Okay, so I've been wanting to write for a few days now, but craziness at work and general fatigue (will explain shortly) have kept me from doing so. But let me set the scene ...
So this past weekend was pure insanity. Aksel came down from San Diego and the stage was set for one jam-packed weekend. Between picking up Aksel from LA's Union Station on Saturday and getting lost in the process, and meeting up with Dan K and Aksel's old friend Bob on Saturday night, I wasn't sureh ow much energy I'd have left for the big GnR show on Sunday night. But despite little sleep and some touring around Hollywood in the afternoon, when the time came, I was pumped, primed, and ready for GUNS N ROSES, baby.
The crew and I met up beforehand at Universal Citywalk, where not only would the concert be held, but also, coincidentally, a huge gathering of Jews was taking place in honor of Hanukah, right outside our initial destination of Hard Rock to boot. So we dined in style at the Hard Rock Cafe - the perdect place to prepare for GNR, as classic Guns' tunes were on continuous rotation and all manner of GnR enthusiasts filtered in and out, even a few in full-on Axl Rose regalia. As I ate my cajun chicken sandwich and rocked out to the music videos from Appetite, Use Your Illusion, etc, it was on like donkey kong. After the grub was consumed the band of misfits headed outside to catch the tail-end of the celebratory Hanukah candle-lighting, in a ceremony complete with Chasidic emo-rockers and throngs of Ortho-families dancing and clapping as the band played on. Supposedly, the Sox' Gabe Kaplar was even in attendance, though I didn't see him first-hand. Still, we had to pry ourselves away from the festivities, as the schlock rock was only but a stop on our journey to the Land of Rock. We headed down the Citywalk road, through neon signs and gaudy storefronts did we trek, until we entered the gates of the Universal Ampitheater, where the one known as Axl (not to be confused with Aksel) would soon grace us with his steely pipes and welcome us into his depraved jungle of rock n' roll.
Although, this being Guns N Roses, fronted by a man notorious for starting things fashionably late, GnR was the final act of an epic night of musical spectacle. We entered the arena - which is I have to say, a great venue - not too big, great views of the stage, very comfortable, and perfect for a rockshow. First up was, quite appropriately, a show from none other than the Suicide Girls, for the unintiated, think the Rockettes as conceived by a braintrust of Hugh Hefner and Marylin Manson. We watched as we were introduced to some of Hell's Belles, and when I say introduced I mean introduced. After a rousing show of burlesque rock n' shock, it was time for Helmet to take the stage. The band was familiar to me in name but I didn't recognize any of their Pantera-esque metal tunes. They were very loud, and hardcore to the max, though I wonder if they were really appropriate for a show featuring the much more operatic rock of GnR. I can't say I really enjoyed Helmet much, but I'll give them some respect as a solid band, even if their gutteral screamings reminiscent of Motorhead but less good sort of gave me a headache.
After Helmet (some would say thankfully) left the stage, it was time for SEBASTIAN BACH to do his thing. Being a fan of Skid Row and the man's humorous acting work on Gilmore Girls, as well as his frequent appearances on VH1's I Love the 70's / 80's / 90's, I was mucho psyched to see SEBASTIAN (n. Yohan) kick ass old-school hair-metal style. And dayum, praised be the lords of hairspray, Mr. Bach came out and declared mightily that Rock N' Roll yet lived, and that as of tonight Rock was Back! And lo, he did ROCK. Sure, some of the tunes were better than others, and the only ones that REALLY got me goin' were the classic Skid Row songs like I'll Remember You, but I give the man credit - he was jumping around and banging his head and wailing his trademark falsetto wail like a man possesed, dancing and jumping like a young rocker with something to prove. Okay, for the most part, like I said, many of the newer songs weren't much to scream about. But holy lord ... when the man played 18 AND LIFE I flipped out - I mean when the hell else might I ever see this song, one of my all-time 80's rock faves, performed live? And the man closed out with a thunderous rendition of YOUTH GONE WILD that nearly brought down the house. My mates and I were transported to the faraway land of rock euphoria as we pumped our fists in unison to the anthem of "We Are the Youth Gone Wild!" Awesome. For one night only it was 1988 and rock n' roll lived a-gane.
And finally, after an exhausting preshow of The Suicide Girls, Helmet, and practically an entire concert's worth of material from Sebastian Bach, it was time for the main event, at the ripe early hour of 11:30 pm on a SUNDAY NIGHT. Oh lord, now you're starting to see why I was barely funtioning the next day at work. But yeah, let me see how to put this ...
Despite the fact that this wasn't the original lineup. Despite the fact that yes, Axl Rose's voice is all but shot. Despite the fact that it's 10 years later and we're STILL waiting for Chinese flippin' Democracy ...
Despite all that ...
GUNS N' ROSES KICKED UNHOLY AMOUNTS OF ASS.
Yes, screw the naysayers. Even if the man isn't quite the force of nature that he used to be, Axl Rose remains one of the greatest rock frontmen of all time, and he proved his iconic status once again on Sunday. The voice isn't there like it used to be - oftentimes, I admit, Axl's lyrics were only just audible over the crunching guitars and drums, and what was heard was, certainly, a far cry from the piercing, smooth-as-silk, high-pitched cry that became his trademark back in the day, and established him as one of the most distinctive and kickass vocalists in rock history. But, dammit, the songs spoke for themselves. The sheer power of Welcome to the Jungle, the undeniable emotion of November Rain, the lyrical brilliance of songs like Sweet Child O' Mine and Used to Love Her, the pure rockingness of rock classics like Night Train, Mr. Brownstone, and so many more. There was no Slash, true, but Sunday night we witnessed the full power and majesty of one of the greatest bands of all time ... this was a concert for the ages.
Much like when I saw them back in Boston three years ago, Axl and leaned heavily on the catalog of classics from Appetite For Destruction to pad out the show. However, seeing as how Appetite is arguably the greatest rock album of all time, with not a bad song in the bunch, it was awesome to hear so many songs I've listened to over and over again at home live and in ya' face. I mean, almost nothing was left out, even lesser-known songs like Out Ta Get Me, Think About You, and It's So Easy got kickass renditions - and for me it was sweet to hear some of the grittier, balls to the wall songs from the early days rather than an overload of the more overblown ballads from the later years. But of course, we still got the biggest power-ballad classics like November Rain (amazing) and Patience (also amazing), and even both of the famous covers - Live and Let Die (YES~!) and Knockin' On Heaven's Door (OH YES~!). We got a firecracker opening in Welcome to the Jungle that had the crowd jumping out of their seats, and an appropriate closing in Paradise City that saw confetti flying everywhere, people convulsing in rock-propelled spasms of joy, and Axl hopping around and belting out "There's an urchin livin' under the street ..." like only he can. In between, we had the inevitable "ohhhh $%&# moment that was Sweet Child O' Mine, the funky lyrical stylings of Mr. Brownstone, the darkly humorous I Used to Love Her, the teen-angst rage of You Could Be Mine (just as good this time as I remembered it from Boston), and the adrenaline-rush-in-a-box that is Night Train, performed to perfection in a chair-rattling show of awesomeness. What else? Well, for one of my favorites, My Michelle, SEBASTIAN BACH returned to the stage to form an unholy alliance with Axl Rose, with Bach using his high-pitched shriek to channel the ghost of old-school Axl Rose, as he playfully wove a dream duet with new-school, corn-rowed Axl Rose. Plus, OG GnR bandmate Dizzy Reed even contribured to a number of songs, so there was that added air of authenticity. The one big song that was missing was Rocket Queen, which I don't believe was played in Boston either, oddly enough. And, much to Ms. Liggett's dismay there was no performance of Civil War, though I can't say that one ranked on my must-hear list. For my part, I was happy to hear classics like Night Train (shoulda been on my Top 10 list, sorry ...), You Could Be Mine, etc.
As far as the new stuff goes, well ... okay, some of it is a lot of sound and fury symbolizing nothing, if you know what I mean. There's a lot of production values but seemingly not as much staying power as the classics. Still, I don't want to diss things outright. Some of the new songs are not bad at all, I think I just need some time to warm up to them. But there's no doubt that one or two of 'em did have a little bit of the kind of overproduced, over-thought feel that you might expect coming from an album that has been years, and years, and years in the making. But in the end, yeah, I'll be picking up Chinese Democracy - at this point there's no way it could possibly live up to or play down a decade of hype and vaporware infamy, but hey, it's GnR, baby. I'll take it.
So yeah ... I can't diss too much on Axl, the man gave it his all and was way more animated than I expected or remembered from Boston. The man was doing his trademark Axl dance, seemed happy to be there, and genuinely into it all. While at this point he'll continue to have his detractors, all the fans in attendance knew they were witnessing a guy going out there and giving it his all, putting it all on the line for a solid 2+ hours of nonstop rockin'. In between songs, there were a few pauses for guitar solo showcases and whatnot to give Mr. Rose a break, and there were some tight stylings from the band, including some salutes to Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, and Hendrix. Overall the band was more than capable of recreating the GnR style, although I'm not sure if anyone in the band brought the same level of guitar prowess and charisma that Buckethead had back in Boston, and surely to this day, the absence of guitar-god-in-a-top-hat Slash is still felt from the band he helped create. But at this point it's time to accept, the GnR of old is no more, but fans can be thankful that this incarnation exists. Because on Sunday, I saw, once again, one of the best frontmen of all time play dozens of the best and most rocking songs ever created. In short, an amazing concert for the ages. Let it be known to the masses what me, Brian, Liz, and Aksel found out on Sunday: Guns N' Roses still kicks ass with the best of 'em, dammit all.
- So yeah, after what was an incredibly awesome but draining night, we were let out past 2 am! On a Sunday! Work the next day was gotten through on pure leftover adrenaline, as, meanwhile, Aksel boarded a train back to San Diego after a crazy weekend in Los Angeles. After feeling ab it recovered by Tuesday though, I got to have another cool experience last night ...
- Via a film series co-sponsored by the Sundance Channel (which is a partial interest of NBC-Universal), I got to, for free, check out a special screening of the much-anticipated 'round these parts new film from Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy) -- the fantasy spectacle known as Pan's Labrynth.
PAN'S LABRYNTH Review:
- Here in America, we like our pop culture to be very compartamentalized. We have action movies, kid's movies, chick flicks, big-budget blockbusters and artsy independent films. But rarely are we accepting of genre-bending films that are not so easily categorized. We like our fantasy Disneyfied and kid-friendly. We like our war dramas serious and realistic and adults-only. Rarely does one see a movie outside of a Miyazaki anime or the occasional flick from a Terry Gilliam or David Lynch that dares to mix the dark, the disturbing, the adult with the dazzling fantasy imagery and surreality that is usually confined to kid-pics. Here though, Guillermo Del Toro crafts a bold experiment - a movie that mixes some of the most imaginative fantasy imagery ever captured on film with some of the most brutal and real subject matter one could think of. It's almost like he took the premise of a Narnia or Alice in Wonderland and stripped it of all the family-friendly, homogenized pretense, instead looking to the dark and bloody fairy tales by the likes of the Brothers Grimm for inspiration. Because this movie is the most gruesome and violent and legitimately disturbing fairy tale you'll see - and, most disturbingly, the scariest moments don't take place in the fantasy realm, but in the real world.
Pan's Labrynth follows the adventures of a young girl, Ophelia, who is taken away by her pregnant mother to live with the unborn baby's father - an Spanish army commander who is as ruthless and monstrous as they come, who sees his unborn son as merely a legacy to himself, who kills his disobediant lieutenants on a whim, and who thrives in the wartorn, ravaged WWII-era Spain that the movie is set in. As bleak as thing are for Ophelia, her one solace is her disovery, brought to her by a mythical faun, that she is in fact the reincarnated soul of a fairy princess, and that to reclaim her throne in the fairy world she must complete three dangerous tasks. From this point on, the movie goes back and forth between the real-world character drama of The General and his brutality towards the rebel forces trying to lay siege on his base, and the fantasy-world encounters that Ophelia escapes to - the completion of which is her one hope of escaping the miserable reality she lives in.
The premise sounds like that of a children's fairytale, and in some ways this is one in its narrative simplicity. But man, this is a stark, shocking, movie. I can't remember ever seeing a movie where I had to actually close my eyes or look away from the screen so many times because of the gruesomeness of what I was seeing in front of me. And most of these scenes are in the real world - the General is a bloody, scarily violent character, who tortures, kills, and maims his victims with grim delight. As he begins to discover a conspiracy within his ranks to aid the rebel guerilla fighters, his paranoia and anger makes his actions grow all the more sadistic. For this reason, the fantasy scenes in the film, as darkly haunting as they are, almost feel like an escape (for us, as well as for Ophelia) from the violence around her in the real world.
In these fantasy-based sequences however, the level of visual artistry is simply amazing - imagine the best and most detailed of Jim Henson's creations in Labrynth crossed with medieval gothic paintings and Japanese videogame monsters. One scene in particular, where Ophelia encounters a deadly, faceless monster with black claws and eyes on its hands, is one of the most horrifically memorable movie visuals I've seen. This is a fairy-tale, yes, but it's also one sick, twisted movie, make no mistake.
The acting across the board is superb, and despite the Spanish language I really felt like the characters, particularly Ophelia (pretty amazingly acted on the part of the child / preteen actor who played her) and the army Captain (a brilliantly scary performance - one of the great movie villains of recent years). Also of note is the amazing sound in this film. The buzzing of the fairies, the clacking of the monster's nails on the table, the thimping of the faun's hoofs in the cavernous labrynth - I noticed the sound in this film more so that I have any other in a long while.
Once again, visually, huge credit must be given to Del Toro. I've long respected the way he brought the work of Mike Mignola to life in Hellboy, and here he draws on classical paintings, modern horror movies, and the imagery of fairy tales to create an amazing-looking film. Each scene has a distinct look - from the bleak blues of war-torn Spain to the organic reds of the fantasy kingdom.
I will say that in some ways the movie didn't fully click with me. I felt that the fantasy elements became so overshadowed by the real-world elements that at times they felt like an afterthought, even though the handful of full-on fantasy sequences were so visually amazing -- their artistry made you wish that they comprised more of the film. Because really, this is almost a wartime coming of age drama first and a fantasy film second. The mythology is fairly loose and undefined, and it all works more as a metaphor than a fully realized world like Oz or Narnia. What Del Toro does here is put a new spin on the girl coming-of-age subgenre of fantasy - a dark, gritty, violent, and extreme spin on Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Narnia, etc. Surely there are bits of Alice, Dorothy, Wendy, and Lucy in Ophelia - but the difference is that in this movie, the chief monster isn't a Queen or a Witch or a Pirate, but an all-too real army Captain who terrorizes all who cross him. The result of this experiment is a visually arresting film that is doesn't fully succeed at reinventing the fantasy genre, but surely succeeds in that it won't allow itself to be easily compartamentalized. A kid's fairytale this is most definitely not.
My Grade: A -
- After the movie, we were treated to a Q and A with Guillermo Del Toro himself, and man, it was great! The man is a genious and knows his stuff, so much so that I'd gladly attend a lecture by him anytime. Funny, smart, and self-deprecating, it was a true pleasure to hear such an amazing director and artist give insight into the film we had just seen, and I am now very curious to see his earlier films, and more excited than ever for Hellboy 2 and Tarzan.
- Finally, I'd like to say RIP to a true legend, a man who along with his creative partner William Hanna redefined animation and practically raised multiple generations of American kids with his brilliant, funny, and imaginative characters. Yep, I'm talking about JOSEPH BARBERA, a true icon of imagination, who passed away earlier this week. What I love about Hanna-Barbera cartoons is that they were like a gatway into so many worlds and facets of pop culture. The Flinstones and Jetsons were in their own right brilliant sitcoms, yet appreciated by kids and adults alike. Scooby Doo was and is a brilliant blend of horror and comedy, one of the first things to make me and so many others fall in love with vampires, ghouls and ghosts. And then there is the brilliant stable of Hanna-Barbera pulp characters. Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, and so many others were what first planted that spark of imagination into my mind that made me seek out other stories of the fantastic. It just speaks volumes to me that - ask anyone of my generation in 
their twenties - we were all raised on Hanna-Barbera cartoons - Scooby Doo, The Flinstones, Jetsons, Laugh-a-lympics, Yogi Bear, Johnny Quest, Wacky Races, Space Ghost, Dyno-Mutt, Huckleberry Hound ... and the list goes on and on and on ... and what's so amazing is that nearly all of these cartoons were created years, DECADES, before we were born. I mean, as a kid, I doubt I even realized that the Scooby Doo and Flinstones cartoons I loved were from a bygone era. They still felt fresh, still felt iconic. Johnny Quest is as cool now as ever. Space Ghost has been reinvented as an Adult Swim icon. These characters are timeless, classic. I am just in awe of the creativity that a man like Joseph Barbera must have possessed. To have created a company whose logo to this day inspires awe and wonder and childlike excitement in millions of people, to have overseen a universe of hundreds of characters who will live on forever - simply amazing. There will never be another like Joseph Barbera, but it's slightly comforting to know that the legend of Hanna-Barbera will always be there for generations of kids to discover.
their twenties - we were all raised on Hanna-Barbera cartoons - Scooby Doo, The Flinstones, Jetsons, Laugh-a-lympics, Yogi Bear, Johnny Quest, Wacky Races, Space Ghost, Dyno-Mutt, Huckleberry Hound ... and the list goes on and on and on ... and what's so amazing is that nearly all of these cartoons were created years, DECADES, before we were born. I mean, as a kid, I doubt I even realized that the Scooby Doo and Flinstones cartoons I loved were from a bygone era. They still felt fresh, still felt iconic. Johnny Quest is as cool now as ever. Space Ghost has been reinvented as an Adult Swim icon. These characters are timeless, classic. I am just in awe of the creativity that a man like Joseph Barbera must have possessed. To have created a company whose logo to this day inspires awe and wonder and childlike excitement in millions of people, to have overseen a universe of hundreds of characters who will live on forever - simply amazing. There will never be another like Joseph Barbera, but it's slightly comforting to know that the legend of Hanna-Barbera will always be there for generations of kids to discover.- Alright, I'm out - stay tuned - Best of 2006 blogs are coming soon!
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