8+

"Locomotive" by Guns N' Roses which clocks in at 8:44

The following is part 4 of 4 in a special series of Guns N' Roses related 8+ posts written by my friend Ryan Vanderboosh. Thanks go out to him for allowing us all a glimpse into his world of guns and roses. I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have. Ryan's a gifted writer when he's not too busy passing the time calculating celebrity death probability. Next week you can expect a return to normalcy with a brand new 8+ written by me. Until then, enjoy this final chapter.

Locomotive

Here the boys have learned all about a little something that burns worse than a fresh hernia scar full of chorizo grease. It’s called the nasty breakup with & subsequent scorn of a woman who never fully appreciated the heart-sick narrator’s efforts to refrain from beating her… and they’re here to tell us about it. From the smoke’em if you got’em pick-slide on through to the obstreperous, wawa-infested outro, it’s the most straight-up rocker of the four, and the one my older self is enjoying most.

There’s a world of difference between blowing yay off a stripper’s tits and eating sushi off an geisha’s ass. While they both involve professional nudity & delicacies popular during a Goldman-Sachs lunchbreak, “Locomotive” could only be the soundtrack to the blow/boobies formulation.
…and this somhow proves that quadruple-dubbed vocals are not tasteless & vaguely insane.

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Despite my sincere fondness, it’s hard not to discuss these great songs without giving in to sarcasm or mockery. That’s partly just because i’m a prick. But you donkey-punch the ones you love the most. Bloated & booze-fueled, it was merely a beautiful, irreparable mess, which –much like Chris Farley-- could neither continue nor regain coherence… only flop face down in a hooker’s tracks.

(And look, i do like the so-called grunge revolution –it’s wonderful. But i take issue with the fundamento-revisionism* that Teen Spirit personally caught a flight to LA to slice the ass-cheeks out of everyone’s leather pants & take a shit in Slash’s hat. One style had said its piece, and so everybody moved on to the next. They’re called trends, and that’s how they fucking work. With enough affirmation, anything can & will become titanically preposterous, but who will notice until it’s too late? Have you ever considered that? Oh you have? and…? No, huh? So then the towering lucubrations behind these four song were never again duplicated simply because the supply price of heroin fell below the Pacific Northwest’s market equilibrium for three years? Fine, be that way.)

My point is this: the person inside you who loves these songs hasn’t got any fucking groceries. He is not a real person. In fact, it’s more than likely there are times when he pours milk directly into the cereal box for lack of bowls. i don’t know how much to worry that the encroaching real-personhood is cutting of his oxygen. But if it’s already too late, i promise not to be sad: at least i can listen to music on the subway, and it sounds pretty fucking great. And so we’ll both get up around 7 tomorrow, Axl, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. But i’ll leave it to you to get out of bed around 9, following two hours of god-knows-what. Trying to remember how much moo-shu pork is left in the fridge & prank calling Izzy Stradlin, i would imagine.

*- like the trendier Islamo-fascism, but with better cartoons

Buy Use Your Illusion II HERE on Amazon.

EAR FARM's 8+ is a weekly feature that showcases songs longer than 8 minutes. In the recent past these songs were featured on EF's 8+:
Guns N' Roses - "Estranged"
Guns N' Roses - "Coma"
Guns N' Roses - "November Rain"
Sleep - "Jerusalem (Pt. 4)"
The Velvet Underground - "The Gift"
Elton John - "Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding"
Jenő Jandó - "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2"
The Temptations - "Take a Stroll Thru Your Mind"

To see a full list of every song featured in EAR FARM's 8+ click HERE.