The Official Needles and Grooves 1001 Album Generator Project (aka Preachin’ about the Preachers if today’s selection sucks)

I’d really like to know what lots of people think about this… off the top of my head it would be interesting to hear from @duke86fan @Kris @mcherry @nolalady @Yer Ol' Uncle D @TenderLovingKiller® I may think of others later.

An interesting thought (that I don’t agree with), Riki Rachtman says they are punk. Although, I guess in the Ramones kind of vein they are. There was an epiphany I had a couple of years ago where I realized much of the album is just straight up (think Chuck Berry) Rock N Roll. It’s just dense.

This is kind of a seminal album for me and I think for guys (especially) of a certain age. It felt dangerous and like something that was just for us.

Fun story… my first tape copy of this… the PRMC had done their thing and in NC, at the time, you had to be 18 to buy an album with a Parental Advisory sticker on it. So a 14 year old Lee somehow convinced his fairly socially conservative and very religious mother (who listened primarily to Peter, Paul, & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Gaithers) to buy the cassette covered with skulls on a cross with the sticker on it at a trip to Roses.
 
Lee Newman said:
10/9/23
View attachment 184210
Guns N’ Roses - Appetite for Destruction



www.allmusic.com

Appetite for Destruction - Guns N' Roses | Album | AllMusic

Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses released in 1987. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...

I like Guns N’ Roses well enough and this is an impressive debut. When I started to get into music it was around the time of Use Your Illusion I & II and “You Could Be Mine” from the T2 soundtrack so they were everywhere. Initially, I thought of them along the same lines as other 80s Hair Metal bands they just seemed a bit dirtier/edgier. I liked their singles back then but I never really explored their albums as a whole until later. Appetite For Destruction is album that you would expect from a band that looked like GNR. The UYI albums had their moments but felt like Axl was embracing his inner 70s arena rocker instead of the 80s Sunset Strip gutter rock that made Appetite For Destruction so successful. I think Appetite was the one album that was equal parts Axl, Slash, Izzy, and Duff where afterward everything was all Axl.
 
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Lee Newman said:
So a 14 year old Lee somehow convinced his fairly socially conservative and very religious mother (who listened primarily to Peter, Paul, & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Gaithers) to buy the cassette covered with skulls on a cross with the sticker on it at a trip to Roses.
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My mother was conservative too but she was strangely agnostic when it came to music. I had a paper route and would earn my own money to buy CDs but the only stores that sold music locally were K Mart & Walmart unfortunately the CDs were more expensive and usually edited so instead I would write down the name of the album and my mom would pick up the CD for me from Best Buy on her lunch break. She picked me up with all sorts Parental Advisory albums including Dr. Dre The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle without so much as batting an eye.
 
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TenderLovingKiller® said:
My mother was conservative too but she was strangely agnostic when it came to music. I had a paper route and would earn my own money to buy CDs but the only stores that sold music locally were K Mart & Walmart but CDs were more expensive and usually edited so I would write down the name of the album and my mom would pick up the CD for me from Best Buy on her lunch break. She picked me up with all sorts Parental Advisory albums including Dr. Dre The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle without so much as batting an eye.
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Ah the funny tipper gore stickers that were on the American albums!

The shops here totally disregarded them as being of any significance and they were never on anything local!
 
Lee Newman said:
10/9/23
View attachment 184210
Guns N’ Roses - Appetite for Destruction



www.allmusic.com

Appetite for Destruction - Guns N' Roses | Album | AllMusic

Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses released in 1987. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...

Solid debut, I liked this a lot in high school. My favorite tracks were the non-singles; found myself playing "Mr. Brownstone" a lot. This album would never willingly get playtime from me now.

Rating: 3/5 [Good]
 
Guns n' Roses happened when I was about 13-14 years old. I remember hearing Paradise City on MTV's Headbangers Ball and how I taped the album from a friend who had bought it with the now banned cover (I think it broke here in Europe about a year after it was released, can that be right?). During my early teens in the late 80's this was the soundtrack to my life in some way along with "And Justice for All" and "Dr Feelgood".

It's still a phenomenal album, without any weak tracks whatsoever in my opinion. I still listen to it from time to time, and I still get an insane adrenaline rush when I hear the riff to "Nighttrain" or the intro to "It's So Easy". What strikes me today is the grim and totally devastating lyrics. Every other song is about scraping by at the bottom of society with drugs, violence and total misery (case study: "My Michelle"). This ain't the party promised by the glam- or hair metal bands of the era, folks. It's something way more profound and dark. And also perhaps more "punk" than "metal" in some way.

And this is also way better and more hard hitting than anything they've done since. Use Your Illusion was mostly the sound of a band (or more likely, a front man) getting hubris and losing all grip on reality in my opinion.

Score: 5 stars (one of the best albums of the 80s and one of the best rock albums of all time!)
 
Lee Newman said:
I’d really like to know what lots of people think about this… off the top of my head it would be interesting to hear from @duke86fan @Kris @mcherry @nolalady @Yer Ol' Uncle D @TenderLovingKiller® I may think of others later.

An interesting thought (that I don’t agree with), Riki Rachtman says they are punk. Although, I guess in the Ramones kind of vein they are. There was an epiphany I had a couple of years ago where I realized much of the album is just straight up (think Chuck Berry) Rock N Roll. It’s just dense.

This is kind of a seminal album for me and I think for guys (especially) of a certain age. It felt dangerous and like something that was just for us.

Fun story… my first tape copy of this… the PRMC had done their thing and in NC, at the time, you had to be 18 to buy an album with a Parental Advisory sticker on it. So a 14 year old Lee somehow convinced his fairly socially conservative and very religious mother (who listened primarily to Peter, Paul, & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Gaithers) to buy the cassette covered with skulls on a cross with the sticker on it at a trip to Roses.
Click to expand...
Pretty much hated it when it came out as it was the soundtrack of all the kids that tortured me with homophobic slurs or fat names. “Paradise City” was ingrained into my head from the Burnout Paradise game. I did have a copy at one point because it was $10 or something and I thought I might like it now. I didn’t, so it went to the record store pile.
 
Kris said:
Pretty much hated it when it came out as it was the soundtrack of all the kids that tortured me with homophobic slurs or fat names. “Paradise City” was ingrained into my head from the Burnout Paradise game. I did have a copy at one point because it was $10 or something and I thought I might like it now. I didn’t, so it went to the record store pile.
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Thanks for posting this. I think the lyrics - especially the more misogynistic, homophobic, racist and other hateful lyrics- get overlooked given it’s importance to both popular music and metal. I think this side of the album is an important part of it legacy that gets sidelined. It’s something I’ve struggled with for sometime as an adult.
 
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TenderLovingKiller® said:
My mother was conservative too but she was strangely agnostic when it came to music. I had a paper route and would earn my own money to buy CDs but the only stores that sold music locally were K Mart & Walmart but CDs were more expensive and usually edited so I would write down the name of the album and my mom would pick up the CD for me from Best Buy on her lunch break. She picked me up with all sorts Parental Advisory albums including Dr. Dre The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle without so much as batting an eye.
Click to expand...
I mean given your age it probably wasn’t as much of a news story. My mom’s sweet kid was listening to Guns N’ Roses and Ozzy Osborne and WASP. She might should have worried a bit more than she did.

When I was in college my parents called me because my brother wanted Check Your Head and they wanted to know if it was okay. I was like “you bought me Appetite for Destruction. The Beasties are way less problematic.”
 
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Kris said:
Pretty much hated it when it came out as it was the soundtrack of all the kids that tortured me with homophobic slurs or fat names. “Paradise City” was ingrained into my head from the Burnout Paradise game. I did have a copy at one point because it was $10 or something and I thought I might like it now. I didn’t, so it went to the record store pile.
Click to expand...
While I totally get were you come from (and I've later understood that Axl is a total bigot) I have the total opposite experience.
I was an outcast in high school in some respect, my best friend was gay (he is now a she actually as he transed gender a couple of years ago) and this was our protest music against the popular kids who harassed us in some way, at least until Patience became a hit.
 
Whiteout75 said:
While I totally get were you come from (and I've later understood that Axl is a total bigot) I have the total opposite experience.
I was an outcast in high school in some respect, my best friend was gay (he is now a she actually as he transed gender a couple of years ago) and this was our protest music against the popular kids who harassed us in some way, at least until Patience became a hit.
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I get why it would be popular for other outcast kids. Lots of kids/people like mean/loud music to destress. It wasn’t the popular kids that harassed me. It was the other outcasts that had to kick someone lower than them. I was an easy target. I never fought back. The misogyny of the music really turned me off. I had honestly forgot about it till I had the record.
 
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Kris said:
I get why it would be popular for other outcast kids. Lots of kids/people like mean/loud music to destress. It wasn’t the popular kids that harassed me. It was the other outcasts that had to kick someone lower than them. I was an easy target. I never fought back. The misogyny of the music really turned me off. I had honestly forgot about it till I had the record.
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As I said, I totally get you and understand your aversion towards it. For me, this album is like lightning in a bottle though. The rest of their output is full of misogyny and bullshit macho ideals (especially LIES), but I don’t actually hear it that much on Appetite.
 
Back in the mid 80s a lot of punks where washing and teasing their hair and getting a bit more rock and a little less snotty punk. There was not a lot of distance between pre-fame GNR and bands like Soundgarden and Green River. Someone joked once that The Replacements could have been a minor-level Guns if they were a bit more ambitious. (Tommy Stinson did have a stint in GNR mach 4 or 5).

3/5, but I still have a big soft spot for Sweet Child of Mine.
 
I can definitely understand why the album was huge for the time, G'n'R were able to sound as pop as possible while still having that small amount of metal edge to make it feel rebellious.. most of the lyrics are simple and benign as every other motley crew wannabe (girls, money, how cool they are), but Axel Rose had the legit vocal chops to make their sound lively, but the star of the show is obviously Slash, who could play as good as any other hard rocker available, but had plenty of groove and swagger to make each song feel like a hit. the issue comes from listening to anything that isn't the singles, the album is pretty one note and once you got into their style the rest is just kinda sitting there in the excess
 
I dig this album a lot. Ray of Light was a bit of a rejuvenation, this is a lot of fun and then Confessions is her last great album.

Qobuz has this listed as the US version. Does anyone now the difference between this and the… not US version?
 
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