Live And In The Flesh
Guns N' Roses - January 31, 2010
Late 2008 finally seen the release of the long anticipated follow-up to Guns N' Roses 1993 "The Spaghetti Incident?" and their sixth studio album Chinese Democracy. With two years of touring for the album already under their belt, the latest reincarnation of GN'R were well versed in their latest material. Seeing as how we had missed their last stop through Ottawa back in '06, we didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to catch them back out on the road so close to home. We picked up a couple of general admission tickets and headed down to the show on the last Sunday of January. Since the show landed in the dead of winter, it was nice having the quick drive into Kanata to the Scotiabank Place.
Danko Jones and Sebastian Bach of Skid Row were brought along for supporting acts throughout the Chinese Democracy 09/10 Tour. Given the price of beer at these large arena shows, we decided to skip out on Danko and partake in a few predrinks before making our way into the venue, as I'm sure he would have understood. By the time we made our way in we could hear Sebastian Bach taking the stage! He came out swinging with the title track from Slave to the Grind, following it up with Big Guns, the first song from Skid Row's debut self-titled album. Here I Am came next before he played Stuck Inside, the only song of the night from his latest 2007 solo effort, Angel Down. About halfway through Sebastian Bach's set, he busted out the classics Piece of Me and 18 and Life before he started to wind the ten song setlist down with a few more Skid Row tracks; Monkey Business, I Remember You and Youth Gone Wild. All in all Bach put on a hell of a show and certainly had the crowd pumped up and ready for some GN'R!
Unfortunately it seemed as though we could have used another opener between sets. It took forever for Axl and his latest band mates to take the stage. I would have been happy with another half hour of Sebastian Bach out on the stage ripping it up to kill the time! After making it through the wait, the band finally took to the stage coming out with the title track off of their latest album Chinese Democracy. Our Appetite for Destruction was quickly appeased with Welcome to the Jungle, It's So Easy, and Mr. Brownstone early on in their set. They ended up playing three-quarters of that album live throughout the night, and that only made up for a quarter of their entire show! The Chinese Democracy tracks came out steady all night long as one would expect. We ended up with just over half of that album being played throughout the night as well. Most of the classics were thrown into the mix; Live and Let Die, Sweet Child O' Mine, November Rain, Knockin' on Heaven's Door, and Nightrain wrapped up their regular set. Twenty-five songs deep it was hard to imagine that they could make it out for much more than that!
The band graced the stage for a seven song encore with quite the surprise hidden up their sleeves! After firing the encore up with a dueling banjos jam, Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys made his way out onto the stage in his astronaut suit with his acoustic guitar! We had known that Bubbles and Sebastian Bach were pretty close, but to actually be out on tour with Guns N' Roses was awesome! Hard to imagine how far those guys from TPB have come. After Bubbles' rendition of his very own Liquor & Whores track, GN'R finished things off with Patience, a few more Chinese Democracy tracks, and Paradise City to top everything off. The latest reincarnation of Guns N' Roses seemed to be in fine form throughout the entire show, although paling in comparison to their original lineup of course. Regardless, it was incredible to finally have the chance to hear some of their songs live for the first time, even if Slash wasn't shredding up the guitar. Axl seemed to struggle a bit here and there, but who could blame him after battling through a thirty-two song setlist! I couldn't believe they had actually gone on for so long, not wrapping up the show until around 2am. Hopefully we will be lucky enough to get a proper Guns N' Roses reunion tour one of these days, and be able to witness the original lineup back together again.