Fair Warning

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 27, 2006 6:45PM

Tonight the Axl Rose freak show currently known as Guns N' Roses hits Chicago. We know the following from their tour thus far:

1. Axl has booted Eagles Of Death Metal from the bill, but decided to keep on the half-naked antics of the Suicide Girls and the half-baked antics of Sebastian Bach*.
2. Axl will not hit the stage until at least two hours after the conclusion of the last opening act.
3. And that’s if he’s feeling particularly punctual.
4. The rumor still hits heavy that the near-mythic Chinese Democracy may appear in stores unannounced tomorrow.
5. Tommy Stinson still kicks ass.
6. But we miss Buckethead.

So what to make of all of this? Well, at least Axl is actually showing up to gigs, and even though he hits the stage super late, he’s been making up for it with marathon sets filled with crowd pleasers, sprinkled with a healthy dose of (mostly) well received new material. So as much as we would like to take potshots at the guy, we have to admit that he seems to be giving his audience their money’s worth, even if he does test the bounds of patience leading to the show’s payoff.

As to the rumor that Chinese Democracy will be released on the sly tomorrow, we don’t give it much credence. While we think it would be pretty cool for Axl to just sort of slip his long-awaited follow-up into stores, we can’t imagine how one could distribute an album like that without even the faintest trickle of a leak to the press by someone, anyone! Yeah, it’d be a pretty awesome way to get the disc in under the surf, but we predict another mirrored ball will drop in NYC before Axl actually drops his delayed opus.

That means the only chance you have to check out the new material, assuming you’ve never mastered that complicated task known as “downloading” these things called “MP3s” from “music blogs,” is by suffering through scantily-clad exploiteés and some Broadway metal.

Have fun!

Guns N' Roses plays the Allstate Arena tonight.

*Full disclosure: We admit to a certain sentimentality about Bach being on the bill since the last time we saw G’N’R it was opening night of their first headlining tour, and Skid Row was opening. It was more awesome than you would have thought.