Use Your Ellipses
Guns N' Roses bonus beats.
I hit the ocean floor to pen this past weekend’s Pitchfork Sunday Review on Guns N’ Roses’ pair of Use Your Illusion LPs from 1991 — an appropriately long take on a one-of-a-kind paragon of stadium rock self indulgence.
I find transitions between decades and eras endlessly fascinating (especially one that imprinted a lifetime of interests / fixations simply by coinciding with the moment my own brain came online). An opportunity to get existential about all that in the context of “big swings” and extravagant, obsessive art? Made by some of the swaggiest knuckleheads to ever walk the earth?!?
It’s what I would be doing with my free time anyway.
Anyway, if you ever dug those two records (or didn’t!) I hope the piece is as enjoyable for you to engage with as it was for me to write. There were a number of side quests and sassy parentheticals nobly sacrificed on behalf of wordcount, but hey, that’s what Substack is for.
Marc Canter (of Fairfax deli fame) got a nod for his Reckless Road book — an insane collection of pre-Appetite For Destruction photos, setlists, flyers, and oral histories — but I would have loved to also shout out Desi Craft, Izzy’s go-go dancing, drug-dealing GF from that era. She was somehow both their muse and their plug… are you listening Lost Notes: Groupies S2?!?
Didn’t have space to get granular on Axl’s sartorial choices, either. We could start with the multiple costume changes from Live At The Ritz 1991 (as compiled here). PURPLE MOTO OVER MESH TANK vs NWA SNAPBACK WITH GOTHIC BIG BIRD SHRUG is the Minion Or Da Bob our closets deserve.
Walking through the Rainbow Bar in an airbrushed “Justify My Love” leather and OPP hat makes for another insanely hard fit in a music video absolutely lousy with ‘em. Bonus “yoooo” to DUMPSTER in the corner.
At one point I toyed with an aside on Illusion’s cover illustrator Mark Kostabi, “the former New York gossip column fixture and self-professed ‘con artist’ who everybody remembers but nobody talks about.” Axl paid him $750,000 for a painting he could have used for free since it sampled Raphael, namesake of the most philosophically Guns-ian of Ninja Turtles. (I also love Kostabi’s Ramones dinosaurs, who have zero connection to TMNT or the Italian Renaissance as far as I know.)
But without a doubt, my fav trivia left on the cutting room floor is braid-era Axl punching Tommy Hilfiger (lol) at Rosario Dawson’s birthday party (wut) in the club that was most famously Nell’s and most recently Up&Down, but at the time was The Plumm, whose owners included Simon Rex, Dame Dash and Joey Mac from New Kids On The Block (wow).
Now gimme some reggae!
detahjae “Janice” — love everything about this, full stop.
Oral History Of The Pyramid Club — “I once saw Judd Nelson. I also saw Allen Ginsberg in the dressing room completely thrilled by Olympia. The crowd was different on different nights. Although a lot of the time it was possible to find the whole spectrum — from queens to nihilistic post-punk squatters, and from straight-edge people to persons with serious substance abuse issues.”
Curren$y x DJ Fresh — such a low-key and consistent combo, two albums of big slaps for the smokers this year alone. DJ Fresh and Jay Worthy also make for a very solid team up.
Chris Ware on Richard Scarry — another fire pairing, our preeminent tiny line drawer waxing poetic on the king of worms driving cars (that are also apples and sometimes helicopters). I wonder if CW knows about this Bottega bag.
Spirit Of The Beehive “1/500” — classique indie vibes.
The Screens Of Demolition Man — guys will see this and just think “hell yeah.”
Playlists updated…