Blog Experiment #108815

For my 1,200th post, I will attempt to live-blog the song "November Rain" by Guns 'N' Roses.

Here we go.

*Placing the digital needle on the digital record*

Playful intro, followed by an airy ascension of piano and synthesizer. The melody is developed.

Then a random jet flies overhead.

Drums intrude. The music becomes more adamant. The strum of guitar.

Randomly, a flute twitters above the music, as another inexplicable jet passes.

The gravelly voice of Axel is heard. Even in the mid-80's, he needed a lozenge.

Backround singers? What the crap?!?

He feels the same...restrained love? And then follows it up with "Nyaaaaahhhh..."

Suddenly, the drums overtake the strings for dominance.

Personally, I think it's hard to hold a candle in any type of rainstorm--more for the difficulty of keeping it lit in the crosswind, rather than it getting snuffed out by the water. As for the cold, I'd imagine that shivvering probably makes it harder to keep the candle lit, so the cold certainly would have an impact.

Axel starts in on that fast, gutteral whine-rap. I stop listening to what he's actually saying, because it becomes incomprehensible. I think it's something like "Love is always gum and gum is always home and home is always wrong and something's always long today, rockin away..."

Come to think of it, the only phrase in the verse that I really understand is "cold, November rain."

And he's right. Everybody *does* need sometime on their own. I suggest a road trip. That's always a good time.

And now we enter into the THIRD melody change of the song.

Slash begins his famous guitar solo. You know, it's not particularly spectacular as far as guitar solos go. I'll take "Freebird" over this any day of the week. Finally, toward the end, he throws in a few trills that impress, but Axel walks all over the end of it to talk about how *he* needs time on his own. I think he's gotten enough of it, don't you?

And then we enter into Guitar Solo B. I find myself trying to listen more to what's going on in the background.

"I know that you can love me when there's no one left to blame." What?

I think all three melody lines are trying to battle it out for supremacy at this point.

Aaaand silence... Everybody takes a breath. The quiet before the storm.

Uh-oh. Here comes the big final build-up. Piano. Strings. Guitar. Militant drums.

And now Guitar Solo C! The only truly awesome part of this song. And AGAIN Axel stomps overtop of it with his dead-cat vocals. If I were Slash, I'd be administering some November PAIN right about now. But then again, I don't think Slash is into violence. Or bad jokes.

Garbled background vocals. I think they're saying, "Don't you think that you need some pie?! Don't you think that you want some pie?! Don't you think that you'd love some pie?! Everybody gonna want a slice! Everybody gonna want a slice!"

Then it slows down again. Electronic sounds. Axel's feedback. Fin.

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Okay, maybe that wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. Oh well. They can't all be gems, huh?