Album of the weekend

Guns and Roses-Appetite for Destruction

Is Welcome to the Jungle the greatest opening track in music history? It's like "Smells like Teen Spirit" off Nevermind by Nirvana. It sets the stage for the entire album. Welcome to the Jungle sounds like a dangerous and potentially harmful song. These are the people who can get what you want-for a price. It get's worse there every day too-it's obviously a dark place. 

So is this entire album. Rocket Queen is like "You Could be Mine" off Use Your Illusion. It's a song that basically tells the partner what Shakespeare said-"I pray you don't fall in love with me because I am more false than vows made in wine". Mr. Brownstone is about addiction-"I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it so the little got more and more" (never has there been a more true, succinct and understandable lyric about addiction than that). Even the most "upbeat" songs have a dark tone. Paradise City ("Captain America's been torn apart, now he's just a jester with a broken heart") and My Michelle "Your Daddy works in porno now that Mommys not around, she used to love her heroin, now she's underground". 

So yeah-it's much, much darker than what people realize. I remember being in fifth grade and people talking about how great this album was without understanding the lyrics. No, I didn't understand them all either in fifth grade, but I did sense an underlying darkness to the album. I really was an obnoxious, pretentious and snotty child. 

Darkness aside, this album is a classic rock album, one of the best albums about the decadence of Los Angeles in the 80's ever recorded, and a Guns and Roses masterpiece.