If I'm going to spend this much effort criticizing a band, I might as well listen to it once in a while.

Well, it's been years but I can't put it off any longer.  I finally decided to listen to Appetite For Destruction.

"Welcome to the Jungle" immediately leaps out, it's an awesome opening.  The first verse is tight and already drives this down, there's well-done back-up vocals and it sounds great.  We're only at the first verse.

The choruses and the bridge sound much more musical than the verses, like they don't fit.  That may be an example of where these guys are going but you can already tell you want to go along, then there's the guitar solo and the great build-up.  We know where we are.

And then it just ends, but unlike all the other G'n'R songs I've heard in the last several years, this ending works.

"It's So Easy" doesn't grab me.  It's ok but I don't find anything special about it.  "Night Train" is much better, like a modern-day Rolling Stones number.  It's got all the parts of a well-made pop song even as it comes off as hard rock.

"Out To Get Me" also sounds good.  The band sounds great but I have to admit alot of these songs so far aren't reaching me, other than as an advertisement for these lunatics.  "Mr. Brownstone" is more about the danger they're involved in on a daily basis.  You can see why these guys made it, I gotta admit.  I used to listen to a little, but a little wouldn't do it...

And of course "Paradise City" starts out awesome, a total change from what we've just heard.  It works as a great build-up from the rest of side A  And it just keeps building and building.

It's probably a good thing I haven't listened to this album much in ages, I'm definitely not sick and tired.  Even with my memory problems, it's still part of me after all these years and I really am enjoying it.

"My Michelle" starts off differently than the songs on side A, like it's a ballad.  It isn't but it makes a nice change.  Those junior high-schooler girls must have been been creaming about this one.  They probably loved "Think About You" too which sounds like a very generic hard-rock ballad.  It's definitely on a different level from side A, something rock band's weren't known for.  "Sweet Child o'Mine" carries that even farther.

Guess I don't have much to say about this.  I'm too busy listening.  But it does sound like it came from a different time, back when actual music was made.

And "Rocket Queen" is another great conscious decision to make.  The music is better than most of the others, there's something expanded about it, then the sex sounds come in, then the whole mood changes to more of a love song.

Ok, that was totally fine.  Even the down-sides are negligible, I can't think of one off-hand other than some of the songs aren't totally fuckin' awesome.  Yeah, there's a reason this one album did everything for this band.  They'd be basically where they are today if they'd never released anything else.  And they didn't.  Was someone trying to make a follow-up to the Sex Pistols?