Angel's Son" shows Strait's friends sitting around a bonfire recalling their great friend:

No One's Gonna Take Me Alive

I'm a Guitar Hero fan. I admit it. I first saw Guitar Hero in a local Best Buy right before Guitar Hero II came out. They had a demo station set up with Guitar Hero I, and I rocked out to Sum 41 for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately I didn't end up buying Guitar Hero I or II, but I did spring for Guitar Hero III.

There are many really fun songs in GH3. Several of these songs have sweet videos which makes them very good blogging canidates.

Muse came along on the music scene (mainstream) in the late 90s. I recall hearing their first big single Uno and thinking "this band has much potential." Sadly, I never bought an album or really followed the band after that. Since then, Muse has become very huge in alt-rock/prog-rock music circles. While playing through GH3, I came across one of Muse's more famous singles "Knights of Cydonia" from their fourth major release Black Holes & Revelations. A friend recently pointed out to me how cool the video for "Knights of Cydonia" is, and I'll have to agree. How can you not like kung-fu cowboys with lasers?

Now, I'm not super awesome at Guitar Hero. I'm currently working my way through the "hard" difficulty and am somewhat struggling on the last two tiers. I can 4-star or 5-star almost every song on "Hard" except for these two tiers. "Knights of Cydonia" is in the second-to-last tier and is a damn hard song. Here's a glimpse of what is to come once I get to "Expert" difficulty: