Yeah I'm not saying he's a god or better than anyone or anything.

I'm just saying there is an internet mythology that's grown around the ideal that he's some type of uber-asshole - and not only that but WORSE than other rock stars - as lets be honest - rock musican is not exactly a profession devoid of strong personalities. He's probably not a saint, but then neither are the guys in most bands.

The whole Matt is a jerk thing seems founded as far as I can tell in two things:

1. That he was honest and candid about his groupie activities. If we're going to damn him for that we can say goodbye to almost all bands - they almost all did crazy shit - he was just honest enough to answer the question.

2. The VR doco where duff called him negative about the non-famous singers who auditioned for them. Sure he was a little headstrong on the day they filmed that audition - but then the GNR boys making a comback project like VR was a fairly important issue - and realistically I think he turned out to be right that scott was the best choice and that coming out with an unknown singer was much less of a good idea than the superground approach they took.

By comparison - no one is calling Slash and ashole for rejecting the VR album they recorded with Corey Taylor. But Matt is the devil because he didn't like some no-name singers they got out of an add in the paper.

There's only a handful of Chinese tracks in the set though. Although I'd like them to stay as I love them.  But most of what Melissa and Pitman do seems to be triggering pre-recorded samples and loops. Don't think it's really anything that couldn't be outsourced to Dizzy most of the time. That said I'm not campaigning for her to be out - but she's a luxury not really needed - so we might as well have some more like extra drummers.

Well he used to be at all shows - has it changed? I know they shipped him out to Australia for the past couple of tours where his job seemed to be checking off the meet and greet list, and taking photos of the band on stage.

What does it cost to ship him and all the other hangers on around for this kind of stuff? To run multiple transport options so Axl and his crew of brazillians can be in different rooms from the other people.

I don't have a problem with any of it, I'm just saying a production of this scale carts around tons of equipment and crap and multiple staff on the payroll, a lot of which is probably slightly unnecessary if times were actually tough....but they're not because it's big business!

So it seems odd that suddenly when I suggest bringing Matt for a handful of songs it's financially impossible.

No I mean Jarmo.

I don't know about this tour but the previous tours he was rewarded for his years of propoganda pushing and anti-slash censorship on HTGTH by being made an offical 'photographer' and traveling the world.

Again I'm fine with it - but if we have to cut costs - it's people like that which we can do without.

I personally think they should have Adler play all the AFD tracks, Sorum do all the UYI stuff, and let Frank (or Brain if he wants to return) handle the CD stuff.

It would be the best of all worlds and it's not like they can't afford it!

Warms the heart to see Steven get his dream back.

Overall the setlists are strong.

Good mix of deep cuts for fans (coma, estranged, DTJ) , iconic mainstream stuff (KOHD, Jungle, SCOM, NR etc) and the bands 'newer' (I know now ancient)  material (CD, Better, TIL etc).

So generally it's a good mix.

The areas I think could use improvement are:

1. Using the same setlist two nights back to back in the same city is a bit poor. There's grounds for it when you've traveled to a new audience. But it wouldn't hurt when on the second night in the same town to bust out one of the alternate cuts like TWAT or something else. Not hard to do as they have spare songs rehearsed and it makes a world of difference to the repeat viewers in the local town.

2. The encore feels weak to me. Obviously it's a solid tradition to end with PC. However the re-opening with a ballad like 'don't cry', moving into an irrelevant cover like 'the seeker' just makes it feel to me like the show never quite re-gains the traction it had before the obligatory encore break. If we want "don't cry" late in the set for sentimental reasons as one of the songs written early in their history - then it would be better to move something faster to follow it. maybe even add a 4th song to the encore so the last couple can be more exciting.

3. "The Seeker" in general feels wasteful. It's not that it's bad. It's just average. There's a host of GNR songs not played, and even in covers there's a host of more interesting songs that would massively benefit from the GNR touch. Think of how KOHD and LALD are basically GNR songs now because of the stamp GNR put on them. To me "the seeker" does not have that feel. It doesn't suck - it's just there's the whole of TSI to play with, along with Sailing, Ac/DC covers, Zep covers slash likes to do, hendrix and god knows what else they could do there, let alone, play some of the other songs they keep in their back pocket like the rarely-unplayed stuff from UYI, CD etc.

Probably some alteration to the setlist as they've been changing it up a little on the second nights normally.