Nothing Lasts Forever, Even Cold November Rain

By Cold November Rain, I mean Axl Rose. 

I was flipping channels today and landed on something I didn't know existed called The Golden God Awards. I caught it at the tail end but from what I could tell it's some VH1 Classic awards show for burnout metal heads from the 70's and 80's. Like a low budget Grammy's for Butt Rock.  I caught it just as Axl Rose was accepting the Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award.  Presented to him by none other than Nicolas Cage who went into a heartfelt obviously read-from-a-teleprompter [because he fucked up and pronounced the word passion; "paSSun"]  dedication saying how he's been inspired by the honorable Mr. Rose over the years. The award presentation was followed by a performance by the "new" G&R. They did Sweet Child 'O Mine and Paradise City.  It was pretty painful to watch.

Axl was fat, old and out of breath halfway through the song.  He was very out of key and his voice is ruined from drugs, cigarettes, booze and scream-singing improperly for so many years. It reminded me of the voice of that 70 year old lady in front of you in line at the gas station ordering a pack of Camel non-filters.

 The band, which is now essentially a Guns N' Roses cover band consisting of professional musicians, was clearly struggling to follow Axl's forgetting how the songs go. Being a drummer myself I was noticing the drummer's closed-eyed focus. That's the focused look you get when you're trying to stay on tempo while you have a click track (metronome) in your in-ear monitors, that's fighting against a band member who's playing the song wrong.  It's as if they all rehearsed the songs thoroughly, and Axl just showed up the night-of and was like "I'm fucking Axl fucking Rose. I've been singing these songs for 30 fucking years I don't need to fucking practice"

At least he didn't have corn rows.